Page 596 - Week 02 - Thursday, 19 February 2015
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Money is an inescapable part of politics, it costs money to campaign and it costs money to win elections …
But on the other hand money usually comes with strings attached, particularly large donations can come with an expectation of involvement or even a hope that someone might see decisions fall their way.
He went on to say:
I think it does go beyond perceptions, we have clear evidence that people are donating, not because they’re altruistic people who just want to support the democratic process but because they may see it as a business expense, money they need to pay in order to carry favour and I think it’s only human nature that if somebody’s funded your political campaign and helped you win an election, then you don’t forget that person when it comes to how you govern.
Professor Williams was, at the time, talking about New South Wales, but there is no reason to assume that the same thing should not apply in the ACT. Sure, we do not have the history of exposed corruption that New South Wales does, but on these issues surely prevention is better than cure. And as the ACT already has a cap on donations in place, why would we now seek to remove it?
Current limits on donations in New South Wales sit at $5,000 to parties and $2,000 to individual candidates, and there are some who would say they should be even lower, and yet here in the ACT we are thinking about removing them altogether.
For the record, the Select Committee on Amendments to the Electoral Act did not recommend the removal of the $10,000 donation limit. The report indicated that the Assembly should debate the merits of the $10,000 limit. When the Attorney-General tabled this bill back in November last year his rationale for removing the limit on donations was this:
By abolishing the $10,000 limit on donations, the government is removing an unintended incentive for donors to circumvent the electoral funding laws and therefore reduce transparency.
So, in the Attorney-General’s words, the primary rationale for the government removing this part of the regulation on electoral funding is that if we remove the provision we will not have people trying to circumvent the provision. That is, “Let’s not regulate in case people are inspired to break the law more creatively. Let’s just let them give.” I and the Greens do not buy that because, let’s face it, the conversations that go with donations will never be transparent, even if the amounts of money are.
I appreciate that, as the attorney laid out, expenditure caps are crucial in reducing the so-called “usefulness” of large donations—that is, you may not be able to spend them all—and that transparency is crucial—that is, the timely and accurate reporting of donations. However, I cannot understand why one measure negates the usefulness of another. Surely strong electoral reform is about utilising all the levers available to us to deliver a complete package that has better democratic outcomes. Yet the irony of
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