{"id":1413,"date":"2014-11-11T07:11:33","date_gmt":"2014-11-11T12:11:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=1413"},"modified":"2014-11-11T07:11:33","modified_gmt":"2014-11-11T12:11:33","slug":"big-government-big-opportunity-for-rent-seekers-the-drum-australian-broadcasting-corporation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=1413","title":{"rendered":"Big government, big opportunity for rent-seekers &#8211; The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/news\/2014-11-11\/berg-big-government-means-big-opportunity-for-rent-seekers\/5881508\">Big government, big opportunity for rent-seekers &#8211; The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"first\" style=\"word-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.3334; font-size: 1.25em; font-weight: bold; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1em 0px;\"><strong style=\"word-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;\"><em style=\"word-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;\">The more a government does, the more opportunities are presented for rent-seeking. Rent-seekers thrive in the minutiae of policy detail, writes Chris Berg.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"word-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.3334; font-size: 1.25em; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1em 0px;\">In the 2012-13 financial year, the Australian Labor Party received $55 million in donations. The Liberals received $73 million. The Greens and the Nationals attracted around $8 million each.<\/p>\n<p style=\"word-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.3334; font-size: 1.25em; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1em 0px;\">Name a large corporate in Australia and their name is almost certainly somewhere on the\u00a0<a style=\"word-wrap: break-word; color: #0058cc; text-decoration: none; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;\" href=\"http:\/\/periodicdisclosures.aec.gov.au\/\">Australian Electoral Commission&#8217;s donations register.<\/a>\u00a0Lots of firms even donate to both sides. And of course the Labor Party has a healthy union donor base as well.<\/p>\n<p style=\"word-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.3334; font-size: 1.25em; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1em 0px;\">But that&#8217;s only a fraction of the total amount of money spent on trying to influence government. Federally, Australia has\u00a0<a style=\"word-wrap: break-word; color: #0058cc; text-decoration: none; padding: 0px; margin: 0px;\" title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/lobbyists.pmc.gov.au\/who_register_lobbyists.cfm\" target=\"_blank\">590 registered individual lobbyists<\/a>\u00a0representing 1,708 corporate and non-profit clients.<\/p>\n<p style=\"word-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.3334; font-size: 1.25em; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1em 0px;\">Then there&#8217;s all the money firms spend lobbying with their in-house government affairs staff (who don&#8217;t show up on the lobbyists register).<\/p>\n<p style=\"word-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.3334; font-size: 1.25em; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1em 0px;\">&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Big government, big opportunity for rent-seekers &#8211; The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). The more a government does, the more opportunities are presented for rent-seeking. Rent-seekers thrive in the minutiae of policy detail, writes Chris Berg. In the 2012-13 financial year, the Australian Labor Party received $55 million in donations. The Liberals received $73 million. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[379,637,1032],"class_list":["post-1413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-government","tag-politics","tag-rent-seeking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1413"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1414,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1413\/revisions\/1414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}