The influence of money on politics is one of the greatest threats to democracy and freedom. Political parties need money to run election campaigns but that money can be a source of undue influence on the democratic process. In addition, non-political-party actors can intervene in the election process by buying advertising and distorting the process in favour of their agenda.
It is essential that we have a level playing field in our democracy and that the influence of money is not allowed to distort our democracy.
As the 1986 Royal Commission on the Electoral System wrote, it is not fair "if some in the community use their relative wealth to exercise disproportionate influence in determining who is to govern and what policies are to be pursued" (p.183). We therefore need regulation of how political parties are funded to ensure a level playing field.
This need for a fair and equitable electoral system informs our responses below:
Chapter 1 - Principles
In broad terms the principles are ok. There is some tension between the principles - equity or fairness should be the legislations overriding principles. We are also not sure that "clarity" is a principle in and of itself - the legislation should be clear to achieve its aims/principles but clarity itself is not a principle.
Chapter 2 - State Funding
The current broadcasting allocation should be maintained. If the campaign spending caps are raised there should be a corresponding rise in the level of the allocation so it remains the same proportion to campaign spending.
We do not think that parallel campaigners should be able to purchase broadcasting time as this would undermine the fairness of elections by allowing wealthy interest groups to saturate the airways.
Chapter 3 Parliamentary Service Funding
There needs to be a broader review of Parliamentary Service funding by an independent body.
Chapter 4 - Private Donations
The current ban on anonymous donations over $1000 should be maintained and there needs to be tighter rules to ensure donations from the same source are not split to get around the $1000 dollar limit.
The disclosure threshold should be $1,000 to align with the anonymous donations cap and candidates' disclosure cap. The public has a legitimate interest in, and a right to know, who is providing significant funding for political parties.
We also believe that in the regulated campaigning period (which should be 6 months) political parties should be made to declare any donations over $1,000 on a monthly basis. There also needs to be a declaration of all donations over $1,000 five working days before the election.
The current system allows for a donations return to be lodged in April each year—that is after the election. The public has a right to know who is funding the parties before voting, not afterwards.
Donation Cap
The Green Party believes that a healthy democracy requires political parties to reach out into the community to fundraise from a large number of people and members rather than be dependent on a handful of large donors who will then have disproportionate influence on their policies. A cap on how much any one individual can donate will make the parties reach out to more people for financial support.
As such there should be an annual limit of $35,000 on total donations to a political party from any single person or entity. This will require rules to make it illegal to split up large donations into lots smaller than $35,000 to avoid this cap. We are open to having the cap indexed to inflation or some mechanism to ensure it stays the same in relative terms.
Chapter 5 - Campaign Expenditure Limits
It is vital that our democracy cannot be bought by big business. An election should be a battle of ideas not a battle of who has the most money. So we do not support large rises in campaign spending caps.
However, we agree that campaign expenditure limits should be raised in line with inflation and that this can be done retrospectively.
The criteria for campaign spending needs to be broadened to include all electioneering expenditure by parties. The current definition does not capture polling or the extensive work of media firms. Parties use these services as a crucial part of their election campaigns therefore the money spent on them needs to caught by campaign spending caps.
Chapter 6 - Regulated Campaign Period
There needs to be a fixed election date as leaving this decision to the Government of the day means it is used as a political tool which serves no democratic purpose and leaves the public and other political parties in the dark.
The only reason not to fix the election date is that it gives a political advantage to the Government of the day.
Having a fixed election date would also avoid the problem of having campaign spending periods applied retrospectively. Having retrospective spending caps clearly places the political parties outside of government at a unfair disadvantage.
The regulated period should be six months before the election date. All of the options presented by the Government have the problem of a variable regulated period which doesn't make sense as the spending caps etc are not variable. They also all have the problem that a snap election will mean either a tiny regulated period or retrospective application of electoral finance regulations.
Out of the options listed by the Government we support commencement May 1st in election year as this more accurately reflects the time at which parties start political campaigning.
If an early election is called we support regulated period being three months before the election date, otherwise there could be tiny regulated period which would undermine the purpose of having electoral finance regulations. However, this clearly raises the problem of the rules applying retrospectively - which is why we need a fixed election date.
Chapter 7 - Election Advertising
The broader definition of election advertising used in the Electoral Finance Act should be used. Production and development costs of advertising that is used to promote political parties needs to be captured so that it can be counted in campaign spending caps. Otherwise there is the potential for parties to avoid spending caps.
Chapter 8 - Parallel Campaigning
It is vital that our democracy cannot be bought by wealthy interests. An election should be a battle of ideas not a battle of who has the most money. So there needs to be regulation of parallel campaigners - having no regulation of electoral spending outside of political parties fundamentally undermines the purpose of having electoral finance regulation. Without regulation of third parties or parallel campaigners there can be no level playing field for our democracy.
In terms of the options put forward we strongly support the first option as it at least places some restrictions on the amount parallel campaigners can spend.
However, this option provides limited checks on political parties giving money to third parties to run campaigns. Under this option parallel campaigners will not be required to disclose political donations they receive - this will allow political parties to use outside organisations to run proxy or parallel campaigns. We are deeply concerned that this undermines the ability of the electoral finance legislation to provide transparency and equity, as parties will be able to avoid their spending caps by using other organisations and they will be able to run anonymous (and potentially negative attack) campaigns.
We also have concerns around how the proposed spending threshold for parallel campaigners registering would work in practice, i.e. how will it ensure that all organisations register, will there be some form of independent monitoring? With a high threshold (the example given is $100,000 -which is much too high) it will be more difficult to know if campaigners are registering when they are required to do so.
There seems to be a significant risk that not all parallel campaigners will be caught under this proposal. Also, the spending cap needs to be relatively low ($120,000 was used in the 2008 election) to stop third party campaigns overwhelming the capped campaign advertising of political parties, especially by the use of attack campaigning as happened in the 2005 election.
It is also crucial that all parallel campaign advertising both negative and positive is caught by caps to make this regulation effective.
This registration list should be made publicly available, as the public has a legitimate interest in who is trying to influence its political decisions.
There also needs to be regulation that ensures groups cannot avoid caps by using multiple identities or secret trusts.
