To fund election spending on things like advertising and pamphlets,more taxpayer funding,tied to how many votes a party won,is expected to flow to party headquarters.
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The changes – which Labor and many civil society groups believe will improve transparency in politics and mirror similar changes in Canada and parts of Europe – are set to prompt intense debate with parties that believe the new laws might make it harder for them to win elections.
A spokesperson for Farrell declined to comment on the changes.
However,in an interview last year,Farrell made it clear the Labor Party was still scarred by the influence of conservative mining magnate Clive Palmer on the 2019 election,which Labor lost.
Despite failing to win a seat,Palmer said the expenditure had been “worth it” to keep then-Labor leader Bill Shorten out of office.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt at all that the reason Bill Shorten didn’t win the 2019 election was the more than $100 million that Clive Palmer spent on that election,” Farrell said in October.
“These people are not necessarily after political influence in the sense of having people in parliament. What they’re after is the result,and getting a favourable result,and I just don’t think Australians want a situation where one individual can spend so much money to get a successful electoral result.”
The government will also introduce measures to capture unions and other third-party campaigners in the cap,but it is not yet clear how the legislation would deal with party-affiliation fees paid by unions which are spent on administrative costs – such as holding conferences – and unrelated to elections.
Farrell will seek bipartisan support for the changes but the Coalition,Greens and independent MPs have previously flagged concerns.
In its response to the committee report that backed donation caps last year,Coalition MPs said such a move “would rig an expenditure system in[Labor’s] favour” if unions were not also captured by the donation caps.
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Teal independent MPs and the Greens have also accused Labor of cutting the legs out from underneath smaller parties and independents. They argue capping spending in individual seats could hurt groups like the Greens which target a handful of seats with a lot of money as opposed to the major parties with a larger group of target seats.
Curtin MP Kate Chaney,who is the leading teal MP on electoral reform,said Labor’s capping of spending and donations “can’t be used to entrench the two-party system”.
“We need to make sure that any caps treat different funding structures fairly and in a way that maintains political competition – whether candidates receive donations from companies,unions,crowdfunding intermediaries or individual citizens,” she said.
Greens Senate leader Larissa Waters,whose party aims to spend big in a few inner-city Labor seats,said:“The Greens would welcome real electoral reform but are very suspicious that the two big parties will gang up to rig the system to benefit themselves and lock out smaller parties and new entrants.”
A spokeswoman for Farrell’s opposition counterpart,Jane Hume,said she would wait to see the government’s proposed bill.
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