Transparency International warns need for political funding reform is urgent
Transparency International is warning the need to reform political funding structures is more urgent than ever – and that complacency is leaving the country more vulnerable to corruption.
The Serious Fraud Office’s (SFO) scrutiny of donations to National and New Zealand First has sparked debate about whether there needs to be a deeper investigation into party funding and electoral laws.
With so much attention on National and NZ First over corrupt donations, it is time to flush the influence of big money out of our political system once and for all by simply funding every Political Party through public funds.
Funding the parties through public funds isn’t just to tackle the garden variety corruption, it is the blunt force trauma required to protect the political process during dangerous climate change.
The vested interests of the polluters will always find money to influence political parties to water down any meaningful climate change legislation, to eliminate those influences altogether, publicly finding our political parties must now be a priority.
How much would this cost? $5million per year.
That is a cheap cost to pay to save our democracy.
Imagine what Labour, National, ACT, Greens and NZ First could achieve policy wise for the genuine betterment of everyone if the influences from big money was simply removed altogether.
How much more could those political parties promote and push policy if the big donors in the back rooms weren’t influencing things?
We know that the dirty filthy oil industry KNEW as far back as the 1990s that climate change was a reality and they embarked upon a campaign of disinformation to confuse the public to the enormity of the threat.
We know right now that the climate deniers and big polluters are currently funding bot attacks to promote disinformation…
Revealed: quarter of all tweets about climate crisis produced by bots
The social media conversation over the climate crisis is being reshaped by an army of automated Twitter bots, with a new analysis finding that a quarter of all tweets about climate on an average day are produced by bots, the Guardian can reveal.
The stunning levels of Twitter bot activity on topics related to global heating and the climate crisis is distorting the online discourse to include far more climate science denialism than it would otherwise.
An analysis of millions of tweets from around the period when Donald Trump announced the US would withdraw from the Paris climate agreementfound that bots tended to applaud the president for his actions and spread misinformation about the science.
…we MUST remove big money from politics, not through more loopholes and regulation, but by completely publicly funding the parties directly.
The climate denier liars and big polluters will do everything to stop Parties from forcing them to change, removing their ability to pay for influence is the only way to inoculate ourselves from their manipulations.
Publicly funding political parties is no longer a nice to have idea, in the face of the looming climate catastrophe, it’s a political necessity.
Absolutely correct, Martyn. Governments are servants of banks, corporations and opportunists, which is why policies remain much the same whichever party is in power.
Other than burning coal, there is no faster way to render the Earth uninhabitable for mammalian life forms (and most other life forms) than to promote airborne movement of people and goods. So, here’s a landmark ruling that will set the cat amongst the pigeons:
‘Heathrow third runway ruled illegal over climate change
Appeal court says decision to give go-ahead not consistent with Paris agreement
Plans for a third runway at Heathrow airport have been ruled illegal by the court of appeal because ministers did not adequately take into account the government’s commitments to tackle the climate crisis…..’
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/27/heathrow-third-runway-ruled-illegal-over-climate-change
Yes, I saw that Heathrow ruling. Now if only they could do something similar for the Wanaka – Queenstown (tourism-at-whatever-cost-to-the-town-and-planet) airports plans. Newsroom Queenstown Wanaka Unite Over Jets
Again, they’re allowing the tourists’ crap to be flushed into our once pristine lakes for decades: Stuff Wastewater Into Lakes for Decades
Industrial waste and sewage to spill into our lakes
Lakes and Rivers the Dumping Ground Queenstown Sewage
The vested interests of the polluters will always find money to influence political parties
…and to influence the voting population. If only there were a way to keep them out of the media, off the airwaves, etc, or at least to declare all CC vested interests at relevant times.
For example, Washington Post carries a lot of weight in the news world. Some of our papers over here re-post their articles and op-eds. Here’s one from earlier this week.
Washington Post editorial page editor and columnist Fred Hiatt’s op-ed, published Sunday evening, … creates a false equivalence between the climate agendas of President Donald Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the front-runner in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race.
