{"id":4282,"date":"2013-05-28T14:03:03","date_gmt":"2013-05-28T04:03:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nofibs.com.au\/?p=4282"},"modified":"2019-04-13T23:24:12","modified_gmt":"2019-04-13T13:24:12","slug":"no-limits-on-political-donations-but-more-and-more-public-funding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/no-limits-on-political-donations-but-more-and-more-public-funding\/","title":{"rendered":"No limits on political donations, but more and more public funding"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Canberra<\/a>

Circus gymnasts in front of Old Parliament House in 2000. Photo: Heide Smith<\/p><\/div>\n

by\u00a0Graeme Orr<\/a><\/p>\n

May 28, 2013<\/p>\n

Australia has a lax campaign finance regime by western world standards.\u00a0 At national level there are no limits on donations and no limits on expenditure.\u00a0 Instead, we have a 30 year old system where the parties are fed public money \u2013 currently around $2.50 per vote \u2013 in return for disclosing larger donations \u2013 currently for donors worth around $12 000 pa.<\/p>\n

Today, news arrives of a government bill<\/a> to increase public funding and lower the donation disclosure level.\u00a0\u00a0 Public funding will rise $1 per vote, ostensibly to defray party administrative rather than campaign costs.\u00a0 Donations totalling over $5000pa will have to be disclosed.<\/p>\n

The proposal is a hashed compromise.\u00a0\u00a0 Some will say it reeks of a major party cartel.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Actually, minor parties will benefit too, provided they can poll above 4% in enough seats.\u00a0 (In some ways minor parties need stable funding more than the majors, since corporate money cares little for them).<\/p>\n

The cost of this is unclear.\u00a0\u00a0 The current $2.50 is actually $5 per voter, as we have votes for both houses of parliament.\u00a0 If the $1 increase takes funding to $3.50 per vote or $7 per voter, then funding for the next term will potentially rise from ~ $65.5m to ~ $92m.\u00a0\u00a0 But if it\u2019s $1 per year<\/i> per elector, the potential cost rises to $105m.<\/p>\n

It is not the public cost that is the problem, but the lost opportunity to rein in donations or campaign expenditure.\u00a0 The proposal is more meat for the parties, without any healthy offsets.\u00a0 No broccoli (limits on donations) or brussel sprouts (limits on campaigning).<\/p>\n

The point of public funding should be that the money is \u2018clean\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 The point of all but small private donations is either to buy favour, or to use wealth to tilt the scales of political equality and debate.<\/p>\n

So we risk the worst of both worlds.\u00a0 Without \u2018supply-side\u2019 limits on big donors or \u2018demand side\u2019 caps on campaign costs, the hunger of parties to out-compete each other will barely abate.\u00a0 But the downside of public funding, the tendency for parties to centralise further and rely less on grass-roots assistance, will exacerbate.<\/p>\n

Labor will cop flak for increasing the cost to taxpayers.\u00a0 Cynics will see it as a lunge for cash to support the party in its coming wilderness years.\u00a0\u00a0 This is a free-kick to the Coalition on a financial as well as political level.\u00a0 Polls suggest the conservative parties will outperform Labor by at least 10%.\u00a0 That will mean an extra $9m to them compared to $6m to Labor.<\/p>\n

Historically, Labor has driven electoral reform, often in tandem with other progressive parties.\u00a0 The current dynamic, however, is for conservative parties to act as a brake on such reform or, as in NSW and Queensland, to take up the wheel.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve waited over a decade for root-n-branch reform of national political finance rules.\u00a0\u00a0 Numerous inquiries lapsed during the Howard years.\u00a0\u00a0 As part of her key to power, the Gillard government agreed with the Greens<\/a> and Independents to drive some immediate reform, like\u00a0 slashing the level at which donations had to be publicly disclosed, to $1000.<\/p>\n

Labor also had some ideas left over from the Rudd prime ministership:\u00a0 bans on donations sourced with overseas money, a reduction of the level of tax deductibility of donations to parties or candidates.<\/p>\n

But these fairly modest reforms met a brick wall in the Senate. \u00a0\u00a0The government managed to fulfil a promise to finally hold a parliamentary inquiry on more ambitious reform.\u00a0\u00a0 That generated a report in late 2011.\u00a0 Unfortunately, it was a damp squib<\/a>, as the major parties nationally couldn\u2019t agree on capping donations or campaign expenditure.<\/p>\n

In contrast, much of eastern Australia has enacted donation and campaign limits for state level politics.\u00a0 Tri-partisan negotiations underway in South Australia may adopt similar reform.<\/p>\n

This is not to say state laws have the balance perfect.\u00a0 NSW Greens worked with the O\u2019Farrell Liberal government to further tighten the screws, including banning all donations from organisations.\u00a0\u00a0 This has angered Labor, and unions are mounting a High Court challenge<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But it does show impetus for electoral and party finance reform exists. It is just bubbling in the state cauldrons rather than at national level.<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

