Those State Libs & their land deals. Is this corruption?

[Tannin]

Oh I understand it allright. They gave the Liberals thousands of dollars worth of donations, and the Liberals gave them a half-billion dollar rezoning. Everything else is bullshit window dressing.

[nomadjack]

The smoking gun is a bloody cannon -

Developers and land owners who tipped thousands of dollars into Liberal Party coffers at the last state election are among the big winners .....One of the single biggest beneficiaries ... is Narre Warren-based developer Parklea...... Mr Guy announced that 350 hectares of farmland it owns at Pakenham would become metropolitan Melbourne's most south-eastern tip. ..... chief executive Andrew Facey ... an enthusiastic Liberal supporter. He said he had contributed thousands of dollars to the Liberals ahead of the 2010 election, had attended numerous fund-raisers and was a member of Liberal fund-raising bodies ..... Last year The Age outed the Berwick Ranges among a string of such clubs that had breached electoral laws by failing to declare themselves to the Australian Electoral Commission. Mr Facey also told The Age that he had given thousands of dollars ... MP Brad Battin. The inclusion of Parklea's property will allow the developer to transform farmland into housing worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

There is any amount more of this stuff. I can smell the deal from way over here on the other side of the state.

More here: Liberal donors win big from rezoning http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politi ... 20am6.html

This is the original article posted numpty Please post SOME more of this stuff. So far you've only raised the two cases - albeit multiple times. Don't get me wrong - I'd like nothing more than these blue-blood toffs and their Collins street mates to shoot themselves in the foot. This aint gonna do it though.

BTW, Brad Battin is one of the good ones. Nice guy, thoughtful, straight up, and a good community minded local member.

[nomadjack]

Oh I understand it allright. They gave the Liberals thousands of dollars worth of donations, and the Liberals gave them a half-billion dollar rezoning. Everything else is bullshit window dressing.

Thought not. Ok. Can no longer be bothered.

[Tannin]

Mate, forget the holier-than-thou posturing for a minute and look at the bare, cold facts: the pollies' friends and donors are getting a massive feed at the public trough. It's just crazy to pretend that because they have a few committees and procedures and reports and all the rest of it that the bottom line is not that the Liberals are handing out millions of dollars worth of favours to their friends. We already know about a couple of them. Others will have been more careful, much more careful. I've seen this stuff going on at local government level - I have personal experience with corruption there - and most of it goes on behind the scenes. We already know that the vast majority of Victorians do not want this shonky let-er-rip policy - they didn't want it under Labor and they want it even less under Ted the Dodgy Real Estate Salesman. But it's not going to stop until this shonky government is turfed out.

(And then it will start again under the other mob, who are not a whole lot better. But what can you do?)

[watt price tully]

^^ Nomad, you've gotta add it to the planning issues around Phillip Island, the litany of wrongs so far in this elitist Goverment's early days.

THat the bloke you mentioned might be a good bloke still does not refute that his campaign was funded by a developer who got more than a good return for his investment in an election outcome - I personally think it stinks - no matter what party he was standing for.

NSW seems to have got this part right - it is unlawful I understand for developers to "donate" to political parties.

The planning minister should be called the member for Louisianna. Then again Rus Hinze once said he never saw it as a conflict of interests but a convergence of interests

[nomadjack]

Mate, forget the holier-than-thou posturing

Excuse me while I choke. Irony much?

I'll look at 'facts' when you provide them. Until then I'll trust in the institutional processes put in place to safeguard probity and the integrity of the independent people involved in the process.

I'll also read between the lines of the media coverage - paying particular attention to lines like "farmer Peter Carpenter, developer Watsons and lobbyist and former Liberal MP Geoff Leigh - were poised to share in a $500 million bonanza if the property was rezoned.

'Donated thousands of dollars' actually being $3,000 donated to a local campaign.

It's really easy to throw generalised allegations of corruption around but the fact that all the Age has picked up is two cases where Liberal supporters have benefitted from government decisions supported by two independent non-partisan bodies, suggests to me that there is not much substance to the allegations.

WPT, my comments are directed solely at this most recent process not to any other actions or more accurately as far as this government goes - inactions. To compare it with what happened in Queensland though is a tad over-reaching I'd suggest.

In NSW property developers, alcohol and tobacco companies and the gambling industry are prohibited from donating. I think it's probably a good thing, but I have the same problem with any vested interest trying to buy influence with government regardless of what industry it is. Is there any fundamental difference between property developers trying to influence Liberal govt policy via donations and trade unions doing the same thing with Labor or does it just depend on whether you think the interest being pushed is legitimate?

[pietillidie]

Is there any fundamental difference between property developers trying to influence Liberal govt policy via donations and trade unions doing the same thing with Labor or does it just depend on whether you think the interest being pushed is legitimate?

On a side note, this equivalency furphy is rife at the moment. There's a massive difference between elite influence and union influence because unions represent thousands, ten thousands and often hundreds of thousands or in some countries no doubt millions of constituents. I don't love unions by any means, but let's not fall for that argument.

Remember, the very problem with capital is not influence per se, but that capital gives individuals influence well beyond their single vote. To say that ten million bucks from the Koch Brothers or Rupert Murdoch is the same as ten million bucks from a union/church/group of any sort with ten thousand members is farcical.

There is a quantum difference between the two groups in terms of the democratic quality of their influence; sure, we can't get perfect equivalency, but this sort of differential is beyond the pale.

[stui magpie]

Is there any fundamental difference between property developers trying to influence Liberal govt policy via donations and trade unions doing the same thing with Labor

OK, has someone hacked your account? That's something I might have said but you?

[pietillidie]

^Yes, and I've heard you say it before and you're both wrong. See my post above. It's beyond me why that even needs pointing out.

[stui magpie]

^

yep they represent 18% of the workforce. May be large numbers but proportionally they're just another lobby group.

[pietillidie]

^

yep they represent 18% of the workforce. May be large numbers but proportionally they're just another lobby group.

What? If someone offers you the choice of either ten million bucks or ten bucks, you don't take the ten bucks because "they're both just money".

I'm off to bang my head against a wall somewhere

[stui magpie]

careful of the wall.

I'd take the $10 mil and worry about the 81% of workers who aren't in a union as being more representative.

[pietillidie]

Now where am I going to sleep tonight?

[Tannin]

The 81% of workers aren't representative because they aren't handing over large sums of money in brown paper bags to their local Liberal Party candidate in exchange for multi-million dollar land rezoning favours. Nor are the 18%.

[Tannin]

^ Sorry. That last post was unfair and I apologise for it.

They didn't use a paper bag.