Under the present insane guidelines on secret donations to...

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    Under the present insane guidelines on secret donations to politicians, we could float a federal government ministry as an ASX-listed company and pay its minister through a blind trust. The system is that wide open to corruption.

    Sound crazy? Ok, here's how I'd set the company up if I was a corporate crook, based on recent past precedents and current guidelines. (My thinking is based on real reported incidents where ministers in this government have had associations with corporate entities, and done things that have benefited those entities without it being considered corruption.)

    Let's pick a ministry at random. Let's say Angus Taylor's Ministry for Energy and Emissions Reduction. As an ASX company, I would take over EER (East Energy Resources) as a shell and relist as Energy and Emissions Reduction Ltd. Corporate clients and fossil fuel companies would come to us with what they wanted done by the government. This desired corporate objective would be published in the Board minutes, along with the success fee offered by the client.

    We would not lobby the minister. We would have no contact with him. We wouldn't need to. All the minister would need to do was read the publicly available Board minutes of EER. If the Minister subsequently acted in a way that achieved that corporate objective for our client, we would get our success fee. Ten percent of that would be paid into a blind trust and the Minister would receive it.

    With no contact between us and the Minister, and a blind trust being used, this corporate corruption is legal right now.

    Possibly not as far fetched as some of the things that are really happening...
 
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