The issue of political donations and electoral funding has come to the fore again this week, with Queensland Premier Anna Bligh calling for a ban on political donations in the wake of criticisms of her government from anti-corruption figure Tony Fitzgerald.
A call was similarly issued by NSW Premier Morris Iemma last year and quickly forgotten once his party turfed him out last September.
The issue has also been raised in the context of the package of election reforms proposed by the Rudd government, which included a lowering of the threshold for the disclosure of donations from approximately $11,000 to $1000.
The loudest campaigners on the issue have been the Greens, particularly the Greens NSW, who have stricter donations policies than other Greens state parties, and have pushed the issue strongly in NSW politics. In particular, Lee Rhiannon and the website democracy4sale have put the issue in the public spotlight.
Today online campaign group GetUp launched a campaign with some similar features to the policy the Greens have been pushing for years.
However, there are a few problems with the position GetUp is pushing that would undermine any reform and make it largely toothless. It seems like GetUp took the Greens policy and tore out anything that would might inconvencience them. It’s blatant hypocrisy.
GetUp’s policy is probably right when it comes to the issue of donations to political parties (which, despite the debate recently, is only one element of electoral funding reform). They propose a ban on donations from corporations and unions, and a cap on donations from individuals of $1000. This is the best option. It removes the influence of rich individuals and corporate interests, while allowing small donations to continue. It’s exactly the same policy as the Greens, and the system used in Canada.
The policy pushed by Bligh and Iemma, a complete ban on donations, would be disastrous for democracy. In a system where the only external funding to a political party comes from the state, it becomes impossible for new parties to arise, and sets the current 2 1/2 party system in stone. It gives a massive advantage, also, to parties with investments that they can draw on. Both major parties own properties from which they receive rent, having built up these investments using donations from previous eras, yet they would continue to reap the benefit long into the future.
But any system that is limited to capping donations to political parties is doomed to fail. Money is like water, it finds every crack and crevice. If you ban companies from donating to political parties, it is easy for them to give money to a third party to do the same campaigning. It’s no minor issue -it will definitely happen. You only need to look at the ‘Swift Boat’ style organisations who campaign in every US election campaign beyond the reach of campaign finance laws that already ban corporate donations and cap individual donations to candidates.
GetUp have completely ignored this issue, apart from a vague comment tucked away on a PDF posted on their campaign page. It’s blatant hypocrisy to demand restrictions on funding to political parties while wanting to avoid any regulation themselves. How are we supposed to take them seriously?
GetUp has also dodged the hard policy decisions by ignoring the capping of campaign spending. Electoral funding is a matter of supply and demand. Donation caps restrict the supply of money, but it’s actually much easier to fix the problem by restricting supply. By capping election spending, you stop the continuous arms race, making it easier for independents and minor parties. It also removes much of the incentive for the corruption of our political process by removing the need for parties to raise large sums of money.
Tim Gartrell, who was ALP National Secretary at the 2007 election, has come out in favour of restricting spending, and says:
Spending limits must be part of the answer – no party is going to allow itself to be outgunned in an election campaign. Campaign Directors will always try to equal or better the other side and in Australia that means a donation arms race to fuel campaign advertising. Any solution has to deal with this escalation or otherwise it won’t remove the pressure for funds. This means a limit on campaign spending. This could be applied to both the political parties and third parties (who might be subject to a lesser limit). Another scheme might ban TV advertising but allow an expansion of party allocated broadcasts (as operates in the UK).
Of course, any spending cap must include third parties involved in election campaigning. It would be absurd if the ALP had its funding restricting while the unions, Greenpeace and GetUp are free to spend a fortune on election campaigning.
Curious timing of their interest in this issue as well. Yet again, they suddenly want to start a campaign on an issue only after senior Labor figures start talking about it.
Increasing transparency as to the sources of their funds might be a good first step if they want some credibility on this specific issue.
On the Canadian system, I seem to recall from when I was researching this a couple of years ago that corporate donations up to $1000 were still permitted to individual candidates. Perhaps that subsequently changed though as I know further changes were being proposed and several elements of their reforms were facing court challenges for alleged breaches of their human rights charter. Is your info more up to date?
There is actually some logic in still allowing tightly capped corporate and union donations to individual candidates, as it gives them somewhere to donate and thus perhaps discourages them from seeking to support third-party campaigns or other more underhand methods of influencing elections. I’m not entirely convinced though, but that does lead to another point, and that is the need for some form of continuous disclosure of donations, so the public can learn who is funding candidates’ campaigns before polling day rather than at least six months later. If, for instance, the fact that high-profile Independent Tim Horan’s campaign for the federal seat of Parkes at the last election was bankrolled to the tune of $50,000 by Manildra had been disclosed prior to polling day it might’ve made for some interesting headlines – was he running to become the ‘Member for Manildra’?
Why is it that I don’t trust the major parties to do campaign finance reform properly? The way the debate in NSW last year panned out was appalling, and wasn’t helped by some terribly uninformed media coverage.
Ignoring for a minute the inherent problems with the blatant attack on freedom of expression that any proposal to regulate political donations/spending, I just want to note that GetUps position is not not only laughable, it is ridiculously self-serving.
Because it’s obvious that if enacted, one of the biggest beneficiaries would be … GetUp!
As you mentioned yourself, money will simply go to 3rd parties. And we don’t have that many in Australia with the profile and infrastructure of GetUp currently established. Hence the money would be pouring in to GetUp!
This is naked opportunism, and attempting to use the power of the State to suppress your competition, pure and simple.
I don’t think there is any overwhelming impetus to change.
Nice post. I think Gartell’s point about a spending cap is important. Just thinking of BO’s campaign in America, i can’t help but think that that will be seen as a standard to measure other fund raising efforts against. That should then be coupled with donation limits like you have mentioned. I think spending limits would also make for more interesting campaigns as parties have to ration their spending.
Just on GetUp! in general, I think the fact that they’ve signed up 300,000 members, raised so much money, and gained such a high profile is a good indication of the potential for online organising to have a similar impact in Aus to what it has had in the US. They’ve only scratched the surface though, and others need to come along and take the next steps.
Whoever wants to set up the more credible and effective successor to GetUp! let me know, I’ll volunteer to help.
More on the topic of GetUp, it strikes me as quite a coincidence that an ALP feeder organisation would want to soften any attempts at funding reform.
The idea of spending limits is interesting, how would you envision this working?
I don’t think it’s fair to characterise GetUp as either an ALP front or feeder organisation.
Politically it sits between Labor and the Greens, but I don’t actually know if anyone there has explicit links with the ALP (apart from the Director, who was a bureaucrat, not a Young Labor hack).
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