Page 5347 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 16 November 2011
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“There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money, and I cannot remember the second.” Which was that campaign? It was not the Obama campaign. It was much earlier than you might imagine. This was William McKinley’s campaign manager in 1896. So the issue of money in politics in the United States is not a new phenomenon.
This comparison may seem to be a little exaggerated. The prize of a seat in this Assembly may not be in quite the same league as the White House. At present, there is probably a dearth of billionaires in this Assembly and in this territory. But there is nonetheless a concern that the same factors may emerge, albeit on a much smaller scale.
We do not want a system dominated by money. In particular, public funding provisions will do little to level the playing field if they are dwarfed by escalating expenditure from other sources. Accordingly, as well as strengthening disclosure provisions, and refining public funding provisions, this bill provides limits on expenditure by candidates, parties and third-party campaigns and limits on gifts.
The expenditure limits have been devised carefully and do not rely on a one-size-fits-all model. In general the limits are provisional on the number of MLAs. There is a basic ceiling of $60,000 per MLA, which will be indexed. Limits must, of course, be extended to third-party campaigners, because if they were not, this would create an incentive for parties to channel funding and effort through such campaigns as a means of subverting the limits on their own expenditure, and we have seen this in the United States.
Third-party campaigners do, however, have a legitimate role in the political process. However, it is secondary to that of political parties and candidates. Accordingly, their limits are set lower, at $30,000. But non-party candidates have a higher allowance of $120,000, reflecting the higher costs and lack of economies of scale—for example, in having to pay for territory-wide advertising because media in this territory is not electorate-specific.
This bill has a series of penalty provisions in relation to expenditure caps. In the comments that I made when the justice and community safety committee brought down its report, I likened those provisions to the NRL salary cap. I think that it is an appropriate provision. There are two levels of penalty in this: a smaller penalty for what could be considered inadvertent or administrative overruns of the expenditure cap, and we see this in football from time to time. When all the accounts come in, they might be a little bit over the cap. It is an offence and they pay a penalty.
But there is another level of penalty which is a much higher level of penalty for those people who wantonly go out and flout the rules. We have seen it in the NRL and we have similar provisions here. If you go out and you flout the rules, deliberately prepared to overrun your expenditure cap, the penalties are quite severe indeed.
Without political entities exceeding these expenditure caps, however, it will be possible for an individual donor, whether a natural person, corporation or other organisation, to exercise disproportionate influence through donations or “gifts”.
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