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corruption

Ruby-faced Gladys

October 16, 2020 by James J. Morrison W.G. Dupree Leave a Comment

Satire, Sarcasm or Irony warning
Satire, Sarcasm or Irony warning

Poor old gullible Gladys #koalakiller Berejiklian has all the emotional desires, so many of us have, and the demands of a taxing job that exacerbates her needs. She has always known she might have a lot to deal with, which explains why she has consolidated so many public departments. She just had to silence so many disparate voices making weekly demands of her, to lessen her obligations so that she could focus on matters of the heart. I mean, how many of us have not made the perfect choice of partners, that in later years reflectively ask, “WTF was I thinking?” Give her a break; it was a one-off mistake. “Princess” Gladys’s ruby complexion is a reflection of her private embarrassment. Her handling of public matters, although, has been exemplary – according to her liberal colleagues. I mean, it’s not like she makes a lot of mistakes as a public servant.

So she spent too much money on ferries built overseas with asbestos and too tall to fit under bridges in Parramatta River. But who could have predicted that? So her trains don’t fit the rail lines or go through the tunnels in the Blue Mountains. But who else could have built those trains? Bejesus, who goes to those places by ferry or train anyhow! So she allowed state forests to be logged and Koala habitats to be destroyed. So she approved the expansion of a quarry in the Hunter which will eliminate 52 hectares of prime koala habitat. So she asserted that those lazy public service bludgers (aka “essential workers“) were not worthy of a mere 2.5% wage rise during a recession. Besides the coffers were depleted after the extravagant pay rises awarded to all 65 coalition politicians in Macquarie St earlier in 2019. Still, some public servants were rewarded, such as the $87K rise to our Police Commissioner. You know him, Mick, the fellow who defended the laws Gladys brought in to strip search our kids. A sentiment echoed by the NSW Police Minister, David Elliott.

She is so good with money, though. She got one million dollars for Vales Point Station. Not her fault that it was valued at $730M. Yeah, OK, there were a couple of over-runs. I mean, who doesn’t overrun a budget on the light rail by $3B and Stadiums by $100M?  Sadly the modern revamp to replace that old “dump” of a Museum at Ultimo which they were very keen to give to their donor property developers, will be retained after protests by all those caffe-latte-drinking leftist protestors. Moving the Powerhouse Museum to a flood plain was a mistake anyone could make when it was such a dry season, that bushfires were all the rage.

Blackened Home of Ash
Blackened Home of Ash

Speaking of the worst bushfires in NSW, wasn’t that a confusing time? Not helped by allegations that Gladys refused assistance by the Navy for fire-threatened south coast towns. Berejiklian pulled up short of suggesting our honourable prime minister was lying. Eliminating public service bloat is important – achieved by cutting rural fire service capital expenditure by 75% ($49.9M). These were efficiency dividends, and besides, they still had 25% of their funds. Such unneeded bloat was presumably why she needed to get rid of 26 out of the 36 specialist fire management officers responsible for doing hazard reduction? Ten officers are more than enough for a State area of over 80M hectares. Slashing 500 full-time positions from National Parks and Wildlife was just being economically rational, surely? She was just clearing the bush her own way, and who could have predicted climate change would result in more significant fires? Probably why she thought cutting $12.9M from the state’s Urban fire fighting budget was an act of foresight.

Think of all the generous help she gave the federal government and irrigators by supporting the water trading of the Murray Darling Water Plan designed in 2012 whose Authority acted unlawfully when it “completely ignored” climate change projections for the determination of water allocations. Gladys did later begin to recant by considering new water-sharing plans for the Namoi River and water registries. This didn’t include the water registries of Helen Dalton’s Bill which would have listed MP’s water interests.  That unsuitable Bill was allowed to lapse. Unlike the Broken Hill pipeline or profitable fracking at Narrabri that threatened water security, as they’d already been approved and one doesn’t want to antagonise donors by reversing decisions! So country towns in NSW ran out of water, Warragamba Dam got polluted, and we had to resort to the desalination plant in Kurnell that relies heavily on fossil fuels to run, making Sydney resident’s water bills to rise. Gladys Berejiklian’s degrees were in Arts and Commerce, so it is unfair to expect her to understand climate science and the causality of events that lead to droughts. It is no wonder she refused to meet with representatives of the Menindee Lakes. I mean, what did they expect her to do, raise the fish from the dead? Folks just expect too much from our Premiers who are far too busy meeting reputable donors or partaking in $950/ticket luncheons (a price just under the $1K disclosure guidelines) with dignitaries.

