I find myself agreeing with the caping of donations at $30000 but also the public register of lobbyists is a fantastic addition. Get big influence out of our politics!
I’d be very curious to see how orgs like the Taxpayer’s Union or Hobson’s Pledge fit in. They are campaigning for our political parties but are not those parties, most of their work is not in actual campaigning but in sewing seeds of doubt or pushing certain views among the public.
I guess what the Greens are proposing is a lot better than the current state, especially the standdown between being an MP/minister and being allowed to join a lobby group.
Yeah that MP to Lobbyist pathway is a joke.
- Become MP
- Gain lots of political contacts
- Learn the ropes of parliment
- Gain lots of industry contacts
- Leave politics to be lobbyist
- Profit!
The alternative is #5 directorship of Fulton Hogan.
This hits squarely in my ‘pro-democracy’ sweet spot. Good stuff.
Political dontations are the worst. Even worse than donations imo.
Nice to see another party on board with Opportunity’s cleand up politics policy.
Billionaires: roight. Ill just make a thousand donations from each of my shell companies, then.
Seriously: its a start, but how does this stop the mega donors from doing just that?
In the finance industry we call this KYC Know Your Customer, specifically the “beneficial owner”.
You tie the funds back to the top-most owner in any structure.
You’re also supposed to vett that the funds have providence for AML (Anti-Money Laundering).
If that industry can do it, so can parliamentary services or whomever would enforce it.
Didnt a bunch of these rules come in world wide due to the Panama Papers leak? you hear almost nothing about it but a whole bunch of laws about KYC came in from the panama papers investigation, its one of the reasons why trusts got a big nerf.
there is a whole bunch to dig into but this look like a good start https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Papers
It was around the same time. I’m not sure if there was a causal relationship.
ahh… by the second part of the head line?
https://thekaka.substack.com/p/election-hoon-how-should-the-supermarkets
This is a good look at the supermarket issue; also has the Labour spokesperson talking.
What if we spread corporate donations across all parties instead.
Ensure the target party gets the largest share of the donation (not necessarily 50%), but all the other parties get a slice of the pie based on their current number of seats.
If you don’t have any seats, you get to keep it all (because you’re either a fringe weirdo, or new and need a leg up).
I think this is how it used to work. If some one donated a lot it acctually got split based on current percentage of seats in the house, not 100% sure hell not even 50% sure but something like that is scratching the back of my thinking cap.
However this is unfair to the smaller parties because of the 5% threshold. Even if Germany is currently proving the 5% threshold dosnt work :(
I should probably read the bills as I can’t see how this enforces anything.
it still feels like it assumes Pele are fleeing the rules and passing nicely, which we’ve seen considerably eroded as the current coalition emulate USistan politics