Here is a link to that op-ed – I don’t know if it’s been re-published here yet or not: WaPo Hiatt How Trump and Sanders Both Reject Reality
Here are a couple of the relevant responses on twitter:
News is something somebody doesn’t want printed; all else is PR
Fossil fuel executives can’t be trusted with choosing how we fight climate change.
@hiattf tells the story of how your house burned down, from the arsonists’ perspective
Patric Galey Twitter Reply
And: Doctor Vive Twitter Reply
Holy shit this is inadvertent satire:
“There is no magic wand to make [Sanders’ policies] happen, as Patrick Pouyanné told me last week. Pouyanné…is chairman and chief executive of Paris-based Total, one of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies.”
Common Dreams covers it here: WaPo Ed Hiatt Ripped for Equating Trump and Sanders on Climate Change
I attended an early (inaugural?) public meeting of Transparency International NZ several years ago when Chair Suzanne Snively (sp?) where the public was told there little concern about Transparency because there was little corruption to be concerned about in NZ, and we’re top of the trust charts! Lol.
“Trust!”
Here’s an example of our idiotic “Trust” – David Parker’s “Handshake deal” with Rio Tinto. What is the matter with him?? When will we grow up as a nation – We’re not toddlers any more – surely! “But I trusted them” does not carry any weight – It is not remotely sensible! RNZ Handshake Deal to Clean Up Dross We deserve better! …Of our politicians.
Don’t forget that john key ignored a referendum giving 67.3% against selling off public assets. International investors have since bought up 49% of our energy companies plus one now entirely owned by private shareholders, being institutional investors plus many shell companies linked with offshore money.
key said stuff Kiwis I will look after my rich friends and sucker Kiwis can line the pockets of the wealthy
JK was in another league altogether. A master salesman, selling our souls, selling out Aotearoa, our land, our water, our homes, our environment, our food, our way of life, even our democratic processes and representation. Aotearoa, “SOLD!”
we’re top of the trust charts!
Yep. In the way that tiny children trust the big man in the flash car who’s offering us a bag of lollies, … so we’re “trusting” enough to get in their vehicle to hell.
And now, even before people are really waking up, we have lost thousands and thousands of acres of our land, of the body of Aotearoa, to foreign owned entities, foreign corporations, foreign nations.
– We have committed to losing billions of litres of precious water-of-life from our underground aquifers, even as the word is out that the planet is running dry, even as the army has to be brought in to deal with the worst problems of drought, right here now in AO/NZ.
– We have been turfed out of homes that were then sold to overseas buyers, and have become tenants in our own land if we even have a home.
– We have exported the food that we grow and produce, sending it off to sold in some cases more cheaply than we ourselves have to pay if we buy our own NZ grown food — We are charged 15% tax to even eat our own food, grown here in Aotearoa. What other sicko country does that??? Our neighbours don’t charge their citizens extra tax to eat their own food! And many many people here in NZ have to beg for food parcels from charity, …including families who work their guts out!!!
(There’s more, much more, but …it’s so bloody depressing. I rest my case anyway… about the paedo/trusting situation.)
National operate only on dirty politics and cannot be honest at anything of value for the people, it’s as simple as that.l
So how are thinks different from when the COL took over. So many changes from their promises
TPPA signed off water bottling plants are growing no change to immegration numbers no roads for 2 years then as election gets near a 12 billion spend up. I could go on but it is not a great picture
Agree 100%
I question the wisdom of using public money to fund political parties which we all know to be corrupt. The politicians will still be corrupt, just better funded, and business will simply change tactics, offering backhanders, restaurant dinners, cars, boats and fully paid holidays to their chosen few instead of cash to parties.
And if you are going to do it, it should not be on the basis of votes cast in the previous election, which will benefit those parties who already benefit from “tactical voting” i.e. the citizens’ belief that they will never get what they really want from the political system and must settle for the lesser of of evils.
Voters should at least be able to nominate the party to which their share of the funding (on a per capita basis) is allocated.
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