Speaker 1: I'm Daniel James and you're listening to seven AM. In
Speaker 1: Australian politics, access can be brought, factions can operate beyond
Speaker 1: public view, and conduct can be deeply troubling without ever
Speaker 1: meeting the definition of corruption. None of this is especially new,
Speaker 1: and maybe that's the problem. Meanwhile, people are becoming more
Speaker 1: disconnected from the institutions that shape their lives, unless convinced
Speaker 1: those same institutions are working in their interests. Today Colonists
Speaker 1: for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald Sean Kelly on
Speaker 1: the money, secrecy and private power shaping our politics and
Speaker 1: what happens when voters stop trusting the system itself. It's
Speaker 1: Saturday August eight, Sean, great to see you again. Over
Speaker 1: the past few weeks, we've seen private political fundraises, paying
Speaker 1: to have dinner with the Prime Minister, a bit of
Speaker 1: dinner and point by.
Speaker 2: It, I tend lots of functions.
Speaker 1: You want to ask that, well, we've seen a premiere
Speaker 1: fall over corruption in the construction sector.
Speaker 2: I've made the difficult decision to step aside as leader
Speaker 2: of the Victorian State Parliamentary Labor Party and as Premier
Speaker 2: of Victoria.
Speaker 1: And a NIGHTCAC inquiry into a secretive liberal faction.
Speaker 3: Christian Ellis, Jeremy Greenwood, Robert Asaff and John Claude Perrete
Speaker 3: solicited or accepted political donations, including from prohibited donors in
Speaker 3: a mountain.
Speaker 1: What connects these stories in your view?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, the first caveat to put on this
Speaker 2: is that we of course don't know all of the details,
Speaker 2: and some of these things are more still in the
Speaker 2: realm of allegation rather than proven fact. But there is
Speaker 2: a general theme, which is the impression that people have
Speaker 2: that money plays an enormous role in politics, that people
Speaker 2: who want to make money, who want to make great
Speaker 2: deals of money, often who are desperate to make money,
Speaker 2: will find a way either to influence politicians or to
Speaker 2: attempt to influence politicians. Those methods of attempting to influence
Speaker 2: the political class can take many different forms, but the
Speaker 2: first important point about them is that money is involved.
Speaker 2: And the second important point to note is that secrecy
Speaker 2: plays a very large role.
Speaker 1: How much of this problem or perceptions around these problems
Speaker 1: is that most of this stuff, if not all of it,
Speaker 1: is entirely legal and routine. It might be serious and concerning,
Speaker 1: it might not pass the much wanted pub tests. But
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily illegal, or it's not even necessarily classified
Speaker 1: its corruption.
Speaker 2: Right, I think this is a huge problem. I think
Speaker 2: it borders on absurdity. So the thing that I always
Speaker 2: come back to is that it is commonly accepted in
Speaker 2: the political class that you can pay ten thousand dollars
Speaker 2: to have dinner with anyone you care to name. Really,
Speaker 2: you can have access, private access to the most powerful
Speaker 2: people in the country. If you're willing to pay ten
Speaker 2: thousand dollars that gets you a dinner. That's I mean,
Speaker 2: that is an insane fact. Now, this is on some
Speaker 2: level a product of the fact that political parties need
Speaker 2: to raise money without public funding for elections, which you
Speaker 2: know a lot of people are opposed to. You are
Speaker 2: always going to have to raise money in some way.
Speaker 2: But nonetheless it did I think it is really striking. Now,
Speaker 2: that doesn't mean that what we're talking about here is bribery.
Speaker 2: We don't. It doesn't mean that somebody pays ten thousand
Speaker 2: dollars and they get an outcome. But it does mean
Speaker 2: if politicians go to enough of these types of events
Speaker 2: and they have dinners at private mansions, they begin to
Speaker 2: swim in the same waters. They hear similar arguments from
Speaker 2: a similar group of people, or a group of people
Speaker 2: with similar interests along a very long period of time
Speaker 2: through their careers, that is going to change the way
Speaker 2: you see the world, or at least make it very,
Speaker 2: very difficult to hang on to the way that you
Speaker 2: originally saw the world. And that's the point. That is
Speaker 2: absolutely the point.
Speaker 1: The most recent example, I guess, is the ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollars dinner that the Prime Minister had at Point Piper, which,
Speaker 1: as you've indicated, it's pretty common practice across all political parties.
Speaker 1: What can you tell us about this dinner and the
Speaker 1: guest list.
