Don't ban donations, ban donations from crooks

The ban is justified by the CCC on the basis there is a widespread public perception that property developer donations are corrupt.

This is despite the fact there hasn’t been a successful prosecution of a property developer for corrupting a politician since George Herscu in 1990, and the failure of the CCC to find any since despite numerous complaints and now Operation Belcarra.

Indeed, while charges have been made this year by the CCC against 13 people, two of them former mayors, to date not one property developer has been arraigned.

The “research” to justify this claim was that it was made by many of the organisations and people who made submissions to the CCC. But as these organisations are anti-development, they would say that, wouldn’t they?

At the same time the commissioner incredibly claimed that there was no public perception that union donations were corrupt.

So we tested these claims in the first of our questions and found that while there is a suspicion that some property development donations are corrupt (73 per cent), the suspicion is even higher for gaming (76 per cent) and still very high for unions (63 per cent), alcohol (60 per cent) and lawyers (51 per cent).

If the test is public perception, then singling out property donations is wrong on the terms of the people promoting the ban.

At the very least it must include donations from gaming, unions, alcohol and lawyers. This would be inconvenient for the ALP, which takes significant funds from unions such that it equalises the LNP’s advantage from property.

But that is only if you accept their terms.

We had a suspicion that the public would see it as unjust that a whole class of people should be punished for the undetected sins of a few of their number. After all, who punishes all their children because one of them smashed the window, or thinks the whole class should be kept in because Johnny or Joanna scratched the top of the desk?

Sure enough, 60.5 per cent of respondents thought you should “catch and convict those who bribe politicians rather than banning all members of an industry…from donating,” and only 15 per cent of them didn’t. The public gets justice, even if politicians and commissioners don’t.

We asked one final question. Despite the CCC Commissioner’s avowed lack of awareness of union corruption, one union in Australia, the CFMEU, is so notorious that even Labor former prime ministers like Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and Kevin Rudd think it should be disaffiliated from the ALP.