Profit makers not the prophets that have the ear of our pollies

Monday, June 6, 2016

Always I am grateful to live in a country where power is contested at the ballot box not in the streets. However we should never forget that it is the naked self-interest of powerful individuals and groups that makes democracy necessary; the need for the common good to prevail which makes democratic elections essential but it is transparency that actually greases a true democracy’s wheel.

 Which begs the question, how transparent can elections in Australia be if we must wait 18 months after the polls before we can even start to have some idea of who has been plying our politicians and their parties with funds? Or in the case of elusive side entities such as the Free Enterprise Foundation, which offer the giver lifetime anonymity, we most likely will never know who and what strings were being pulled.  

 Money buys access and access puts you in a powerful position to influence. When the purchasing of this influence takes place behind closed doors without any real transparency, then the risk of it distorting and ultimately undermining our democracy is high.  It was interesting to hear former Liberal Federal Treasurer, Michael Yabsley recently express the courageous view that we have reached such a ‘crunch time’ in this regard that we should get rid of the current system of political donations altogether.

 Certainly an 18 month lag before we can start tracking exactly which individuals, corporates and lobby groups have ended up getting what they want,  would seem to be a costly 18 months for Australian democracy.   

 Even with my intimate understanding of how voracious the generosity of the Australian pokies lobby has been to both our major parties, in late 2013, I watched in disbelief as the ALP joined the Government to vote down the last vestiges of Gillard’s gambling reforms.  Later, not then, Clubs NSW disclosed donations of $241,600 to the Liberal Party and $19,100 to the Labor Party in the 2013-14 financial year.  And that is not even counting the fact that the Labor Party machine draws on the massive poker machine revenue from the Canberra Clubs to keep their doors open. Or that both major parties have become reliant on the $5 billion a year in predatory pokies taxes they shamelessly take.

 There is pressure from some quarters for all political donations to be made visible in real time disclosures such as those that South Australian Senator Nick Xenophon is now doing.  Although the scrutiny Xenophon is rightly facing as a result is exactly what puts the pollies - and their funders – off such transparency.

 By giving us a chance to see who is trying to buy influence and for what end at precisely the time they are doing it, real time donation disclosures can shine a light that must surely lessen the power of those seeking influence by making our politicians pause to think just how this might look?

 Real time disclosures would also give us, the voters, a fighting chance of unpicking the spin of self-interest that is constantly and shamelessly dressed up as lofty common-good economic arguments, no more so than during election campaigns. Do not underestimate the insidiousness of this spin to not only frame the debate as well as the vote on many issues but to also skew the national dialogue to the areas of policy of interest to those with the big bucks.

 If the money to buy political influence lies in corporate hands, who then fuels the debate on the issues that affect us all,  such as education, health, and our moral debt to make this world a better place, through our aid program? There is no big business to draw our political leaders’ attention and energies into this space, the result of which can be seen with the choices this Government has made in these sectors as a result.

Right now the word is that Liberal Party donors are keeping their wallets in their pockets until Malcolm Turnbull drops his retrospective superannuation changes. This is at least fairly obvious but will Malcolm cave? I hope not as we know most of these tax payer funded concessions flow to the richest. In truth the current superannuation concessions function as domestic tax havens for the richest Australians.

 I have no problem with tax cuts for business with $10 million turnover or less but it is the tax cuts for the big banks and multinationals that worry we most. The transparency delivered through the Panama Papers hack has confirmed a dirty little secret that we all suspected. It is entirely optional for the rich to pay tax. As most Governments are broke this tax base erosion has now seen them start to stand up to multinationals and rich individuals through a new international agreement for automatic tax information sharing. Sadly, we the public are not permitted access to this data. Nor do we connect the dots that lower corporate taxes - the cornerstone of the Coalition jobs and growth policy – in part relies on the premises that footloose capital flows to the nation that caves in to powerful tax avoidance interests.

 For now we have the strange conundrum that we are told that this nation of ours, one of the richest in the world, cannot afford to fund a decent aid program for poor foreigners living in absolute poverty yet we are quite willing to give them tax holidays at our national expense, if these foreigners are rich.

 The Coalition has slashed Australian aid to its lowest level in our history. Apparently our debt justifies this though it is lower than other nations that have not balanced their books on the backs of the poorest because it costs real lives. Yet the Australian taxpayer can fund foreigners who are rich. The Coalition $51 billion corporate tax cuts, thanks to our dividend imputation arrangements, flows excessively to foreign entities. How is this justified? Apparently we must trust the voluntary decision of multinational companies to engage in less profit shifting. We must hope and pray for a morality dividend to get a return. And so it would seem that even in our democracy, it is the profit makers not the prophets who get to call the shots.

Tim Costello is the Chief Executive of World Vision

 First published in Fairfax Media

Opinion Pieces, Tim Costello

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