campaign finance
2 Oct 2008
The Developer Cash In Clover's Campaign
Sydney's Lord Mayor campaigns against political donations from property developers, but their money reaches her anyway, writes Norman Thompson
The independent NSW MP and Lord Mayor of Sydney Clover Moore appeared before the state's inquiry into electoral and political funding in April 2008. In the midst of the unfolding Wollongong scandal involving property donations, Moore made a number of suggestions for reform of the electoral funding system in order to avoid undue influence by individuals and companies on decisions made by governments.Among her many recommendations, Moore suggested ethics training for members of Parliament, banning donations from high risk industries such as property, liquor (including hoteliers), gaming and tobacco companies, better disclosure of fundraising events and disclosure of donations before elections.
Moore has advocated banning donations from the property industry for decades and has constantly maintained she never takes such money for her campaigns. In light of Moore's statements and recommendations about political donations it is important to examine how closely she actually follows her stated principles and advice to others.
In early 2004 the NSW Labor government forced the amalgamation of Sydney and South Sydney Councils in spite of strong community opposition. Fearing Labor control of both the state government and the richest council in NSW, I volunteered to work on Moore's campaign for Lord Mayor of Sydney. I had only met Moore a few times, but I believed in her public persona as a principled politician interested in the welfare of local residents and opposed to property donations.
Throughout the campaign I worked three to four days a week helping manage her campaign office. While I saw some disturbing aspects of campaign meetings which gave me cause for concern, it was when I heard the campaign could only survive if the promised $30,000 of money from Living Sydney Ltd. was received by Moore's campaign that I began to have serious doubts.
As director of the Greens "Democracy4Sale" research project I had explored the funding of Living Sydney — a company that raised funds for Frank Sartor's campaigns for Lord Mayor of Sydney in 1995 and 1999. I knew that almost 70 per cent of its funds had come from direct donations and money spent at fundraising events by property companies. Much of the remainder came from hoteliers.
I immediately informed one of Moore's advisors that by accepting such money she would be breaking one of her major promises to the community. My concerns were brusquely pushed aside and ignored. Pragmatics triumphed over principles when campaign funding was needed.
When the story of the sources of the Living Sydney money was made public in 2007, Moore responded to the suggestion of hypocrisy by saying that the money "was considerably less than half my campaign fund, and I accepted it on the condition that it was not sourced from developers." She failed to reveal that the Living Sydney money comprised over 48 per cent of her 2004 campaign funds.
When the Sydney Morning Herald examined the issue of Living Sydney money combined with reports of large donations from Peter Holmes à Court in the 2007 NSW election, Moore again replied she had received assurances from Lucy Turnbull and Fabian Marsden, who were directors of Living Sydney Ltd in 2004, that the money was not sourced from property developers. However, both Turnbull and Marsden denied they gave such assurances.
This year the Democracy4Sale research team moved from working only on political donations reported to the Australian Electoral Commission and began to explore political contributions reported to the NSW Election Funding Authority by state MPs.
When large discrepancies were found between the 2007 returns of Labor's Jodi Mackay in Newcastle and Linda Scott in Sydney and the money reported by their respective donors, we began to conduct research on other politicians and their donations for the 2007 NSW election as well as earlier elections.
The Greens research team found that Clover Moore has received donations from property interests in every election since 1999. She has also admitted she took more money for the recent 2008 Sydney Council election from Living Sydney Ltd.
Our research found that in the lead-up to the 1999 state election Moore accepted donations from companies associated with developer Josef Reisinger, whose companies have been responsible for large and important developments throughout the Sydney area.
During the 1999 campaign Moore also received money from the hotel industry, including a large donation from the Australian Hotels Association. Although Moore has never denied taking money from hoteliers, she has classified them as among the "high risk" industries and in 2008 called for banning such donations.
In Moore's four election campaigns since 1999 she has continued to accept donations from property interests, and small contributions from hotels at least through the 2007 NSW state election. The public only learned of the Living Sydney money for her 2008 campaign during a public forum three days before the Sydney Council election.
Unfortunately Moore refused to disclose the donations her campaign received prior to the 2008 Sydney Council election in spite of calling for such disclosure just months earlier. Therefore, we don't have information on the extent of property money she may have received and if she again accepted hotel contributions.
When the Democracy4Sale team exposed the extent of Moore reliance on property money in her various election campaigns, her response was to attack. She wrote in her newsletter that the Greens were engaged in "a cheap game of smearing their opponents for political advantage". Her tactic was to attack the messenger rather than take a more statesmanlike stance and apologise for having accepted property money while denying she took it.
After her impressive victory in the recent council election she still couldn't accept the Greens exposure of her past behaviour. She used such terms as "campaigning negatively", "ugliness" and "grossly hypocritical" while speaking of the Greens.
Moore also attacked the Greens for the allocation of preferences in the recent local council election in order to deflect attention from her problems. Her information was partly inaccurate. The Greens preferenced Moore on the Lord Mayor's ballot. Also in past state and local government elections the Greens have preferenced Moore before the major party candidates.
But in the 2008 council election the Greens did preference the Labor Party on the ballot for Sydney City councillors before the Clover Moore Party because at a local level Labor councillors have often been more progressive than certain members of the Moore Party.
Moore also supported the very same Labor government she so strongly criticises in a no-confidence vote last week. Had the motion passed, the long suffering NSW public would have been able to decide the state government's fate in a new election.
