民主与金主

novation

Interestingly, many businesses give money to both sides of the narrow political divide; sometimes different amounts, sometimes exactly the same amount. In the lead up to the 2013 federal election in Australia, for example, Inghams gave Labor and Liberal parties each $250,000, Westfield gave them each $150,000 and ANZ gave them each $80,000. By my count, over one third of donors (excluding individuals) gave to both the coalition and Labor during 2012/13. This is not unique to Australia but occurs in all democracies, just indirectly in those places where direct political donations from corporations are illegal.

Australian politics: subscribe by email
Read more
Donating equally to both sides is clearly not about helping one side win. It’s an implied threat: “if you don’t treat us well we’ll give you less and they’ll be ahead.” When both major parties have the same policy on an issue, it effectively removes that issue from democratic scrutiny. This is the aim of many political donations from businesses who stand to lose from policy changes that would be popular with the electorate. Only areas of difference between contenders end up being discussion points during elections, the rest is passed over in silence.

During their last term in office, the minority federal Labor government in Australia were more or less forced by independent MP Andrew Wilkie to attempt to implement restrictions on poker machine gambling. Prior to the discussion of reforms beginning, gaming industry lobby groups were giving similar amounts of money to both major parties but slightly favouring Labor. As soon as Labor started talking seriously about reform, the donations began to dramatically favour the opposition Liberals. The leader of the Liberal party, Tony Abbott, came out strongly against the reforms and they were eventually abandoned.

During the period in question, surveys showed that a large majority (70-75%) of Australian voters supported poker machine reform to limit the impact on problem gamblers and their families. The voters lost that one as they usually do when wealthy industries are lined up against them.



This is a complex and dirty game dominated by political donations, vested interests, personal ambition, class and power. Voters are a part of the game but representing their interests may not be a politician’s top priority. Politicians will only act on behalf of voters if no wealthy or powerful group objects – or if the party in question is boxed into a corner by a hung parliament or a combination of marginal electorates and strong community action.

All of this begs the question of why we should bother voting. A video of actor Russell Brand being interviewed by the BBC’s Jeremy Paxman went viral last year precisely because of Brand’s compelling arguments that we should not vote and that voting only legitimises a fundamentally illegitimate system.

novation

文章讲的是西方民主。 可惜， 山林之流估计看不懂。

novation

要不然就不会当cowboy 的米田共， 什么鬼佬很直，鬼佬很透明，鬼佬顶瓜瓜般歌颂敬拜。

山地居民

民主只是假象