Say what you like about Clive Palmer – although given how notoriously litigious he is, maybe don’t.
But at least he puts his money where his mouth is by running for office (he was in federal parliament 2013-2016), even if he was often absent from parliament and his electorate, and didn’t put forward a single question or piece of legislation.
Perhaps that’s why other billionaires like Gina Rinehart simply deploy lobbyists behind the scenes or donate to political parties like One Nation and thinktanks like the IPA to promote their vested interests.
Reaganomics neoliberal deregulation didn’t just result in the ‘greed is good’ ethos that skewed the balance between labour and capital in favour of shareholders over workers and communities. It also created the cult of the ‘celebrity CEO’, lionising the wealthy as prophets who could fix any complex socioeconomic problem as easily as they increased profits by stripping assets, cutting wages, laying off workers, and offshoring jobs, causing precisely the sort of socio-economic problems they pronounce solutions for.
Where once the wealthy sought to justify their riches through ‘philanthropy’ by putting their names on colleges, museums, hospitals, or their own charitable foundations – now, with a few exceptions, such as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s ex-wife McKenzie Scott, who’s giving her entire $USD40 billion fortune away – they don’t bother.
Today, in addition to superyachts, private jets, overpriced art, palatial mansions, and the odd rocket ship, the 0.001 per cent buy political influence.
They can afford to, given around 56,000 people – a few more than can fit in the SCG – possess three times more than the world’s ‘other’ half, or four billion people, with the one per cent’s remaining 0.999 per cent owning more than 95 per cent of all of the rest of us combined.
That’s why tech bros dropped millions on Trump’s inauguration and ballroom, Bezos blew $USD 40 million on Melania’s widely panned hagiography, and Google co-founder Sergey Brin, worth $USD 279 billion, spent $USD 102 million to stop California’s proposal to impose a one-off five per cent excise on wealth over a billion dollars – despite paying his ex-wife Nicole Shanahan a $USD 1 billion divorce settlement.
Shanahan, Robert F Kennedy Jr’s biggest donor in his failed presidential campaign, ran as his running mate, before endorsing Trump and threatening to fund the opponent of any Senator who didn’t confirm him as health secretary.
It’s enough to make you sick. And thanks to RFK Jr and Shanahan, thousands are.
PayPal founder Peter Thiel has spent millions on lawsuits bankrupting media outlets he doesn’t like, bankrolled a secretive far-right conference compared to the shady neoliberal Atlas Network, and funded and mentored the soulless JD Vance to promote his racist, sexist, anti-democratic ideology.
Thiel’s fellow ‘Paypal Mafioso’ Elon Musk gave $USD 270 million to Trump’s re-election campaign, and, despite the disaster of DOGE and their brief 2025 tiff, has now been appointed to a Pentagon future weapons taskforce, along with fellow cashed-up MAGA, the sociopathic drone manufacturer Palmer Luckey. Both have significant defence contracts, including in Australia.
So why wouldn’t billionaires funnel money into politics? For all their talk of being self-made, most of their fortunes are made with public money. As Trump posted after their falling out: ‘Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa. No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE.’
Governments are the biggest clients of Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, Musk’s near-monopoly Starlink satellite internet service and Thiel’s terrifying surveillance system Palantir.
It’s not just that, as US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes observed, ‘every billionaire is a policy failure’ – it’s that the neoliberal policies which have created such billionaires and their monopolies, and enabled them to influence governments for their own interests over the common good, have failed.
It’s not as bad here as it is in the US, but still: hand a politician an Aldi bag full of cash, or buy them a car, and you’ll both be charged with corruption. But engage a lobbyist, donate a few grand or give their political party a Cessna, and not only do you get their ear, you’ll also get a tax deduction.
There’s been no meaningful reform of lobbyists, who now outnumber MPs by ten to one – many of whom are former colleagues. As the saying goes, whoever pays the piper calls the tune. Despite widespread opposition to environmentally destructive salmon farms, tax-minimising fossil fuel multinationals and mine approvals, AI data centres, destructive developers and loggers, and rapacious gambling companies, time and time again governments of all stripes side with lobbyists and donors.
Which is why One Nation recently quietly reversed its policies on workplace protections and LNG domestic gas reservation policy, given their biggest donor has significant gas interests and is vocally opposed to workers’ rights.
Now, the Albanese government is privately urging industry groups, peak bodies, and major lobbyists to move sensitive reform proposals off official channels and into disappearing messages on encrypted messaging platforms to put documents and communications beyond the reach of FOI.
Notwithstanding the ‘cozzie livs’ crisis, how many of us can afford $10,000 for dinner with the prime minister, or with Pauline Hanson at one of Rinehart’s mansions?
Voting was historically limited to property owners. In our new, even more unequal gilded age, the price of representation has blown out to billions. Just look at US politicians, like billionaires Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy, Michael Bloomberg, or JB Pritzker. Much less Kevin Rudd, Malcolm Turnbull, or Palmer.
Still, at least they’ve sought election, even if campaigning – and winning – is more about how much money you have, rather than how many policies you have.
But why should unelected people – let alone someone as unelectable as Rinehart, who has a 25 per cent approval rating among her own children – be able to decide our country’s future just because she can buy influence – and potentially, governments?
No wonder most punters are disenchanted with politics. Forget ‘one person, one vote’ or ‘the voice of the people’.
It appears when it comes to public policy – much less public good – money talks.
♦ Sunil Badami is a writer, academic and broadcaster.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
