Political influence policies

A review of political influence policies of some of the Federal parties (Coalition, Labor and the Greens) highlights the divergent views. The efficacy of the proposed policies will be the focus of another post.

The Greens brought major policies to the 2019 election:

• Ban political donations – We’ll ban political donations from mining, property development, tobacco, alcohol, banking, defence, pharmaceutical and gambling industries, and limit all other donations to $1,000 per year. Until those bans and caps are in place, we’d ensure all donations above $1,000 are reported to the public in close to real time.
• Shine a light on shady lobbying – We’ll ban MPs from becoming industry lobbyists after they retire, and make details of meetings between industry lobbyists and politicians publicly available.
• Investigate and expose corruption – Root out corruption by creating a federal anti-corruption commission to investigate and prosecute politicians when they do the wrong thing
• Defend democracy – We’ll protect the rights of community groups, charities and not-for-profits to speak out about government policy, and be advocates for their communities.

Following the loss of the 2019 elections, the Labor party recommended the strengthening of electoral laws:

• Reducing the donation disclosure threshold from the current level of $14,000 (indexed to inflation) to a fixed $1000;
• Introducing a real-time disclosure scheme;
• Limiting the level of federal campaign expenditure through the introduction of spending caps; and •
• Ensuring public funding of elections is an effective and practical tool for minimising the influence of vested interests in the democratic process.

The Coalition has recently focused on foreign donations with the strengthening of the restrictions on donations from people and entities that are not Australian citizens or registered in Australia. The legislation states that:

• Political entities, political campaigners and third parties can receive donations under $100 (e.g. small donations via fundraising in the form of ‘bucket donations’) without having to determine whether the donor is a foreign donor.
• Political entities and political campaigners are:
  • restricted from receiving gifts in the amount of $100 to $999.99 from a foreign donor where:
    • the person or entity knows that the foreign donor intends the gift to be used to incur electoral expenditure, or the dominant purpose of creating or communicating electoral matter; or o the gift is accepted with the intent of using it to incur electoral expenditure, or for the dominant purpose of creating or communicating electoral matter; and
    • prohibited from receiving donations of $1,000 or more from a foreign donor.
• Third parties are:
  • restricted from receiving donations of $100 or more if:
    • the third party knows the donor is a foreign donor; and o the third party knows that the foreign donor intends the gift to be used to incur electoral expenditure, or for the dominant purpose of creating or communicating electoral matter; or
    • the gift is accepted with the intent of using it to incur electoral expenditure, or for the dominant purpose of creating or communicating electoral matter.
  • restricted from receiving donations equal to or more than the disclosure threshold from a foreign donor, if the donation is used for:
    • incurring electoral expenditure; or
    • for the dominant purpose of creating or communicating electoral matter.

Some resulting questions include:

• What is the impact of reducing the maximum donation limit?
• What does banning lobbying by MPs do for the influence that post- political jobs might have on the decision making of politicians?
• Were foreign donations in the Australian political system a major issue?
• Does a corruption watchdog result in less corruption?

I think it is time to turn to the academic research.