The first way in which democracy is damaged is of course obvious. Wealthy persons and corporations (and unions) can easily influence the policies of those political parties whom they fund. Witness the national secretary of the Transport Workers Union threatening to withdraw funds from Labour if Gilliard is dumped as PM. The threat, or implied threat, of withdrawal from a major donor is inevitably going to influence political parties (and even government) policies. The way in which large political donations damage our democracy which is not often mentioned is that campaign finances can and do win or lose elections. How much money a party has to throw around greatly affects the outcome of elections. Why else (except in order to obtain direct political favours) would people make such donations if not to try to get their preferred candidates elected. This clearly skews the democratic process in favour of the wealthy. Normal people can only influence elections with their single, solitary vote. But if you have money, you can wield far more influence than you own personal vote allows. Even if we don't want to have a system whereby political parties are publicly funded, I think we must seriously consider a limit, and a fairly stringent one, on how much any individual or corporation can contribute. Union contributions are a little different because they, at least in theory, represent their members, and are donating on their behalf. This being the case, I think union contributions should always be put to a general vote of their members, rather than being at the discretion of union officials.

In accordance with our global wisdom source, Wikipedia, "Donations are given without return consideration." If corporate donations to political parties were indeed given sincerely without return consideration purely to support their policies then I would oppose this topic. Unfortunately, in my experience, corporate donations are made as an investment and a return on investment is usually the focus of generosity. This is typically observed by the fact that many corporations make donations to the party most likely to be elected and will 'swing' their donation accordingly making it obvious that they are expecting support for their business in whatever form that may take.

Voters are people. And every person has motivations and pursues objectives that are many and varied. These motivations and objectives underpin a person’s voting decisions and level of political activism (for example, whether they donate to political parties and how much they donate, whether they distribute how-to-vote cards and for whom, and whether they doing nothing of the kind). Importantly, this must always be a personal compromise that is informed by, among other things, their personal ethics (whether they be religiously based or otherwise). This must also true of organisations that seek to represent the political interests of groups of voters (such as unions, business councils, environmental organisations, GetUP!, etc).

Corporations on the other hand, are profit-making entities with the statutory obligation to maximise profits for their shareholders. Importantly, this is irrespective of the individual shareholders’ other wider interests. And, although corporations are run by people, the decisions they make must ultimately be guided by the corporation’s profit imperative. As such, any corporate political activism (including donations to political parties) is a corruption of democracy because it is not multi-faceted and negotiated in the same way that it is for people and the organisations that represent them.

Tied up with democracy is the concept of citizenship. Original democracies only extended votes to citizens. By extending more influence to particular actors in a political system, you are saying that they are more worthy of citizenship and all the rights that come with citizenship. Indeed that is often the aim of corporations when they buy influence, to seek more rights and fewer responsibilities. Democracy is how citizens ensure that their other rights are secured. By reducing the value of a vote (by corporations purchasing influence), the ability for citizens to secure their rights is diminished, particularly when their rights are in conflict with the 'rights' that a corporation wishes to secure.

However transparent and regulated donations to political parties are probably the least damaging form of corporations' buying influence. They are less corrupting than individual donations, and probably less effective at changing policy than issues-based advertising and astroturfing. Given the obvious difficulties (and that it involves restricting freedom of speech another cornerstone of democracy) in implementing a ban on issues-based advertising, allowing corporate donations is preferable in an imperfect democracy.

Why should those with large amounts of money - and in a corporatocracy that is big business and a small number of inviduals - have such great sway over the government? They already control the majority of the resources through their purchasing power. They already control the message of big media through ownership of tv, radio, print media, etc. They already control the financial system, the food supply, and much of employment. Surely government policy need not also be biased towards the big end of town! There are reasons that individual politicians are not able to accept large 'donations' from vested interests. What makes a party any less susceptible to bribery and corruption than an individual?

To be heard in a noisy world seems to require lots of money. Or so it seems, but this is not the best ways for ideas to compete. A good idea needs to be heard but there is no guarantee that it will be while ever the person with the deepest pockets can shout over everyone else. A perfect example of this is currently at play in USA where Mitt Romney does not have to declare a donation when a supporter funds directly a proposal of his. Consequently he is able to build an huge donation base and still have his ideas promoted without officially spending a dollar of this money.