The main lesson to be learned from this case study of Clover Moore's statements compared to her actual behaviour is that we can't allow politicians to self regulate their behaviour when it comes to political donations. This clearly demonstrates that it is crucial that we achieve true reform of the electoral funding system not only in NSW but throughout Australia.
The Greens have argued on numerous occasions that such reform must include banning donations from corporations and other organisations, capping donations from individuals, banning foreign donations and adopting strict limits on electoral expenditure. Not only would such measures bring much-needed reform to the electoral funding system, it would save politicians from their own hypocrisy.
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Exactly what is all this campaign money spent on?
Pole posters by the hundred, glossy leaflets, direct mail letters, how-to-vote cards, perhaps the wages of campaign workers - and advertising, advertising, advertising…
According to disclosures on re-elected Greens councillor Chris Harris’ website, the Greens city council campaign was based on funding of less than $15,000 with two thirds of that coming from the Greens local groups in the city area. Greens local groups get funds from membership fees, individual donations and fundraising, and from election funding for state and federal elections.
Clover’s sins are paltry relative to those of many players in the Liberal and Labor parties.
She’s slick. The Greens are not.
Having campaigned repeatedly for the Greens in the upper house, and Clover in the lower for Bligh, I’m disappointed by the lack of perspective.
Yes, the Greens are doing a great job of keeping everyone honest and monitoring political donations is useful.
It is good to have an external review of the deals being struck and the compromises being made.
However, Clover is hardly waltzing into every developer cocktail party and leaving with cash stuffed brown paper bags, as previous premiers like Askin and several Sussex St darlings have done in living memory.
Green sour grapes over the level of support Clover has deservedly attracted are wasted. The grassroots appeal Clover has is based on real community concern and her patience with ‘residents’ of the area, whether the full quid or not.
Polish up 2030 and have more input on cleaning up the CBD instead, guys. Collaborate with Clover to get greater environmental awareness and more 200m tall trees into the city. Get more green space. Do your job better. Bitter muttering is not the route to relevance.
A sin is a sin, just because it’s not as big a sin as others is not an excuse.
Then, on top of the sin, to deny it ever happened is the slippery slope, leading to the cesspool, the Lib. and Lab. Parties find themselves in.
The Clover Party rides upon the coat tails of The Greens, hiding behind a "green" facade while handicapping, truly beneficial environmental projects that the voters so keenly desire.
Cracks have appeared in The Clover Party’s facade and the view is a shock.
Thanks to The Greens and their tireless efforts to expose graft, corruption and hypocracy, the world is a better place.
Don’t shoot the messenger, there is still a lot of work to be done.
I can’t understand why the Greens are so concerned about Clover’s taking donations from property developers. She is a politician and all politicians do what they can to win office. It’s just that she is a more cunning politician than most. This is the reason she keeps winning. She even beats the people in the Labor Party who supposedly are so smart.
It is all about power. You have to win to get the power then you can do things.
The reason the Greens are only a small player is that they try to be pure. That doesn’t work in our system.
Look to Clover how to play the game and win!
Nancy says: "You have to win to get the power then you can do things". Yes I’ve heard that same statement from some of my friends who are members of the NSW Labor Party.
Enough said!
JSD urges the Greens to collaborate on 2030. Everyone seems to have a 2030 or similar plan at the moment - it seems to be fashionable. The Greens have been talking about this for more than a decade - we have been urging a 2030 since 1990.
Anyway - donations have nothing to do with 2030 - donations form corporations corrupt our democratic system - the evidence is everywhere. Clover and her supporters can shoot the messenger but that won’t clean up the system which is rotten to the very core.
If you think that is an exaggeration then do some research on "clean coal" or "carbon capture and storage" and inform yourself about it and you will see that this idea is pure fantasy and will not solve our climate change problem. Also note the pittance offered to decelop the renewable energy industry which is the solution. Now why would that be so?
The Greens were accused by Ms Moore as running an "ugly" election campaign. Here is my response that was printed in the City News last week
Developer Donations are Ugly
The leader of Australia’s newest political Party, The Clover Moore Party, criticises the Greens for the "ugliness" of their Sydney campaign.
The Greens campaigned on bringing solar thermal power to Sydney, dramatically improving the City’s resource recovery from waste, providing skate parks, a BMX track and netball courts for young people, affordable housing for lower income families plus revamped campaigns to reduce cigarette butt littering and reducing plastic bag usage. Nothing ugly about any of that.
Perhaps what she finds ugly is that we pointed out the fact that her campaign accepted $30000 in developer donations that were laundered through the Living Sydney Party formerly controlled by Frank Sartor. And in the week before the recent election she accepted a further $7000 from the same source. Accepting that kind of tainted money and pretending that it is ok is what is ugly - we can agree on that!
I’m saddened to hear of Clover’s acceptance of soiled contribution monies. I’ve always supported her vision for Sydney, though I’ve always known that the Greens would have a better one.
So her political party accepts dubious funds, as does the Labor Party, as does the Liberal Party. The difference is that she denounces acceptance of such funds. However she also knows that while they are legal she needs them to stay in power. (so Norman Thompson reports).
The only option the ethical voter has is to support the Greens and their preferences advice.
One day funding from developers, the hotel industry, and other front entities will be outlawed.
It would be a tragedy if this enabled Labor or Liberals to seize control over Sydney.
We would much prefer the present status quo to remain.
In the end we all want a better quality of life.
Can we live with insidious funding to remain to attain this goal?
This goes to show Clover is as bad as the major parties when it comes to donations and politics.