4 December 2008

The wages of politics

| johnboy
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The Canberra Times has a piece on the divvying up of the electoral commission loot post election based on votes garnered:

    “Almost $30,000 went to parties and Independent candidates who failed to win any seats in the Legislative Assembly, including almost $12,000 to the Australian Motorist Party and almost $6000 to Ginninderra Independent Mark Parton.

    The Labor and Liberal parties were the big winners, pulling in $116,887 and $98,760 respectively.”

Before anyone gets outraged it’s pretty small beer compared to what most of them paid WIN to little effect.

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As I said recently in another thread. Public funding based on votes received combined with compulsory voting. What an absolute rort.

I am completely opposed to any public funding. It benefits the big players at the expense of the minors, and is a true bipartisan scam. If political parties want to be funded, let them do the bloody work to get money.

it annoys me when people suggest that money is the big factor in the outcome of elections because it’s simply not true. (read freakonomics for a good discussion of this)

what matters more is the candidate being quality (this is far and away the most important thing) and being willing to do the hard yards (and having volunteers who’ll do them aswell). door knocking costs almost nothing and is a billion times more effective then anything else candidates can do.

sure money makes things easier (replacing stolen signs etc) but it would be a mistake to think its the determining factor.

just look at the CAP candidates norvan vogt and val jefferies who spent 59k and 55k respectively (figures from the crimes). Now thats an obsence amount of money to spend (i’d reckon they’d be if not the very top very close to it on money spent per candidate(per party spending is a different beast)), and it would hardly seen to have been effective.

I mentioned that at the time it came out…

Very odd that the ACT Labor Branch declared the two sub-quota ($10,300) which constitute less than 2.7% of total contributions.

Total receipts: $587123.49
Less $238552.86 (Canberra Labor), $5000 (Woden Tradies), $1500 (Ms Phi)

There’s still $348570.63 (58% of income) unspoken for there, unless it was all sub-quota contributions, and all (apparently) less noteworthy than Ms Phi…

The ridiculously lax laws mean we only get occasional peeks at funding disclosure.

But Labor’s 2006/7 return is online.

Very cleverly all the money has come in from the Labor Club, the Woden Tradies, and one public spirited Barbara Phi.

Are you telling me they didn’t? No levy from union fees, no contribution, no employment for ex staffers for the few months between being a staffer and the formal campaign, nothing?? Are you telling me the unions abandonded local labor?

My mistake if that’s the case.

housebound said :

A successful election campaign is out of reach of the normal person anyway – who can match the dollar might of the ALP-LaborClub-Union spending force?

Are you saying the Unions donated money to the ACT Labor campaign. Which Unions in particular are you referring to?

colourful sydney racing identity3:25 pm 04 Dec 08

Roslyn Dundas (the only and presumably last Democrat elected to the LA) ran a campaign on an absolute shoestring – if I recall properly her campaign barely cracked the thousand dollar mark

The Greens were arguably the most cost-effective for the public purse, because they had fewer failures (only 2 out of 6) than any other group (which seems to be how we are measuring this). (Mark Parton isn’t a group – see below)

Labor and liberals put up 17 candidates, of whom most failed to get elected (10 ALP failed, 11 libs failed). AMP had 17 failures, Mark Parton had 1 failure, Pangallo and Mucahey 2 or 3 each (I can’t remember), CAP had 10 failures – same as ALP – but ALP got more money for their succcess.

This is all to show you can use numbers like this to twist any argument in any way.

A successful election campaign is out of reach of the normal person anyway – who can match the dollar might of the ALP-LaborClub-Union spending force?

Running a political campaign is big dollars, even if your investment is very small. I have no problem with people whom run in an election being reimbursed for their efforts, as it means that the average person on the street actually has a chance to represent in both the LA and Parliament itself. It ensures that it’s not just the exclusive domain of the rich.

I believe the amount received by the candidate should only reimburse for legitimate campaign expenses. (No Pauline Hanson’s who allegedly make more $$$ in profit from a single un-successful campaign than most people earn in a year)

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