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Next Friday night in Moonee Ponds, Pauline Hanson, Barnaby Joyce and supporters of One Nation will gather for a fundraiser at a newly opened Sicilian-themed restaurant.
Tickets start from $200. For $2000, you can buy a private audience with Senator Hanson. Exactly what this entails is not clear. If only Dame Edna Everage were still alive to muse about the goings on in her old neighbourhood.
Across Melbourne and Victoria, ’tis the season for tin-rattling, wine quaffing, cheese tasting and swanky corporate dinners, as political parties and aspiring independent MPs try to raise the money they’ll need for their campaigns.
And across the Victorian parliament, the limits of our political system to look past self-interest and fairly regulate the flow of money into state elections have never been more evident.
In the six weeks since the High Court, in its wisdom, ripped 80 pages out of the state’s Electoral Act and left Victoria without any campaign finance laws ahead of the November election, the Labor Party, Liberal Party and the Greens have been negotiating a legislative fix.
The only certainly now that the government has introduced a bill to parliament is that we will be back in the High Court before the election. This is not a bold prediction. As one Labor figure familiar with negotiations noted: “It is 100 per cent going to end up in court.”
This is not a criticism of the Allan government. It is an observation about human nature. If the women and men running our political parties were judges, they would be forced to recuse themselves from this case. They are all hopelessly conflicted.
The proposed replacement law, at a glance, appears an attempt at compromise. The previous cap on private donations of just under $5000 will be increased to $7500 and first-time candidates for non-major parties allowed to accept donations of up to $15,000. This change recognises that the old system, with its tight cap and generous provision of public funding, was unfairly skewed towards incumbents.
Public funding has also been increased, with Labor the beneficiary of an additional $3 million to cover the administrative expenses of its MPs and the Coalition reaping an extra $2 million. Climate 200 calculates that on current polling numbers, One Nation would receive about $17 million in taxpayer funding over the next four years. That makes Hanson’s glad-handing down Puckle Street look like small beer.
The biggest change is that, for the first time in decades, the Labor Party, Liberal Party and National Party will not have access to large donations from their legacy investment funds known as nominated entities. The special provision for this in the old laws is the reason the High Court declared them unconstitutional.
So, what’s the problem?
The Liberal Party, which seeded its nominated entity nearly 40 years ago with the sale of the 3XY (Rocks Melbourne!) radio station, is furious that it can no longer access a $125 million corpus built from its own money. It is angrier still that the proposed laws retain a carve-out for Labor to keep receiving union affiliation fees. It wanted the private donation cap to be set between $25,000 and $50,000.
This is why James Newbury, the shadow attorney-general who negotiated his party’s position alongside state Liberal Party director Alyson Hannam and Jess Wilson’s chief of staff Byron Hodkinson, accused Labor of trying to rig the system. It is why even cool heads in the Liberal Party say that unless the legislation is substantially amended, they will challenge it in the High Court.
Outside the parliament, the Climate 200 group is likely to sue as well. It supported the High Court challenge against the old laws and thinks the proposed new ones are worse. Climate 200, as a significant funder of teal campaigns, is frustrated by the tight cap on donations. Its co-convenor Simon Holmes a Court pushed for the introduction of a cap-free threshold of about $50,000 – a figure based on the federal campaign finance laws.
There is also a loophole in the government’s legislation that allows third-party campaigners to spend whatever they want to promote a political candidate. This means that the old nominated entities, including the ALP’s Labor Services and Holding and Liberal Party’s Cormack Foundation, can spend an unlimited amount spruiking for their preferred candidates.
“These laws tilt the playing field further in favour of the major parties,” Holmes a Court says. “It’s as if they haven’t read the High Court’s ruling.”
The government’s 11th-hour decision to reduce the donation cap from an earlier, proposed figure of $10,000 was needed to secure Greens votes in the upper house. The Greens would be happy if there were no private donations and elections were entirely funded on the public purse. As well-established incumbents who don’t have a nominated entity, they can afford to think this way.
By contrast, West Party founder Paul Hopper, one of the litigants who successfully challenged the previous regime, sees a stich-up at play. “High Court, here we come again,” he says.
Centre for Integrity executive director Catherine Williams describes the legislation as an emergency repair rather than a long-term solution. This is perhaps, as much as could be reasonably expected from a government knee-deep in the hoopla of an election year.
If the advice of Solicitor-General Alistair Pound is prescient, we won’t have to wait long to find out whether the patch job will hold till November 28. Pound’s advice, as relayed by the government in its negotiations, was that if the High Court has any qualms about the response to its previous ruling, it will bring on a fresh hearing quick smart.
Chip Le Grand is state political editor.
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