Speaker 2: Well, the first thing to say is that there's some
Speaker 2: debate about exactly the amounts of money involved. The people
Speaker 2: who were there include Matt Common, the CEO of Commonwealth
Speaker 2: Bank and arguably the most influential CEO in the country
Speaker 2: right now. David Murray, the former chair of the Future Fund,
Speaker 2: also a CEO once upon a time of Commonwealth Bank,
Speaker 2: former Premier Daniel Andrews of Victoria. It was a pretty
Speaker 2: pressive guest list, and a lot of this is it's
Speaker 2: not so much shadowy as vague I would characterize it
Speaker 2: more as a type of aesthetic that governs politics in
Speaker 2: the eyes of most people. The artist storian TJ. Clark,
Speaker 2: he wrote this article about politics and he says, the
Speaker 2: politicians language repels scrutiny. We have got to the point
Speaker 2: where we know that they have become so effective at
Speaker 2: using language that uses a whole lot of words, but
Speaker 2: in the end doesn't mean an enormous amount, and so
Speaker 2: we can't ask politicians questions and get answers. And at
Speaker 2: the same time, we know that they're operating in this
Speaker 2: world in which money flows freely, but we don't have
Speaker 2: much access to it. And then there's this third element
Speaker 2: which is present on each of the stories you mentioned,
Speaker 2: which is the operation of factions in politics. Factions are
Speaker 2: always going to be involved in politics. They are at
Speaker 2: their base just a group of people who are working
Speaker 2: together to try to use the power that lies in numbers.
Speaker 2: That is absolutely legitimate. The difficulty of courses that once
Speaker 2: upon a time factions were about beliefs and ideologies, and
Speaker 2: over time that become mostly about power and promotion and
Speaker 2: those three things, if you like. The language that politicians
Speaker 2: use to repel us, the secrecy around the internal operations
Speaker 2: of political parties and the secrecy around the way that
Speaker 2: political parties interact with moneyed interests, all former kind of
Speaker 2: whole where we are not allowed to see inside the
Speaker 2: workings of politics, and.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like the secrecy then breeds into this
Speaker 1: narrative that once the secrets are exposed, it then becomes
Speaker 1: scandalous and that makes the whole body politics even look
Speaker 1: more dodgy in the eyes of the public.
Speaker 2: It does absolutely the thing about this dinner that Anthony
Speaker 2: Alberinezi held with Felix Lee, there's nothing obviously wrong about it,
Speaker 2: but it has these little hints, you know, it has
Speaker 2: a hint of alleged murkiness because Felix Lee's father, Philip Lee,
Speaker 2: there were questions around the movements of large amounts of
Speaker 2: money from China into Australia. There was a little hint
Speaker 2: of glamour because he apparently put two point two billion
Speaker 2: dollars through Star Casino. These make it kind of more
Speaker 2: exciting story, But the truth is that type of thing
Speaker 2: is happening all the time, and so it's become the
Speaker 2: case that only when you have these other added elements
Speaker 2: does it become a new story. And that points to
Speaker 2: the ordinariness of the problem. It points to the systemic
Speaker 2: nature of the.
Speaker 1: Problem, still de cap the faction shaping politics behind the
Speaker 1: closed doors. Sean, you mentioned factions. Ikack is exposed in
Speaker 1: the workings of a secretive liberal faction, while Labour's National
Speaker 1: Conference showed how tightly factional deals can control what actually
Speaker 1: happens publicly. What have you noticed about the evolving nature
Speaker 1: of factional power and how it's being used in politics.
Speaker 2: Now, look, many years ago, before I worked directly in politics,
Speaker 2: I went to an event and I think, perhaps ironically,
Speaker 2: it was a fundraiser and GoF Whitler was there, and
Speaker 2: it was the only conversation.
Speaker 1: I ever had with him.
Speaker 2: He was very old and I was very young, and
Speaker 2: he said to me, factions, factions are killing the party.
Speaker 2: Once upon a time there was a division between factions
Speaker 2: and always about their view of politics and their view
Speaker 2: of the world. And so within the Labor Party you
Speaker 2: had the left wing faction pushing for a more left
Speaker 2: wing view of the world. It was pushing not in
Speaker 2: a pure sense, but for a kind of socialist view
Speaker 2: of the way things should be. And then there was
Speaker 2: the right wing of the party, which had a more
Speaker 2: pragmatic view of politics, perhaps a more conservative view of
Speaker 2: the economy, and they wouldn't it out. And that battle
Speaker 2: for principle, that battle for different views of the world
Speaker 2: has with time been lost. You know, it is widely
Speaker 2: said the factions have turned into vehicles for promotion, They've
Speaker 2: turned into vehicles for careers. This is why I come
Speaker 2: back to this question of the aesthetic. So ordinary Australians
Speaker 2: aren't paying attention to this dinner that Anthony Albanize he had,
Speaker 2: and they're not paying attention to the fundraisers that all
Speaker 2: of the political parties have, but they are getting an
Speaker 2: overall sense of politics. They're getting an overall sense of
Speaker 2: politics that opens the door for somebody like Donald Trump
Speaker 2: to come in. That opens the doors like Pauline Hanson
Speaker 2: to come in, which is ironic because Pauline Hanson, we know,
Speaker 2: is absolutely tied up with Gina Reinhart. You know, there's
Speaker 2: no purity on behalf of one nation here, quite the opposite.
