If past performance is any guide to future outcomes then it is most likely that after a period of mutual and acrimonious hyperventilation the left and the right will find new clubs to belt each other up with, having done nothing constructive about the elephant in the room.

This will be unfortunate given the events of the last two weeks indicate the voting public is highly suspicious of the way individual politicians and their parties engage with the issue of donations.

To suggest, as both sides of politics frequently do, that political donations have nothing to do with buying access and exercising influence is to insult the intelligence of the electorate.

Why would any businessman, Chinese or otherwise, hand over a large chunk of cash to an individual politician or party machine without the expectation of some form of quid pro quo?

While the disclosure of such gifts has become more transparent over the years, the general public rarely gets a glimpse of what is done in return.

This paper reported last week that when pushed on the issue of reform the Prime Minister adopted an arm's-length approach, saying while he had his own views it was a matter for the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters.

That committee has yet to be re-established and reconvened in the wake of the federal election and does not appear to feature prominently on anybody's "to do" list.

Mr Turnbull indicated that given his druthers donations would be "ideally" restricted to people on the electoral roll.

This view, which was echoed and expanded upon by the PM's predecessor and possible future nemesis Tony Abbott later that day, would have the joyful effect of banning corporations, foreigners and trade unions from buying into the political process. It doesn't take a deep examination of the issue to see how both sides could attempt to play politics with such a ban, by attempting to cut off each other's financial lifeblood.

How that latter effect would sit with the Labor party, originally the political arm of the union movement and intended to protect the workers from the insidious reach of an amoral plutocracy, is a matter for some conjecture. The short answer is probably not well.

Mr Abbott's record on political donation reform is less than laudable. He was the Liberal leader who backed out of a donation reform deal struck with then prime minister Julia Gillard in May 2013.

Mr Turnbull's JSCEM has a track record as a bit of a toothless tiger. When it addressed these issues in a report after the 2013 election it did not make a single recommendation to reform the system or improve transparency.

There is little to indicate this time round will be any different.