The US has the most unrestricted political financing laws of any advanced industrialized country. The US Supreme Court equated money with free speech thus allowing corporations to spend an ever increasing amount of money on campaigns. So what do you get for this in return ? Take the recent financial crisis. Public opinion polls and experts all agree that inadequate regulatory oversight of financial institutions resulted in a degree of malfeasance that contributed greatly to the real estate bubble and the subsequent financial melt down. US Congress passed some tepid new laws that have not even been implemented yet. Why ? Because, politicians depend too much financial contributions from the financial sector. Compare this to many other countries (i.e. Netherlands or Switzerland) where legislatures passed effective new financial regulation. Why was it possible ? Because the stricter political financing laws made it more difficult for financial institutions to oppose such laws.

It is an illusion to think that our choice must be between banning political donations by organisations and continuing to allow money to have unfettered influence in politics. For example, we could convert the first $50 of tax paid by every citizen into a "democracy voucher" that can be donated to any political candidate that agrees to accept donations only from Australian citizens, capped at $150 per citizen. This is a scheme that was proposed by Lawrence Lessig for reforming US campaign finance. He chose the $50 figure for the US so that the potential revenue from democracy vouchers would be substantially more than current political campaign revenue from all sources. Thus political candidates would have an incentive to voluntarily reject large contributions in favour of many small contributions. Citizens could potentially delegate their democracy voucher to political organizations whose principles they agree with and who have the time and expertise to navigate the political landscape on their behalf.

I would argue that this strategy would be better than either doing nothing or banning political donations by organisations outright. Surely there are yet better strategies and we should look for those too.

Biggest disadvantages of banning political donations by organisations: --> It would undermine the ability of political organisations to facilitate collective action by channeling the donations of many citizens to fight for a cause they collectively believe in. --> If this source of campaign funding were replaced directly with public funding then whatever agency were given responsibility for allocating that funding would have too much discretionary power and would probably tend to favour established political entities at the expense of small parties and independents.

Biggest disadvantages of the status quo: -> Wealthy individuals and corporations have undue influence in our political process. ----> Political campaigns are financed disproportionately by the wealthiest individuals and corporations. ----> Political contributions can buy influence in parliament. This is necessarily true however indirect the influence might be because, at a fundamental level, politicians are faced with an incentive to shape their actions to attract contributions. ----> Therefore wealthy individuals and corporations have influence in parliament disproportionate to the number of citizens whose interests they represent. This will tend to distort our laws away from representing the public interest. ----> The argument that corporations have a right to influence in politics because they benefit our society is flawed. A democracy is premised on granting equal rights to all citizens. To the extent that corporations benefit the citizens of society, those citizens have an incentive to advocate laws that support the socially beneficial activities of corporations, but no corporation's interests are directly aligned with those of the public so the more influence corporations have in politics the more our laws will favour corporate interests at the expense of the public interest. -> The perception that money is corrupting politics undermines public confidence in our political system. ----> Lack of confidence in the system tends to reduce participation which would tend to further draw political power away from the people, leading to a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Corporates seek a return on investment

"One Way Forward" describes how to remove money from politics. In the US at least.

Australia is supposed to be a representative democracy, where each citizen's interests are represented by the individual or party they vote for, and by the parliament as a whole. Corporate views are reasonably taken into account in this process because the individuals who own or work for these businesses already have the same power to influence political debate as their fellow citizens - through their votes, through their ability to form petitions, and through their ability to influence their fellow voters through public debate.

To allow arbitrary groups of profit and rent seeking individuals to then have a second bite of the cherry to further influence political outcomes through sponsorship and investment in politicians is, at the very least, double dipping. More broadly, it is a fundamental corruption of representative democracy.

Corporations have a narrow set of interests, being obliged to seek to maximise financial gains for shareholders. Their interests do not extend beyond the financial to, say, the overall wellbeing of their shareholders, let alone non-shareholders. This issue is compounded by the distribution of corporate profitability, which is highly skewed - the largest 100 companies on the ASX account for over 90% of the value of all listed companies in Australia. These large companies are able to wield disproportionate political influence in the pursuit of their narrow interest if allowed to use their resources to influence politics. It's hard to see how this situation could enhance the goal of the greatest good for the greatest number of citizens.

Corporate donations create self interest and familiarity threats in that politicians feel obliged to work for corporations rather than the masses.

Corporate donations can influence party policy and actions in a way that very few individuals can.

He who pays the piper calls the tune, irrespective of whether it's the tune we all want or need to hear. Each candidate in an election who can show, say, 1000 signatures of support, should receive the same funding and let their words speak for themselves instead of vested business interests.

