The Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill changes

While I am mightily pissed over the restrictions on third parties, the select committee has made many other changes, which are reasonably desirable. I’ll summarise them below.

• The editorial content of any periodical, radio or television programme, or news media Internet site is now excluded from being an election advertisement, rather than the former requirement that it be “solely for the purposes of informing, enlightening, or entertaining” which I and other submitted was too narrow.
• The exclusion for those expressing personal political views on the Internet was defined as only applying if “non-commercial”, and now it applies unless “the person makes or receives payment to express that view for publication”. That is a very welcome change.
• The definition of the regulated period has changed from what was in the draft bill, to the definition I proposed at a seminar of “experts”. The regulated period will now start 2 years and nine months after the last general election unless the PM calls an early election. This is great as it means no longer will there be a retrospective regulated period, and it also provides certainty as to when it will begin (if no snap election).
• A $300,000 (incl GST) expenditure cap on third party spending during the regulated period. This will inflation adjust. While the limit is relatively high, it is less than 10% of what a party spends in total and National should not have voted for it.
• Candidate expenditure limits have increased from $20,300 to $25,000. A small step in the right direction but the reality is that this is still an inadequate amount to be able to effectively communicate to 40,000 people over three months.
• The party expenditure limit also increased from $1.015m and $20,300 per electorate ($2.436m in total) to $1.032m and $25,000 per electorate ($2.782m in total). Again a good move in the right direction but it doesn’t even cover the inflation impact since 1993. It will at least be inflation adjusted in future.
• The summary disclosure of total revenue from donations changes from bans of under $1k, $1k to $10k and over $10k to $1.5K to $5k, $5l to $15k and over $15k. I think it is regrettable that the total amount of small donations will not be disclosed as this would have allowed the public to form a holistic view of the total way a party is funded.
• The disclosure limit of identity for individual donations has increased from $10k to $15k. Presumably this is part of the trade off with Labour in return for support third party restrictions. However I think the $10k limit was about right, and don’t see a need for it to increase to $15k. Transparency is my preference over limits.
• The disclosure limit for candidates increases from $1,000 to $1,500. Not a big change there.

Both Greens and ACT have done minority reports.

I will be very interested to see what Labour says about this bill. It is a win for them.

Most of the changes made by the select committee are good ones. The compromise over third party spending limits is what spoils it. I would be very interested to know where the decision was made to do that compromise – was it at Cabinet or at Caucus?