One has to be immediately suspicious whenever the two major parties agree on anything. Sometimes it is a matter of obvious public importance, but usually it benefits the politicians who serve the major parties and is a disservice to politicians of minor parties or independents and the public in general.
This week the two major parties in the ACT Legislative Assembly, Labor and Liberal, have agreed on a range of changes to the electoral law in the ACT. One must be immediately suspicious. The changes to the way ballot papers are printed to ensure that there aren’t freakish flows of preferences to undeserving candidates are reasonable and were recommended by the Electoral Commission.
However, other proposed changes dealing with political donations, the nomination process and the public funding of political parties are suspect.
Changes to the Electoral Act to be debated by the Assembly today include a proposal to allow anonymous political donations up to $1,500; a plan to allow an ACT candidate to use a Commonwealth return in a full satisfaction of the ACT requirements; a requirement that 50 people to nominate a candidate, instead of the present two; a restriction of public funding of candidates to those who win four per cent, as distinct from the present two per cent, of the vote at the previous election; a plan to no longer require political parties to account in any detail for the way in which the funds they receive are spent.
These changes are an assault on minor parties and independents and make candidates of major parties and their donors less accountable.
The rules about the funding of political parties are critical to the health of a democracy. There is a fine line between a donation to a political party by an individual who has a philosophic sympathy in what the party stands for and donations by wealthy individuals and large corporations who expect favours in return in the form of spending and laws that will have direct financial benefit to them. The best way to ensure that the latter does not get disguised as the former is to have a system of full disclosure and accountability. If there is full disclosure the public can know if a political party is in the pocket of donors and judge it accordingly. Disclosure must include where the money came from and where it went.
The new provisions which will downgrade disclosure invite the question, “What have the major parties got to hide?” The obvious answer is that have they have a lot to hide. They are taking in money from wealthy individuals and corporations who want favours returned in the form of legislation, spending priorities and policy. If the major parties say that donations do not affect legislative and spending programs then they should have nothing to fear from full disclosure.
The ACT Electoral Commission made an number of recommendations about disclosure. The proposals by the major parties before the assembly now fly in the face of these recommendations. They will enable corporations to pass money to major parties in lots of $1499 in a metaphorical brown paper bags to get favours that will invariably be against the broad public interest.
The proposed changes to the public-funding rules are mean-spirited and the proposed changes to the nomination requirement will just add a petty bureaucratic requirement that will do not to stop the determinedly frivolous who, in any event, should be weeded out at the ballot box, not at the nomination stage.
In general, if these provisions are passed the major parties will be inviting an exodus of voters to minor parties and independents.