I oppose corporate donations because:- 1. It is not a corporate's charter to influence government 2. Politicians are cheap to buy look at how little Murdoch paid to buy the UK government! 3. Look at how far pollies go to do their masters' bidding

As well as banning political donations it would seem to us democracy would be well served if a cap was put on pre-election advertising and such advertising was restricted to factual content - eg lists of achievements and/or future plans/policies, brief explanations for previous failures etc.

Before I was elected to my local council I had already learnt far more than I really wanted to. Most people are too busy with their personal lives to take much interest in politics but it IS about the big issues and it does involve REALLY BIG DOLLARS. When my local council approved a rezoning it increased the value of one parcel of land from $8 million to $50 million by a stroke of the pen, People will kill you for much less than $42 million. There is no doubt that people who are genuinely politically aware stand to make a considerable amount of money from legislative change (Dick Smith and CB radios springs to mind) indeed such people have a name and are referred to as political entrepreneurs as opposed to the traditional market entrepreneurs. It is a lack of community awareness and transparency which enables the true selling/subversion of democracy.

The problem with political donations is that they're clearly made with the purpose of influencing political decisions in favour of that corporate organisation. The trail of corporate donations and the blatant political decisions by the receiving political party once in government has been very well established in the US where this practice is most prevalent, but also in some European countries. Whereas some may argue that this is not so prevalent in Australia (and there is some truth to that), it is common practice here too and the danger of corporations taking over policy is one that must be avoided. In my view, citizens, as voters, should be able to donate money to political parties (with a cap to be negotiated) and these donations should be publicly disclosed above a $500 amount. Corporations are not people and therefore should not be able to make political donations. Same for NGOs and other similar groups.

Political donations distort elections and policy, but they also distort the politician's conduct. How many politicians end up then with executive salaries, or sitting on corporate boards? It is this kind of corporate relationship with politicians that betrays democracy and citizens creating a democratic deficit between what is in the interest of the majority of citizens and the corporate world.

Simple fact is actually best taken from the argument against the proposition:

" Strong campaign finance law insulates political parties from outside pressures and influences. "

Precisely WHY we should have strong campaign finance law! The ONLY influence that any members of a political party should experience is directly from their electorate! Otherwise, we are not in a DEMOcracy but in a LOBocracy, where lobbyists have more influence of policy than do the general public. The internet will see to it that politicians are kept well advised by their electorates about the concerns of their constituents, until such a time as representational democracy goes the way of the dinosaurs and people contribute directly to allocation of their own taxes and to the writing of laws.

It seems that many Western nations have two parallel political dialogues. One is the electoral dialogue, which is largely symbolic. The candidates do and say meaningless things which are designed to get the emotional support and the votes of individuals, even though the things said and done are often nonsensical ("going forward") or poorly thought out or harmful to minorities (refugee policy) or are not intended to be fulfilled.

The second dialogue is between groups of people who have links to people in power. Sometimes these groups are transparent and democratic (perhaps law reform commissions, or some NGOs). More often they are completely self-interested groups of elites who are only interested in sustaining their own power. Unions and business organisations are the most obvious examples. These groups are able to influence decision-making and policy far more than electors, first because they have the power and opportunity to make elaborate and detailed submissions to government, and secondly because there is so much personal overlap between politicians and lobbyists. Donations to political parties only exacerbate this.

We need to balance these two dialogues, because it is clear that the electoral dialogue is not meaningful enough, and that the elite dialogue is too important. We should be constantly working on our political system, checking that it is sufficiently democratic. Changing the electoral system or breaking up political parties would be advantageous, but corporate donations should be subject to great scrutiny and probably restricted as well.

It is becoming abundantly clear that this "buying" of influence is having a massive and corrupting effect on our political system. In other countries such as America this has got to the point where it is dangerous. Let us hope we can do something about it before it gets to the same stage here.

Look at the Leveston Enquiry in UK. Look at US politics. $ buys politicians AND it buys votes. The only new 'small' parties that are ever going to get significant funding are likely to be fronts for monied interests. The Greens as a small, hard working, very slowly emerging party oppose current funding structures because they know that individuals will continue to have limited power if corporations and single wealthy individuals can buy influence. Political donations are not charity, they are business.

