En Passant

Image courtesy of resorces3.news.com.au

 
Labor heavyweight Sam Dastyari rang TOP Education Pty Ltd to pay an excess travel bill (and hence unreimbursed by taxpayers) for him of $$1,670.82.  TOP Education has close connections to the Chinese Government. They paid.

That suggests a very close relationship between the Senator and the company.  It appears, according to reports in Chinese media, that during the election campaign Dastyari said:

“The South China Sea is China’s own affair. On this issue, Australia should remain neutral and respect China’s decision.”

This is contrary to Labor Party and Government policy which calls on China to respect the recent international ruling on this that the area was not Chines property and not to militarise the Sea.

Dastyari has a history of receiving payments and support from Chinese organisations, as Anna Henderson on ABC News has set out.

He is not alone. Chinese interests have made sizeable donations to both the Coalition and to the Labor Party. Over $5 million in fact. They are all rotten.

The sophists have already been telling us the difference is that the millions were to the parties, while that to Dastyari was for a personal expense. On a trip as a Senator? Yeah, sure.

And donations to political organisations get no quid pro quo, no doubt the Sophists will argue. Yeah, right….

So then, what about when, as James Robertson and Jonathan Smith wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald in October 2013: ‘Gina Rinehart flew three Coalition MPs to Hyderabad in a private jet, where they watched the granddaughter of her business partner marry in front of 10,000 guests.’

They go on to say: ‘Barnaby Joyce, Julie Bishop and Teresa Gambaro collectively claimed more than $12,000 in “overseas study” allowances to pay for flights home.’

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has recently defended a $50,000 gift to the Nationals for his campaign. Any quid pro quo? No, of course not, other than that Joyce and the whole government remain committed to mining coal and other climate change activities. A nice insurance policy payment from Gina eh?

The Chinese whisper is becoming a roar, but the danger is that this will reinforce anti-Chinese racism. For Pauline Hanson in 1996 and 1998 we were about to be swamped by Asians. In 2016 her target was Muslims and Islam. The hysteria about political donations from or by Chinese interests, about the Chinese buying the farm when in fact they own 0.4% of abgricultural land, the Treasurer’s rejection of Chinese bidders for New South Wales electricity provider Ausgrid, all provide fule for the inciting of racist sentiment.

The fact that China is the second most powerful imperialist power in the world, and still growing, and that it could soon overtake the US in terms of the size of its economy, all against a background of a sclerotic US economy over the last 9 years, suggests that the imperialist rivalry will intensify even further.

There are likely to be more and more US containment exercises that go further than invading Afghanistan, including the possibility of the South China Sea as some sort of flashpoint. Australia is a key element in the US pivot to Asia, and that includes the new US base in Darwin plus old favourites like Pine Gap.

Governments may ramp up anti-Chinese sentiment among Australians with nudge nudge wink wink tactics like those mentioned before, attempting to balance our ruling class’s interests in a strong relationship with the US and its powerful defence forces against the strong trade ties we have with China.

Meanwhile the Chinese government is trying to extend its influence here through its exercise of soft power, including political donations to both sides.

Dastyari is no ingenue, despite Labor Opposition Leader Bill Shorten saying Turnbull was picking on a ‘junior’ Senator.

Let’s be clear, Dastyari is a hardened political operative from the NSW right, a brutal numbers man with lots and lots of blood on his hands from stabbing people in the back. Shorten is defending him because Dastyari delivers a large number of votes to Shorten as leader.

So, now the discussion, apart from possibly degenerating into anti-Chinese racism, is all about campaign donation reform (and the Government calling on Shorten to sack Dastyari.)

Ban foreign donations eh? Yeah, far better that the likes of Gina Rinehart or Clive Palmer fund our politicians than the Chinese. Seriously?

Limit donations to individuals on the electoral roll? Yeah, and at the same time destroy the ability of the trade union bureaucracy to fund its sort of political expression, the used to be reformism of the Labor Party.

Such limitations would still allow the likes of Malcolm Turnbull to donate bucket loads to the Liberal Party, just as he did during the 2016 election. I don’t know about you but I reckon giving $2 million to your own party to shore up your election chances and hence your position as Prime Minister seems pretty corrupt to me. It’s my party and I’ll buy it if I want to.

And of course limiting it to Australians, ie those on the electoral roll, means that the ugly question of ‘Australianness’ and the racism that goes with it will raise its ugly head. ‘They are on the roll, but really they are Chinese …’

Limiting donations to individuals on the electoral roll fails to understand the class divisions in society.

So is the solution to limit donations to a set amount, say $500 over a typical electoral cycle of 3 years to politicians and political organisations at all levels of government?

The tax lawyer in me immediately began thinking of ways around such a ban. Oh, that wouldn’t happen, you say. Remember Eight by Five, the Free Enterprise Foundation, Chris Hartcher? NSW has a ban on donations from property developers. As the most recent ICAC revelations show it is pretty easy to get around, as would donations limited to $500 over 3 years from individuals on the electoral roll. Rich people, not that they would, oh no, of course not, could for example give $500 to people they know who are on the electoral roll to donate. Those people might be people with similar interests – eg members of the same political organisation….

They could presumably set up non-political organisations to campaign for a ‘better Australia’. Their activities, and advertisements during elections, might favour favour a particular party. Unions and GetUp! could presumably continue their current campaigning activities during elections – a good but very limited type of political activity.

Assuming we could set up restrictions to stop the rich spivs, a big assumption given politicians are in one sense all in the pockets of capital and manage the system for them, a $500 limit might force parties to turn to the grassroots.

Now I know the ALP is not going to do a Corbyn or a Sanders and electrify a mass base with pro-people policies and get them to fund its activities with small donations. Certainly a ban allowing only small donations is not going to change a party whose 33 years of neoliberalism are ingrained into its soul and parliamentary representatives. The ALP is not going to democratise and give power to its members because those members are, like the rest of Australian society, by and large well to the left of politicians.

The task is to build a new politics, a politics that puts people first. That is what I am trying to do.

Declaration of interest: I am a member of a tiny socialist group called Solidarity and pay $40 fortnightly so we can keep producing our magazine Solidarity. Any action that limited donations to political organisations to $500 over 3 years would cut my current donations from $20 a week to about $3.25 a week if it applied to small groups like Solidarity.

Update: Dastyari has resigned from the shadow front bench. He will be back given his influence and power in the NSW right.