The old saying "He who pays the piper calls the tune" is certainly true of the mainstream political parties in Australia. According to the February 2 Australian Financial Review, "The annual returns from the Australian Electoral Commission for 2003-04 show that resource companies, property developers and finance companies are the largest donors to the major political parties".
The returns do not include campaign donations for the October 2004 federal election, but only donations made between June 2003 and June 2004. As one might expect, the federal Liberal Party's top donors were big businesses like Westfield ($200,000), the Kingfold Group ($200,000), Pratt Holdings ($200,000), the ANZ bank ($150,000), Coles Myer ($75,000) and Westpac ($75,000).
As for the NSW Liberals, the February 2 Sydney Morning Herald reported that they drew their sums from a variety of sources, "tapping into big businesses, merchant banks, individuals and private investment companies, as well as property developers".
He who pays the piper calls the tune: no wonder, then, that the Liberal Party, at both federal and state level, pursues policies in the interest of big business, merchant banks, investment companies, property developers and the rest. Political parties represent class interests, and it's no surprise at all to find that the Liberals represent the interests of the rich and powerful in Australian society.
But what of the Australian Labor Party? We're told that Australia is a democracy in which the interests of all are represented, so does the ALP represent the interests of those who are not so rich and powerful? It seems not. According to the AFR, among the top donors to the federal ALP in 2003-04 were Westfield ($300,000), Pratt Holdings ($100,000), the ANZ bank ($75,000), Coles Myer ($67,500), Westpac ($50,000), Coca-Cola Amatil ($40,000) and Kellog, Brown and Root ($20,000). According to the SMH, "the NSW ALP relied heavily on the largesse of developers to fund its activities in the last financial year". Among property developers donating to the NSW ALP were the Walker Corporation ($152,000), the Cienna Group ($55,000), and Grocon ($40,000).
What do the figures tell us? One is struck by the number of businesses and corporations who made donations to both the federal ALP and the federal Liberals: these include Westfield, Pratt Holdings, the ANZ bank, Coles Myer and Westfield. So, as far as who pays the piper, there's not much difference between the two largest mainstream parties. No wonder, then, that there's not much difference between the tunes they play, or the class interests that they represent.
Take ANZ bank, for example. Green Left Weekly #618 reported that in the wake of the brutal and illegal invasion of Iraq, a number of Australian businesses are profiting from the neoliberal "reconstruction" of the Iraqi economy that is being imposed on the Iraqi people at gunpoint, and that "one of these companies is ANZ bank, which is part of an international consortium set up by the Coalition Provisional Authority (the US-run body that controlled Iraq until the 'handover of power' on June 28, 2004) called the Iraq Trade Bank".
Students all over Australia have been protesting against ANZ's war profiteering. The truth is that both of the mainstream parties in Australia represent the interests of big business, not the interests of ordinary Australian working people.
Perhaps the most scandalous revelation from the Australian Electoral Commission's report is that the ALP received a donation from Kellog, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of giant US military contractor Halliburton, the most notorious of the war-profiteering corporations, and the old company of US Vice-President Dick Cheney. So why is the ALP receiving large sums of money from the most wretched scumbags among the profit-hungry corporate world? Work it out for yourself: he who pays the piper calls the tune.
Of course, the corporate world would have us believe that these donations are not given for anticipated political favours. For example, Telstra donated similar sums to both the Liberals and the ALP and the SMH reported that a Telstra spokesperson said: "Telstra has a policy of not making political donations. The returns listed would reflect the money Telstra has paid to attend political functions, as with most major companies," Sure! So why weren't Telstra executives lining up to attend last year's fundraisers for Green Left Weekly or the Socialist Alliance? The answer is simple: unlike the major mainstream parties, the Socialist Alliance represents the interests of ordinary Australians, not the corporations, property developers and sordid war profiteers that fund both the ALP and the Liberal Party.
Alex Miller
[Alex Miller is a member of the GLW-Socialist Alliance editorial liaison board].
From Green Left Weekly, March 16, 2005.
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