Lobbyocracy: The Hypocrisy of Democracy
The Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice is campaigning against the excessive power that is wielded by a wealthy few through political donations. We now live in a lobbyocracy where one vote one value has been replaced by one lobby dollar, one decision favour.

Lobbyocracy is a collaborative project where we use wiki-based software to track the donations made to political parties and the policy outcomes of this. We expose the dodgy back room deals and show how money is siphoned through front groups to side step accountability.

Lobbyocracy undermines the democratic process because lobbyists have a much higher level of influence than those without large financial and political resources available to them. This reduces access for most people to the nodes of power. Moreover, access to information regarding these donations is often hard to obtain, hidden behind anonymity, front groups and "backdoor" donations.

This then decreases the amount of control communities have over their own destinies. The decisions made by governments are not based on community concern but on commercial interest. This gives certain interest groups more say over the running of the country than those that are directly affected in their day to day lives.

Help us show that lobbyocracy is the hypocrisy of democracy.

Lobbyocracy.org.au



Press Release: Fighting Dirty Donations
The Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice today launched their latest campaign targeting the influence that donations to political parties have on Australian politics.
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Press Release: The Price of Democracy is $10,000
Three organisations dedicated to the promotion of democracy today called on the federal government to dump its bill that will see the limit for disclosed donations increase from $1,500 to $10,000.

Seizing on the recent release of donations made to political parties in the 2004/05 period from the Australian Electoral Commission, Democracy 4 Sale, Democracy Watch and the Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice jointly stated their staunch opposition to the proposed legislation.


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