Page 734 - Week 02 - Thursday, 23 February 2012
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incurring of electoral expenditure is a significant example of an individual’s right to participate in public life. Further, such expenditure has the potential to enhance and encourage that participation, as the media and other informative materials that such expenditure can produce can assist citizens to make more informed decisions on their electoral preference.
However, it is also the government’s view that the amount of money spent on campaigns should not be an overriding factor on the outcome of an election. Candidates should not win seats simply because they have more, and can spend more, money on election campaigns than their rivals.
Essentially, the same cap of $60,000 for electoral expenditure applies across the board. These caps on electoral expenditure are aimed at lessening the capacity for election results to be excessively influenced by the candidates and parties’ spending on election campaigns. In short, they provide a level playing field for all participants.
As I discussed earlier, the bill also imposes a limit on the receiving of gifts by a party grouping, a non-party MLA and an associated entity of an MLA, a non-party candidate grouping, a non-party prospective candidate grouping and a third-party campaigner. This bill groups these entities as receivers and prescribes that a receiver must not accept one or more gifts from a person in a financial year that total more than $10,000.
The rationale for this cap is to ensure a level playing field for candidates and parties without overly limiting the community’s right to take part in public life and, following from this right, make donations to the political entity of their choice.
As the Electoral Commissioner noted in the standing committee’s inquiry, a regime that allows for uncapped donations can lead to entities that provide significant donations having undue influence or, at the very least, being perceived to have undue influence on the political process.
The introduction of a cap on gifts will provide a significant deterrent to the practice of donors making substantial political contributions with a view to using this donation as leverage to advance their own interests. By limiting the capacity for excessively large donations to be made to parties, both directly or indirectly, the scheme is intended to prevent entities from unduly influencing political candidates in this way.
It is important to note that the bill imposes penalties for exceeding the caps for both electoral expenditure and gifts, and they are both civil and criminal in nature. This demonstrates that these caps will not be unenforced guidelines and that the bill is serious about ensuring that caps are applied and adhered to.
The reforms to the disclosure requirements in the act revolve around increasing the transparency of the territory’s electoral campaign finance regime. Clause 26 of the bill inserts section 216A, which requires the financial representative for specified receivers to record the details of each gift received.
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