While having much respect for Andrew Norton (the key arguer for the negative), the ability of citizens to finance political parties is not removed if corporations are banned from political donations - while true non-profits (as opposed to those created artificially by companies or corporate groups) on the other hand remain able to contribute.

Admittedly, there is an issue separating artificially-created non-profits from real ones, but this could be judged by the proportion of donations that came from individuals with donations below a certain level.

At the very least, within Australia, corporations with foreign ownership (direct or indirect) above a certain limit could be easily prohibited from making donations, and this can hardly be said to be removing rights from Australians.

Corporations are in the business of making money so when they donate they expect freebies and their interests to be protected. Political parties when in government will have to deal with the conflict of interest between the majority that elected them and the ones that gave and will give them the money to be elected. It is possible to cause democracy to bleed until it ceases to exist definitely yes.

Corporations are comprised of individuals. If individuals within corporations want to make small (capped) donations they remain free to do so, just as they may also stand for election in our democracy. Political parties should be limited to receiving small "capped" donations ONLY from individuals, not corporations or lobby groups. The Australian Electoral Commission could be publicly resourced to transparently fund basic election campaign information on an equitable basis for all qualifying political parties during an election period, so their respective platforms may be heard/viewed equally.

Democracy is based on one vote for every person. The fairness of the system is damaged when people/corporations use the unequal distribution of wealth to buy excessive influence on the political process. Big donations have more influence than small donations leading to examples of competing industries e.g. farming/forestry fighting mining or land developers, and of company profits being placed ahead of community interests. Obvious examples include the tobacco industry and big financial companies in America. Donations buy advertising; lots of it! Psychology texts tell us that if a story is repeated often enough it becomes accepted as fact, even if it is not true. Politicians and political parties should be free to put the needs of citizens first, and not be subjected to the potential of undue influence of corporate donations.

The funding of political parties should primarily come from its members and constituent units. Corporate donations should be strictly limited to say $AUD 10,000 at election time, and individual donations should be limited to $AUD 500 per person. If in the case of the Labor Party a trade union is afiliated, it's affiliation fees and donation to the Party should be limited to a agreed and fixed amount for each trade union member, who is also a member of the ALP. I believe that Federal and State governments should provide financial support to political parties based on a formula, whicvh takes into account the Party's paid up members with over one year's membership and the primary votes a Party receives in an election. There should be separate per voter amounts for the lower and the upper houses of Parliament election results.

Let's take a case in point. Let's look at the Orange Grove Affair. If anything was learnt from this fracas, it's that there should be no special access to government planners from big corporates - which Westfield clearly enjoyed with the Carr/Iemma government. But that was also the beginning of the end of the people's trust in Labor in this state.

It's actually in the interest of governments, to preserve their credibility. Removing big lobby dollars is a plain and simple step towards this.

Provide sufficient resources to all serious political candidates to make their point (fund advertising space and actively engage the electorate using dedicated media). Limit donations to $10K and ensure transparency.

More and more, especially in state politics, I am seeing legislation passed as payback favours stemming from donations paid to political parties. Surely, the idea of democracy, is that we elect politicians to represent us, the people, and not for the vested interests of a few.

The problem with political donations is that they assume the ability to make large amounts of money makes your opinion more valuable than the random person on the street. Unfortunately the ability to make large amounts of money often goes hand-in-hand with some kind of exploitation of the environment or of people and they stand to benefit from the relaxation of laws that protect the majority and keep our resources and welfare in tact. Some would say the role of the government is to manage and minimise the negative impacts of markets. It becomes less likely that government is going to do this with rigour when they stand to lose hefty political donations from those with interests that run counter to this.

Why donate if not expecting a return? Altruism?

Mainly because big lies can be made to appear as truth the longer you advertise it- and usually the big boys want this as per the abhorrent ads against the wealth tax on mining. False advertising can manipulate people through preying on fears or prejudices. And the less well off can't afford the ads to rebutt these claims. The US is a country where the ads are obscenely powerful and campaign donations instead of policies are the driving force of the parties. The recent tricks by the GOP to allow unlimited donations under some dubious front mocks the whole notion of the US personifying democratic ideals.

It's unfair to say that donations will always result in favors being offered to those making the donations, but time again we see examples of politicians and parties abusing their position when it means some extra money in their pocket. Even if money doesn't end up in their pocket, politicians have a vested interest in "buying" votes if it keeps them in power a little longer. Taking away the donations won't remove that sort of corruption completely but at least it will level the playing field for everyone.