Westconnex Protest issues list
Westconnex Protest issues list

Gladys is good for business. She is raising so much money for her donors from the public and transport industry, via Sydney’s nine toll roads with a locked-in 4% rise in tolls per year till 2060. That donor, Transurban (Westconnex), may have struggled with the planning to get NSW’s road infrastructure built, but Berejiklian’s support did not waver. She not only supports her generous donor, but her ongoing support to the legal industry has been commendable. NSW will be tied up in litigation for decades because of the compulsory acquisitions of houses and the structural damages to still-standing homes wrought by Westconnex’s construction activity.

Let’s not forget the prescience she exhibited when she hired Aspen Medical (whose director hid $15M in the British Virgin Islands) for $57m for Covid-19 work in Newmarch House (which had 19 Aged Care deaths) and for that lovely cruise ship, the Ruby Princess! She seeks out the “best quality” advice when she needs it.  But these errors are past us, and now our business-focused Premier has this Covid-19 infection all under control, almost!

Fine wines & good times.
Fine wines & good times.

The implications of corruption implicit in this ICAC investigation are over the top, surely?  It’s not like someone gave Gladys a bottle of Grange Hermitage that she forgot.  Although memory failures featured significantly in her testimony to ICAC, but then who needs an excellent memory to run a State? It’s not like she was accustomed to maintaining a detailed memory with “meticulous focus on every minor policy detail“.


I mean has the shock, horror, scandal news rags of Murdoch said anything critical of Gladys other she had been “falling for a bloke called Daryl“? Of course not, so honestly, there isn’t anything to be seen here. Just move along and don’t forget to vote them back in, on March 2023! Besides, who will remember any of her government’s small foibles by then?

 

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Filed Under: Corruption Tagged With: corruption, Fire management, Gladys, ICAC, NSW, Westconnex

Donation Transparency

September 30, 2019 by Martha Knox Leave a Comment

The Australian government’s increasing corruption is both measurable and comparable with other sovereign states. Trends in fluctuating Transparency International score for Australia in the last 25 years and international comparisons on political donations rules, are revelatory.

Failing perception of Transparency for Australia
Failing perception of Transparency for Australia

In 2013, Australia was amongst the top 10 countries on the Transparency International Index. Now in 2019, it has fallen to 13th in the world. There are many avenues through which the national ranking of transparency can deteriorate. What is clear is that the form of government and the quality of that government plays a significant role in determining transparency. Transparency rankings are highest in countries where democracy is most robust. Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark are all in the top ten countries on the Transparency International Index. The same modelling also indicates that dictatorships are the next least corrupt form of government (Page 2) and that corruption is most likely to occur in partial democracies, where the state is weakened. Could Australia’s comparatively quick slide between 2013 to 2019, be associated with a process that is undermining the state? This period coincides with the advent of the Coalition Government, and Australia’s slide out of the top 10 has happened before. The Transparency International Index only goes back to 1995 and has only been operating in its current form since 1998. But an examination of the years from 1998 to 2007, which coincides with the four terms of the Howard Government, indicates that Australia had fallen entirely out of the top 10, tending to hover around 11th to 13th place. Australia’s score hovered between 7 to 9 from 2007 to 2013, a period which coincided with the Rudd/Gillard Federal Labor Governments. It is not possible to say precisely why these shifts in Australia’s standing occurred based on which party was in power Federally. But it does suggest that there are underlying phenomena to be explored.

Donations or Bribery?
Donations or Bribery?

It should also be noted that the Transparency Index only measures perceptions of corruption, rather than actual corruption. Political donations are amongst the most direct means of State capture, or which weakens democratic purpose. This awareness was born out in a 2003 World Economic Forum survey of 102 countries, where 89% of surveyed countries estimated that the influence of political donations on policy changes was moderate to high.  Is there something unique to Australia’s political donations rules, that differentiates Australia from the top ten countries on the Transparency International Index, but which has also been a point of difference between the Federal Liberal and Labor Governments? Referring to the IDEA (Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance) database can clarify the first part of this question. The IDEA database compares 180 countries, on 74 different aspects of political donations. The database draws a distinction between donations to individual candidates versus parties. Specific questions are listed about rules around foreign contributions, corporate contributions, trade union contributions and contributions from other sources. Limits on monetary, in-kind and candidate-funded contributions, access to media, restrictions on online advertising, as well as gender equity in candidate funding, are explored. Prohibitions on vote-buying, spending limits for candidates and political parties, requirements for regular reporting on party finances and candidate expenses, public availability of reports, as well as disclosure of donor and lobbyist identities, are listed items.

