Campaign spending up 144% as parliament looks at reform

The Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, chaired by Labor MP Kate Thwaites with National Liberal Senator James McGrath as vice chair, began its election hearings in September and has already published more than 250 applications.

loading

Signaling the government’s willingness to consider reforms, Special Secretary of State Don Farrell asked the commission to start work, whose terms of reference include consideration of donation laws, real-time disclosure, a smaller disclosure threshold (to reveal more donations), spending caps, public party funding and the possibility of laws Honest in advertising.

Another major issue is the proportional representation of states and territories and the goal of “one vote, one value” across the country.

The Center for Public Integrity’s new report was based on public documents submitted to the Electoral Commission, examining total payments for each year by political parties, using this as an indicator of electoral expenditures after subtracting routine expenditures and adjusting for inflation. It found an increase of 144 percent compared to an increase in the electoral register of only 37 percent.

When competition of ideas turns into competition for dollars, voters suffer. The report concluded that elections are becoming less fair, and our elected representatives are forced to spend their time raising money from wealthy donors to prepare for their next re-election effort.

loading

“Furthermore, when corporate interests can bombard voters with advertisements to protect their bottom line, our representatives effectively suffer from the pursuit of good public policy.”

Among the directors of the Center for Public Integrity are former New South Wales High Court Justice Anthony Wylie, KC, former Victorian Court of Appeal judge Stephen Charles, KC, University of Melbourne Professor Jo Cheung Tham and University of New South Wales Professor Gabriel Appleby.

University of New South Wales professor George Williams urged the Electoral Affairs Commission to recommend laws to counter disinformation campaigns.

“The result should be a narrow canon of truth in political propaganda,” he wrote in his letter.

This law should only aim to disseminate information that can be proven to be false. number
An attempt must be made to organize opinion or ideas in the contested areas.”

Go beyond the hype of federal politics with news, opinions and expert analysis from Jacqueline Malley. Subscribers can sign up for the weekly Inside Politics newsletter here.

Source link

Originally published at Melbourne News Vine