Speaker 2: But how to ordinary people navigate through politics. It's a
Speaker 2: matter of glancing every now and then at the news.
Speaker 2: The overall sense you have, theesthetic and the sense Donald
Speaker 2: Trump and Pauline Hansen they are not trying to repel,
Speaker 2: meaning in fact, they are often giving you a very
Speaker 2: very good sense of what they stand for and what
Speaker 2: they want to do.
Speaker 1: And so even.
Speaker 2: Though they are absolutely tied up with money as much
Speaker 2: as anybody else, there is this sense that they are
Speaker 2: immune from the overall operation of influence and elites in
Speaker 2: this country and every other country. To a fairly large extent.
Speaker 2: That is on the major political parties for allowing that
Speaker 2: impression to grow over time.
Speaker 1: And that impression makes them seem more authentic, and therein
Speaker 1: lies the political opportunity for the populace right and other
Speaker 1: populist movements exactly Sean. We're often told Australians need a
Speaker 1: better understanding of how democracy and its institutions work. How
Speaker 1: much does that matter when people don't believe those institutions
Speaker 1: so even working for them in the first place.
Speaker 2: Right, I mean, this is absolutely the number the problem.
Speaker 2: So there were these two interesting facts that came out
Speaker 2: of the last fortnight. One was a survey from the
Speaker 2: Reserve Bank of Australia that was about trust in the
Speaker 2: bank and understanding of the Australians. About half of Australians
Speaker 2: really do not understand or misunderstand the relationship between interest
Speaker 2: rates and inflation, the relationship between interest rates and economic activity,
Speaker 2: which is remarkable considering how much of our public debate
Speaker 2: that's consumed over the last few years.
Speaker 1: And how much it affects people's lives exactly.
Speaker 2: We know that people's trust in institutions in democracy has
Speaker 2: been declining. The Reserve Bank's own survey of trust shows
Speaker 2: I think the average was five point five out of ten,
Speaker 2: and I think this means that there is the potential
Speaker 2: for people's approach, attitude to institutions and the way we
Speaker 2: are governed to really spiral. The problem has been that politics,
Speaker 2: for several decades now has moved too far in the
Speaker 2: direction of giving advantage to those who are already have advantage.
Speaker 2: There is a sense that governments have become a drift
Speaker 2: from voters, and that is a substantive sense in the
Speaker 2: quality of lives that people feel they are able to
Speaker 2: lead and the quality of ambitions that people feel they
Speaker 2: are able to have. That is what governments need to
Speaker 2: address first and foremost. But you cannot separate that from
Speaker 2: the influence perceived and actual that people with great deals
Speaker 2: of money, businesses with great deals of power have on
Speaker 2: our politics.
Speaker 1: And finally, sean to all of this, has the political
Speaker 1: class actually come to rely on the community's ignorance of
Speaker 1: how our democratic institutions and systems work in order to
Speaker 1: exploit that lack of knowledge and create a well for themselves.
Speaker 1: Where then get away with this type of thing without
Speaker 1: proper scrutiny.
Speaker 2: Because it's a good question, Daniel, it's a complex one.
Speaker 2: I don't want to say any of these things are
Speaker 2: quite that conscious, are quite that deliberate. I think what
Speaker 2: happens instead is that a set of assumptions grow up
Speaker 2: over time. Political parties need to raise money, they get
Speaker 2: in an arms race, they have to win elections. They
Speaker 2: try to find the most effective ways of raising money.
Speaker 2: They fall into these habits. They end up mixing with
Speaker 2: a certain class of people, a certain type of very
Speaker 2: powerful business. Those things, over time, reshape the assumptions of politicians.
Speaker 2: They reshape the assumptions of how politics is done. All
Speaker 2: of this is fairly organic. Nobody is setting out to
Speaker 2: create this system. But that is why it is so
Speaker 2: hard to unpick. And I should add labor has made
Speaker 2: some moves over the past couple of years to change
Speaker 2: some of the laws around donations, we will have something
Speaker 2: that is closer to real time donation disclosure. There have
Speaker 2: been various caps placed in the main part. While these
Speaker 2: things could go further, these are good things. They are
Speaker 2: some significant changes. Whether they make a really significant difference
Speaker 2: to our politics over time, obviously we will only be
Speaker 2: able to tell as we see the operation of those
Speaker 2: laws which kick in in earnest next year.
Speaker 1: Well, dear listener, if you haven't subscribed to seven AM's
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Speaker 1: Shawn's wonderful jumper Sean. Thank you for joining us once.
Speaker 2: Again, Thanks very much, Daniel.
Speaker 1: Seven Am is a daily show from Solstice Media. Is
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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, have yourself a great way Kit,