This is in response to a Getup campaign email on 28th September, 2017, which asked for submissions to the Joint Selection Committee on Electoral Matters.

The "major problem" with Australia's system of political finance is the "perception" of corruption, according to a new Parliamentary Committee report. The perception, it says – not the reality. 

The fact that large corporations can funnel millions of dollars to political parties with zero oversight or accountability? That didn't even rate a mention. 

How about the fact that it's perfectly legal to draw a salary as a Big Business lobbyist and sit in Parliament at the same time? Nope. Not a mention either.

Read "Game of Mates" - GOM - How favours bleed the nation - This book should be primary prosecution evidence. It is how Australia really works.  There are some better practices to be found around the world that are lucky enough or sophisticated enough to acknowledge and compensate for human nature, in our tendency to exchange favours for personal advancement, at the expense of general welfare. Australia seems to have avoided them.
It is a pity that the Joint Select Committee on Electoral Matters looks unlikely to make any difference on the games of mates. It is most likely stacked by the same mates that have learned how best to play the game for their own advancement. We are all susceptible. Being blind to it should not be an option. For the JSCEM, strong blindness will be a strong indication of rank complicity,  as political donations are a major blind spot through which political favours can continue to operate.

Australian Culture has become largely a bunch of climate booby politicians, keen on fossil fuels, hateful of renewable energy, and keen on ripping off our country with gas exports, a lot of which will be non-burnable carbon, in order to deliberately miss the 1.5°C global warming target. This is evidenced by wilful blindness to the flow of millions of dollars of political donations to the major political parties from fossil fuel interests, and the rapid uptake into corporatchik positions of key ministers in their post political retirement.
Climate change targets were signed for after Paris 2015, but not one single policy or political attitude in Australia has changed to honour this. Such contempt for the Australian public is shown everyday, that the public are told that they are also climate booby idiots who only care about cheap energy no matter what the global carbon budget is for 1.5 degrees of global warming. Every day we are told, by omission, to ignore how much of existing fossil fuel reserves are non-burnable. The corporatchiks tell these lies to the Australian people that every day in the media, and from the safety of elected, tax payer funded, parliamentary positions, so that global climate hell will be created by burning fossil fuels, and the wealthiest people in the world get more power until it all ends in tears.

The real message given out by the federal government that it does not matter to the politicians what the public thinks, or what the longer term public interest might be, in this fossil fuelled dictatorship of Australia.
Such is the human species as we are now well on the way to global mass extinction, and so the the Anthropocene will become our final-scene. This is already a real climate emergency, with climate booby traps being triggered right now, as naturally sequestered stores of carbon and methane are getting released, ice is melting, and everything changes. These are tipping point additions and feedbacks that add to continued human contributions, and will seal our doom.
This hedonistic civilisation is appears doomed.  The fossil-fuel age still declines regardless as net energy return falls, and resources get consumed, leaving behind a damaged environment, that may be unliveable for humankind.

I hope the JSCEM is not just another example of mate-serving and time serving booby.  It starts out being wrong as it accepts uncritically the culture and institutions from which it is formed. Corporatchik infill-traitors and favour traders that achieved their exalted positions, by their very nature, exhibit absolute no long term public and global species responsibility. JSCEM needs to address the extreme fossil fuel funded  nature of government political corporatchiks that are obviously running the show. Hundreds of billions of dollars of favours for their mates at stake, of which political donations play a massive leverage role, and hence the nature and level of corruption involved should be unavoidable.
It is most likely that the current JSCEM will end up as a mere toilet paper mutual arse wipe for the fossil fuelled corruption shit of a doomed civilisation.
I would rather live in a North Korean style dictatorship, as long as Earth System constraints such as carbon budgets and pollution are observed, than pretend that this carbon funded democracy is really concerned and takes action about long term best interests. Earth System constraints will be much crueller, but truer than any politician, as the realities of rupture are irreversible and global, with no repeal.

Late news flash. Just as was writing this, I was told that Tony Abbott has just seriously suggested that the Australian Army be used to enforce the mining of states resources. Tony Abbott is normally crazy-serious, but this should really indicate to you how deadly and undemocratic are the underlying powers that are running the Australia political system as it works today, and how the stakes will rise if this mining elite in control of Australia is in any way threatened by serious loss of control.