Extract from ‘Still not happy, John! Defending\u00a0our democracy’ (Penguin, 2007, pp 328-332<\/a>)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Australian Electoral Commission has two vital roles in our democracy: to manage the electoral rolls and conduct our elections, and to enforce our donor disclosure laws.<\/em><\/p>\n

In a Webdiary piece during the Honest Politics Trust scandal, Australia\u2019s most experienced electoral law expert, Graeme Orr of Queensland\u2019s Griffith University, described the democratic purpose of the latter role:<\/p>\n

\u2018Disclosure laws are meant to provide two related types of transparency. One, to inform interested voters about \u201cwho supports who\u201d (on the assumption that this in itself provides clues about the real intentions\/ideologies of political actors); and two, to allow the media, in particular, to shine light on possible \u201cquid pro quo\u201d corruption of political actors.\u2019<\/p>\n

The AEC was converted from a government department to an independent statutory watchdog in 1983 when the Parliament gave it responsibility for upholding new laws requiring the disclosure of large donations to political parties. Before 1983 Big Media and Big Business financed political parties in secret. Compulsory disclosure was a trade-off for the introduction of public funding for election campaigns, under which all candidates polling more than 4 per cent of the votes in the seats they stood for would be paid a certain sum per vote.<\/p>\n

The Labor government that introduced the public funding laws argued they would reduce the parties\u2019 dependence on private funding, both directly through the compensating public subsidy and indirectly due to the scrutiny of donations. The two Big Parties would in future be able to count on a guaranteed base \u2018public income\u2019 to fund their campaigns, and so the private fundraising pressure, with all its associated \u2018temptations\u2019, would be eased.<\/p>\n

Twenty Years later it still sounds like a damned Good Argument. In a system such as ours there\u2019s always scope for wealthy businesses and individuals to use their economic power to\u00a0gain disproportionate political influence, and thus subvert democracy\u2019s bedrock promise: that each citizen shares equally in political power. It\u2019s an insidious anti-democratic threat that can be hard to avoid.<\/p>\n

The then special minister of state Kim Beazley, who stewarded the 1983 reforms, said the new laws would minimise that threat: \u2018There is no greater duty upon the representatives of the people in a democratic society than the duty to ensure that they serve all members of that society equally. This duty requires government which is free of corruption and undue influence.\u2019<\/p>\n

As it turned out, our politicians, as usual, just wanted to eat our <\/i>public cake and <\/i>gobble every other private one they could get their hands on.<\/p>\n

Since 1983 the Big Parties have used taxpayer money to secure their financial bases while massively increasing <\/i>the corporate donations they collect. After the 1984 election 60 per cent of the Big Parties\u2019 revenue came from the new, vote-based public subsidy. After the 2001 election \u2013 by which time Labor and Liberal were together \u2018earning\u2019 around $38 million in taxpayer reimbursement \u2013 this had fallen to 20 per cent. <\/i><\/p>\n

Far from spurning private dough since 1983, the Big Par- ties have gone berserk: a rich voter can now buy superior access to political heavyweights \u2013 framers of policy, national executives, ministers, prime ministers \u2013 in all kinds of ways. Special lunches and dinners, expensive \u2018forums\u2019, one-on-one meetings and inside briefings \u2013 parties even get Big Money\u00a0to sponsor <\/i>their annual national conferences. La Trobe University\u2019s Joo-Cheong Tham, a leading electoral law expert, argues that we citizens should be under no illusion about these arrangements: \u2018Such sale clearly involves undue influence of politicians, because access to and influence on political power are secured through the payment of money.\u2019<\/p>\n

The stranglehold that large corporations now have on our government-forming parties \u2013 the Big Money, Big Party nexus \u2013 is tightening, and it isn\u2019t confined to the conservative side. Since 1999\u20132000 corporate donations have outstripped those from both wealthy individuals and <\/i>big unions, with results that would almost be funny if they weren\u2019t so sad. A conservation group in Byron Bay recently called for donations to help it campaign against a major development \u2013 not to fund a demo or knock up some flyers, but with a view to offering money to NSW Premier Bob Carr to listen to its point of view, just as the developer, Becton, had done!<\/p>\n

At the ALP\u2019s 2004 national conference in Sydney \u2013 Mark Latham the headline speaker \u2013 a cool $11,000 would have bought you a \u2018Platinum Table of 9\u2019 complete with its own \u2018senior Labor representative\u2019, plus <\/i>a \u2018full-page advertisement in the evening\u2019s program\u2019. All this while you and I pay these people every time we vote for them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Graeme Orr May 28, 2013 Australia has a lax campaign finance regime by western world standards.\u00a0 At national level there are no limits on donations and no limits on expenditure.\u00a0 Instead, we have a 30 year old system where the parties are fed public money \u2013 currently around $2.50 per vote \u2013 in return for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":87,"featured_media":4293,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3434,622,62,66,585,623],"tags":[2616,624,2617,625],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/circus-act.jpg?fit=607%2C414&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3t0mw-174","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4282"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/87"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}