What every Australian should be aware of before the incoming federal election.

We are in a age described as monitory democracy where there is a proliferation of organisations just like very well respected Australian Conservation Foundation my daughter makes me very proud to be part of and many others, who are there to monitor governments and make sure they are doing the right thing by the citizens.?

A new addition, the Australian Democracy Network was founded cooperatively with Human Rights Law Centre,?ACF and the Australian Council of Social Service. ?

?They have put a stethoscope on the chest of Australia’s democracy and diagnosed it seriously unwell. They argue we are dealing in today Australia with something more than everyday corruption cases in the government, we are dealing with something much more systematic. They named it the State Capture.

Whichever big social issue you want to tackle, the advocates come to the same end, it is the influence of powerful corporations who are making profit from statues quo that is stopping us from making progress. This is the problem all of us share, whatever issue we are trying to fix.?

What is the State Capture? It is to exercise of power by private actors to shape policies to serve their narrow interests. When powerful and rich influence the decision making and they shape the whole government?policies to produce system that benefits them without any consideration of?harming wellbeing of everyone else.?

There are six way in which big industries insert influence:

1. Fossil fuel industry donated the similar amount of money to both of our major political parties so whatever prime minister will be chosen will serve their interests. The Coalition received a million of dollars and the ALP received over 8 hundred thousands of dollars to secure for the Fossil Fuel Industry their continuous profit. It is important to mention there is no real time data of disclosure so ACF had to source it looking back. For the last financial year it was over 2 million dollars now if you consider billions of dollars of subsidies the Fossil fuel industry is getting from the government it is remarkable profit on investment for them.?

The conclusion is our political class, both of our major parties are very cheaply bought. They have received close to five billions of dollars over the

last twenty years from our government, so they are getting a bargain. So where it leaves the rest of us, the climate change, the natural disaster prevention and the social and health issues we grappling with?

2. Let us look at Western Australia, our home state where Woodside Scarborough gas plant project is under way, a seventeen billion dollars project. WA has a tighter donation regime than other states, so money is not the only thing we have to pay attention here. Woodside pays a hundred of thousands dollars to each major party to join their policy forms or business forms which is basically fund-raising where relationships are built and maintained and close quarters lobbying for position. So it is not called donation but membership fee. A lot of money donated to political parties in WA are dark money, we do not know who is donating them and why. You know it is there but donation regime is so utterly loose in its terminology, no one can find out how much was spent and by who. The Scarborough project will produce over billions of CO2 over next thirty years which makes it impossible for Australia to meet Paris agreement.

It is not possible whatever Woodside and the WA government think, for the project of that dangerously polluting level to go ahead. Even the International Energy Agency which is pretty conservative said resolutely no new fossil plants. So Scarborough is absolutely NO GO!

3. When Kevin Rudd wanted to introduce the fossil fuel?super profit tax our mining companies spent twenty two billions in campaign against it and forced it to be squashed, that is the power they have even now. They are very good to use social media and broadcasting media to suit their purpose if needed. No one in today’s government be it in leading seat or opposition will try to impose any tax on them again from the fear of loosing election.?When in 2020 we have been hearing about the gas future one of my daughter’s colleague went to sit with the member of the Labour and asked why the Labour is still getting on the gas band wagon it does not stuck up environmentally and financially, will not help to recover from pandemic, will not create jobs we need, it does not make sense and the Labour representative said, we lost two prime ministers over this and we are not going there again. The Gas industry spent twenty two millions on lobbying this issue and it is nothing for them like going for coffee, nothing.

Mining companies play up successfully the card of the good citizenship deciding what they donate to poor specifically to the corporate sponsorship of sport grounds and cultural events where they plaster their logos on every empty space in order to by the social licence. Sport washing or Art washing as we have seen in our WA with the Woodside sponsorship of our beloved Fringe Festival or our richest person Gina piling into the Olympics ridiculously is the form of buying our social conscience of liking them and letting them be to pollute and corrupt our governments as they like.?Adani, Santos all are doing the same thing believing if you plaster your logo on popular things, it makes popular by association. A lot of is tax deductible for them on top of everything and it is very small money for them, just a coffee money. Campaigners in WA manage to get the Fringe Festival to divorce Woodside but I know the Black Swan State Theatre company I visit keeps Woodside logo as their main sponsor everywhere and I hope I will not see it next time I visit their premises.

4. The revolving door between the fossil companies and the government became somehow a normal occasion for the resigned Australian public seeing in the past Health minister supporting the tobacco industry and junk food and yet it is time to shut them. You have many examples of politicians who after quitting parliament move straight on top of the fossil fuel industries they used to regulate which is truly unsettling. These problems are systematic and our government system is not working by being exploited so heavily and for so long by these powerful rich companies. A quarter of the federal national MPs own a sustainable amount of shares in fossil fuel companies in the time of our symbolic move to net Zero? What does it say about our politicians representing our interests? Whose interests they represent but their own.

This is not the problem you can only legislate away, it is a shift that needs to happen across our whole culture and our own stake in this corrupted system that suppose to represent us all. The overwhelming majority of people in Australia from 2005 vehemently ask for renewable energy to be implemented as fast as possible and our goal of net Zero to be achieved according to Paris agreement, are they being heard?

