A concerned politician's guide to donations reform

… that is a different conversation. The issue for today is Senator Dastyari and I think it confuses the issue to speak of this payment as a donation to Senator Dastyari. It wasn't a donation, it was a gift. It was the payment of money into his bank account to settle a personal debt, by a company with very close links to the Chinese state.… it's no different to if someone had given him a bundle of cash and he put it in his pocket.

Next morning ABC journalist Leigh Sales grilled Barnaby Joyce, Nationals leader and deputy prime minister, on the difference - she asked him to explain how Gina Rinehart's $50,000 donation to his 2013 election campaign was any different to Dastyari accepting $1670 to pay a travel debt. Joyce said the difference was that it went to a political party, and was "auditable', whereas Dastyari had taken the money for himself.

Joyce,

What we have here is a direct cash payment to an individual by an entity closely associated with the Chinese Government and at the same time, so there's definitely correlation - a substantive change to a policy … Mr Shorten has to explain this.

When pressed further about Rinehart's donation, Joyce tried to avoid the question by saying other parties got donations as well. But Sales persisted:

What do you think that you have to give her in response? Is it access? Why does she give that money? What does she expect? I'm asking you what you - do you think you have to take phone calls from people or attend functions? What do you think you have to do?

Joyce:

To be honest, Ms Rinehart, I haven't had to give anything. They are strongly of the conservative side of politics. There's no doubt about it. They support the conservative side of politics. They're Australian. It goes via a political party. It's auditable.

On the same day (September 6^th) Joyce was explaining to Leigh Sales the difference between a personal gift and a political donation, former PM John Howard was booked to address the National Press Club in Canberra. He would have anticipated a question and responded with a defence of traditional Liberal party principles.

… fundamentally it is an attack on freedom of political activity and expression. If you limit donations to a small amount per head, that will inevitably result in massive increases in public funding. And political parties cannot run campaigns on nothing.

This was backed by an appeal to personal history, based on a dated and arguably distorted view of Labor party principles:

Having spent all of my life in a political party fighting socialism and nationalisation, it passes strange to me that people should embrace the idea of completely socialising the operation of political parties by increasing the amount of public funding, because that's the result.