Ok, some of you are trying to draw a link between Sam Dastyari’s acceptance of a payment of $1670.82 from a Chinese businessman and the gift of several Rolex watches to a number of Liberal politicians and their wives when the Liberals were in Opposition.
For a start, it needs to be pointed out that the Liberals all thought that the watches were fakes and only worth between $300 to $500 dollars which means that no individual received anything like the value of Dastyari’s donation. Of course, I suspect that a lot of you lefties will be suggesting that when you add all the watches together that it far exceeds the $1670.82, but that overlooks the fact that because nobody knew how much the watches were actually worth, then any attempt to add them would have been ludicrous. Particularly – as it turns out – when they were so wrong about the estimated worth and that the total value of the watches would have been enough to buy a nice little apartment somewhere. (Maybe not in Sydney or Melbourne, but don’t try and suggest that there’s a housing affordability crisis because I said “apartment”!)
Abbott, Macfarlane, Robert, their wives and anyone else who received a watch immediately presumed that it a fake because -as a spokesman clearly explained at the time –
it wasn’t the gift, but “the way it was given”: they were taken out of a plastic bag and handed over, whereas usually genuine attempts to bribe politicians come in brown paper bags and aren’t taken out by the donor in public. We can perhaps put this down to a lack of understanding the Australian culture by the gentleman concerned.
Yep, once they’d decided the watches were fake, then it was perfectly ok to accept them. It’s no worse than say illegally downloading a movie or selling pirated CDs. And surely nobody could have a problem with that.
But when comparing it to recent events, there’s the big, big difference! You see, Dastyari received a personal “donation” whereas the Rolex watches were a “gift”. This might seem like a petty distinction. However, a gift is – as was explained back then – a “goodwill gesture”, while a ” personal donation” implies that there’s a possible expectation that the person is expected to do something in return.
Which is why it’s wrong to bring up the whole issue of political donations from overseas companies at this point. That just confuses the issue because if you hear that Dastyari may have been influenced by a personal donation, then you may think that parties would be also be influenced by the people who donate. But that’s just ridiculous. Particularly in the case of the Liberal Party.
The Liberal Party has a long history of wanting to take people’s money and give them nothing in return. You don’t even have to go back to Howard and Costello – just look at Joe Hockey and Scott Morrison’s approach to returning the Budget to surplus.
No, as property tycoon Huang Xiangmom (who’s donated more than a million to both major political parties in the past few years) said a couple of weeks ago:
“We need to learn… how to have a more efficient combination between political requests and political donations.”
So clearly he doesn’t feel that all that money has bought him enough influence.
Perhaps we should introduce a more transparent process where, for example a donation of $10,000 gets you one member voting the way you want on a particular bill, while a donation of $100,000 allows you to dictate his or her vote for an entire session of Parliament. And, if you agree to pay the MP’s salary then they’re yours for life. (Mm, this could even be a saving for the tax payer…)
However, a gift of Rolex watch – or several watches – gets you nothing. That’s just a gesture. Of goodwill. That’s just to make it absolutely clear that you expect nothing in return and it’s all ok and if you were expecting something in return… Well, you’d… um, pay their travel expenses.
Yep, that’s when it’s bad. That’s the only time it’s bad. And bringing up anything else right now is just confused the issue, ok?