There has to be social, economical and political consequence for any politician or rich, powerful individual representing any corporation who undermine our democracy. There can not be any other way out of this undemocratic government mess.?There has to be written law for us to define what is corrupt or elicit or normal in order to make sure the revolving doors and the donation system on the government level is democratic and transparent as it should be in democracy we pride ourselves to live in.

5. There is also lots of revolving doors in casino industry as you can imagine but let us look at something even more sinister, the arm industry. Even if they do not show up in top ten biggest political donors, they build influence by poaching very influential political people even the ones in very senior top ranking uniform, like chief of Defence Force and drought them to advisory committee or boards of huge defence contractors. It is very tight circuit happening behind the close doors where public policy, defence establishment and arm industry close regularly million and billon of dollars of arm deals. Christopher Pine lead the industry delegation to Saudi Arabia while he was a minister with his portfolio case and moving directly to lobbying position where he politically representing the very same arm industry that he was setting policy for in the government. There were no consequences for him after he was uncovered and he is enjoying good pension while continuing his career in the arm industry of course. You have one unified class, a very close unit group you can not penetrate, even the former foreign minister Julie Bishop had done very well financially out of it too.

Another example is on our home soil when our Mark McGowan asked his governor to advocate for defence industry. It is the first time ever the state governor was dragged in that type of the role of the arm deal lobbyer. Christian Porter as an attorney general blacked out parts of one of many arm procurements when the question arrises how the public money going to be spend on this inappropriate arm deal. Then our prime minister turns around and tells us we do not have money for national fire protection equipment when the country is on fire? We do not have money to pull people out of poverty. We do not have national renewable strategy but we have this fossil fuels and arm deals priorities instead that benefit rich and powerful corporations and our elected politicians. The rest of the Australia is kept in dark!

6. The hollowing out of the public sector is on the way and new management consultancy firms linked often to the fossil fuel or arm companies are taking over. So the companies that should be watched and regulated end up watching and regulating themselves the way they like. Our defence expenditure is the same as of the oppressive Saudi Arabia and we are responsible for destroying?of?whole villages with children inside them in Yemen with the arms we provided. As we remember it was our minister’s Christopher Pine’s prospective market. Our government is planning to continue to spend even more in the next three years on defence and arms. It is the priority of the coalition government now as it is seems. Our government with its arm deals makes Australia responsible for many horrific conflicts taking place in Africa and Middle East especially.?

Our pandemic really highlighted for us the hollowing out of our public sector and its capacity to provide services just look at our hospital sector or aged care sector. Not only the capacity to deliver services we need but also the capacity to hold the public trust at a time we really need to be able to trust the government. If we learnt anything from this pandemic it is important to keep in mind there are the times the hard decisions have to be made and we need to be really confident these decisions were made with our best interests at heart.

1. We need to set up federal integrity commission, if there is not strong integrity commission there is no capability for politician to do anything wrong which feeds into the culture of dismay across the public and low expectations is really damaging for our democracy. This integrity commission needs strong laws to implement and enforce.

2. We need a good framework for a fair democracy: donation reforms, the integrity commission, how to deal with revolving doors, how to deal with lobbyists and how to deal with people telling flat out lies during election campaign and using vast amount of cash to clear the playfield.?

3. We need to address corruption and cash to access that take place during election, enforceable code of conduct for our politicians which most professions have to keep people on the straight and narrow, without those measures there is no accountability for our politicians. Cap Cash to access needs to be scraped so our politicians can not influence policy outcomes away from the common good. If we cap donations to stay in very modest amount and very transparent who is giving money to which political party and candidates in real time. Lobbying has to be absolutely transparent too so no more secret revolving doors and backroom deals. Ministerial diaries should be accessible if needed just like my own counsellor or teacher diary is always accessible to authorities. Public has a right to know who is minister meeting and even more who they are not meeting.?

4. Level playing field in election which means we need to stop unlimited election spending which allows corporate powers to attack political party that does not do what they want, destroy carriers, change election outcomes, we need to cap election spending so it is fair for everyone and set up requirements for politicians and candidates to be truthful.?

5. Policies like this would erase future Clive Palmers who was using Nationals as intermediary, then he got bored of them and started to purchase the political seats, Palmer’s senators were ones with the swing votes to blow aways what remained of the mining tax and abolish the most of the clean energy act so yes we need to clear off this selfish rich men who keep Australia dirty for their own profit. His only policy is of self interest so any politician who takes his money does as he is told by Palmer who makes sure he splash millions on advertising of his candidate. If you take this possibility out of picture you certainly level the field and make it possible for true blue candidates who care about Australia not only their own pockets to emerge and help us all clean this mess.

6. The state capture report was taken to Canberra yesterday by very brave representative of the new Australian Democracy Network. It is unlikely it will be read there or even acknowledged and yet all of us who either party needs to win elections should demand the state capture report should be addressed in every speech Morrison or Albanese prepare for their election bid. We should demand it!

Recently Morrison undermined our national security by twisting the words of our ASIO secret agency representative to blame Labour party being under the Chinese influence knowing very well that both party equally benefit from the Chinese entrepreneurs living here. Both parties are tough on China and still happy to receive lobbying money. Morrison's constant lying would be questioned under the new integrity law.

NOW IS YOUR TIME AUSTRALIAN PEOPLE DISTURB THEIR ELECTIONS SPEECHES AND ASK THEM UNCOMFORTABLE QUESTIONS RAISED IN THIS ARTICLE...IT IS YOUR ONLY CHANCE?