[toomanybeersies]

> The state of Australia's national science initiatives and the projects they support have always been of concern to me

That's because technology companies generally don't make political donations or engage in lobbying, unlike the banking, gambling, and mining industries, and trade unions.

[mrslave]

>technology companies generally don't make political donations or engage in lobbying

I'm pretty sure they do, but their primary concerns are getting their piece of the foreign worker visa pie, resisting further industry regulation, and corporate tax. It is definitely not supporting local universities in either the quality of their undergraduate programs or post-grad research.

[opnitro]

This is not true. [https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/microsoft-corp/summary?id=D...]

[toomanybeersies]

I should've clarified, I was meaning in the context of Australian politics. A lot of Australian tech companies actually ban political donations as part of their anti-bribery and corruption policies.

If you look at donation data from the Australian Electoral Commission, there are no donations from tech companies [1]. The majority of donations are from banks, property developers, and mining companies.

[1] http://democracyforsale.net/search-aec/