The special minister of state, Don Farrell, has accused teal independents of hypocrisy for proposing a ban on political donations totalling more than $1.5m while imposing no limit on electoral spending.
On Tuesday Farrell reiterated Labor’s intention to cap political spending and donations, accusing unnamed teal independents of “saying to us that they agree with banning big money, just not theirs”.
Guardian Australia revealed that independent MP Kate Chaney and senator David Pocock are leading a cross-bench push to prevent individuals or companies donating a total of more than 2% of public election funding – currently a cap of $1.5m – over the electoral cycle.
Farrell first revealed in July 2022 that Labor planned to legislate spending caps, citing Clive Palmer’s $117m spending at the last election funded by donations from his company, Mineralogy, as an example of excessive influence.
The Albanese government is planning to legislate truth-in-political advertising laws, but is still consulting on the level donation and spending caps should be set to withstand likely legal challenges, and whether public funding for political candidates should be increased.
In question time on Tuesday, Chaney pressed the government to reveal its planned caps, querying whether Labor will bring a reform approved by the Coalition and “designed to lock out political competition”.
In reply the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, noted that Labor had a policy of lowering the donation threshold to $1,000 since the Hawke-Keating era, but it was “overturned” by the Coalition including the Howard government.
“We are consulting very broadly, including with members and representatives of the cross-bench and the major parties as well … to see if reform as proposed by the minister … can receive very broad support,” he said.
“One of the objectives that we have here is to land reform that stays, not reform that comes and then goes with changes of government.”
“There needs to be a stopping, to give just one example, of the sort of largesse that we saw from Clive Palmer during the last two election campaigns.
“I don’t think it is tenable at all to have the sort of dollars washing around the system such as occurs in the United States. I think that is unhealthy. I think it undermines our democracy.”
In a statement Farrell said: “Labor is committed to this reform. We need to stop billionaires throwing their money around and trying to buy our elections.”
The cross-bench bill is supported by the Greens, Jacqui Lambie Network and Lidia Thorpe in the Senate, and MPs Zoe Daniel, Helen Haines, Andrew Wilkie, Dai Le, Monique Ryan, Sophie Scamps, Rebekha Sharkie, Allegra Spender, Zali Steggall, and Kylea Tink.
The six teal independent MPs elected in 2022 received a total of $10.2m of donations, including from fundraising body Climate 200, which received $1.5m from Atlassian founder Scott Farquhar.
On Tuesday, Daniel told reporters in Canberra the majority of donations were from “individual people who donated a small amount of money to bring political change”.
“So don’t buy the major parties’ pup that we were all funded by big donors – that’s just not the reality.”
Chaney said that under the cross-bench bill “a major donor cap would apply equally to all donors, no matter who they donate to – or how they donate – whether directly or through an aggregator”.
“This simple cap model would take more than half the private money out of the system and stand up to constitutional challenge.”
Chaney said spending caps “would stop people from being able to participate by donating”, but she will consider any proposal brought by the government.
“It’s hard to structure a spending cap that is actually fair to new challengers, because of the significant incumbency and party advantages.”