On the matter of restricting contribution sources, Australia appears to be more rigorous than some of the ten countries on the transparency index. Australia, along with Singapore, Finland and Norway have specifically restricted foreign contributions to elections. Australia (along with eight of the ten top countries) permits contributions from corporations and trade unions (in fact only Canada and Luxembourg expressly prohibit corporate contributions). Canada, Finland and Luxembourg explicitly prohibit donations from corporations with government contracts to parties or candidates, but Australia and the six remaining countries of the top ten, do not have such a prohibition. Only Finland and Canada have explicit limits for individual donations outside of election periods to candidates and parties. Finland, Sweden, Norway and Luxembourg explicitly prohibit the use of state resources in elections, but there are seven top ten countries, which do not. Data is not available for Canada and the Netherlands, but no such limit exists for Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Denmark. In fact, there is remarkably little difference between Australia and any of the top ten countries with respect to 73 of the political donations indications listed on the IDEA index.

Countries that ban corporate donations
Countries that ban corporate donations

There is only one stark difference between Australia and the top ten countries, and this is in the realm of anonymous donations. Luxembourg, Sweden, Denmark and Norway expressly prohibit anonymous donations. The other countries require disclosure of donor identity for donations ranging between $20 for Canada to $5000 for Singapore. The Australian cap on anonymous donations is twice as high as that permitted in Singapore. In Australia, the cap on anonymous donations is set at $10,000 per year and is indexed by the consumer price index each year. Also, Australian political parties are only required to do an annual disclosure, unlike other top TI countries, which require more frequent and more timely disclosure.

Further anonymous donations of up to $10000 can be treated as separate items at Federal, State and Territory levels. In theory, this means that up to $90000 could be contributed each year anonymously to a given party. No other country in the top ten has such a loose and generous relationship with anonymous donations.

In Australia, the financial disclosure scheme was amended on the 8th December 2005 to increase the threshold for anonymous donations to more than $10,000 per the calendar year as a result of its being linked to the CPI. What was the background for this? According to the Federal Joint Select Committee on Electoral Reform (JSCER), the public was already concerned about political donations back in 1983. This lead to recommendations for fully funded public elections, disclosures and public funding for first preference votes. In 1995, the Keating Labor Government removed the obligation for parties to lodge a claim with the AEC for reimbursement of electoral expenses, weakening institutional oversight of donations. However, it was the Howard Coalition Government, which amended the Electoral Act in 2005, increasing the prescribed anonymous disclosure threshold to $10,000, and making it CPI Indexed. By 2017, the disclosure threshold was $13, 500. Before 2005, the disclosure threshold was $200 for candidates, $1000 for senate groups and $1500 for political parties. The changes reflected a diminishing pool of private donors for both major political parties, and it was a concern at least for Labor Senator John Faulkener that this would open the way for buying and selling access.

In 2008, the Rudd Labor Government tried to reduce the anonymous disclosure threshold to $1000 through the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Political Donations and Other Measures) Bill 2008. That bill prohibited the receipt of gifts of foreign property limit public funding to the lesser amount of either actual campaign expenditure or the amount awarded per eligible vote received. The 2008 bill stalled in the Senate, as did the two subsequent efforts by the Rudd Government. The Gillard Government tried and failed to reduce the disclosure threshold in 2011. Coalition representatives on the JSCER dissented against the reduced disclosure threshold. They also resisted having the definition of ‘gifts’ being amended to include fundraising. In 2013, a deal was struck between the Gillard Government and then opposition leader Tony Abbott, which would have resulted in the anonymous disclosure threshold being reduced to $5000. However, Abbott faced a party revolt, once details of the deal leaked.

After his loss to Malcolm Turnbull, Abbott spoke out again about the need for transparency in political donations in 2016. The Australian Labor Party introduced the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Donation Reform and Transparency) Bill 2016 in November 2016. The bill again tried to reduce the disclosure threshold to $1,000, prohibit the gift of foreign property and anonymous gifts; and restrict public funding of election campaigning to declared expenditure incurred or reimbursed based on first preference votes. The Australian Greens also attempted to introduce a similar bill in 2016, which would reduce the threshold for anonymous donations, and prohibit contributions from specific industries. It failed, although foreign donations have been prohibited, corporate, trade union donations remain. To date, the extraordinarily high anonymous donations cap is still in place, and it is clear that it is both a point of distinction between Australia and the top ten TI countries and between the Coalition and other parties.

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Filed Under: Corruption, Politicians Tagged With: bribery, corruption, Donations, Transperancy

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