The Liberal party has complained the Albanese government lacks a mandate for truth in political advertising and spending cap laws, which Labor argues are needed to prevent dangerous, big money, election campaigns.
The dispute between the major parties in a parliamentary inquiry sets up a battle on electoral law before the 2025 election, as the opposition resists a suite of reforms that are claimed to improve transparency in campaigning.
Climate 200, the body that helped fundraise for teal independents who won six lower house seats, has also warned the joint standing committee on electoral matters that spending and donation caps could have “perverse effects” and should be pursued only with “great care”.
In July the special minister of state, Don Farrell, revealed to Guardian Australia that Labor intends to legislate spending caps and truth in political advertising, as well as promote adherence to the one-vote, one-value principle by boosting the number of parliamentarians in underrepresented jurisdictions.
The reforms would be bundled together with Labor’s election commitments for real-time disclosure of political donations and reducing the disclosure threshold to $1,000, and legislated after the committee’s inquiry into the 2022 election.
In a submission to that inquiry the Labor party national secretary, Paul Erickson, warned that laissez-faire regulation of spending and donations had allowed “extremely high-net-worth individuals, groups and networks to distort the political conversation with levels of advertising that were previously inconceivable in Australian elections”.
“As a result our elections are not fought on a level playing field,” he said, calling for a cap on spending.
“Expenditure from some actors crowds out all others. Further, the pestilential quality of some of these campaigns is eroding trust and confidence in our elections and in the democratic system.”
In 2019 an $83.3m donation by Clive Palmer’s Mineralogy Pty Ltd to the United Australia party helped finance tens of millions of electoral expenditure prompting calls for spending caps.
The UAP fielded a similarly big campaign in 2022, while Climate 200 raised $13.2m from 11,200 donors, supporting a slew of successful candidates in formerly Liberal-held seats.
In the Liberal party’s submission, the federal director, Andrew Hirst, argued that Labor “did not take a detailed proposal to the election on imposing caps on electoral expenditure, and arguably does not have a mandate to implement such a change”.
Hirst called for a “level playing field”, warning against a regime in which trade unions could each spend the maximum allowed under the cap, delivering a “massively unfair” advantage to Labor.
Climate 200 warned that a donation cap would have the “unintended consequence of entrenching incumbency and inhibiting the ability of new entrants from outside the established, major parties”.
It proposed if a cap was introduced new entrants “should be exempt … for the first portion of their fundraising” to help level the playing field with parties in parliament that have incumbency benefits like taxpayer-funded communications budgets.
Climate 200 similarly warned that major parties were advantaged by spending caps that were calculated based on how many seats the party was running in. It proposed the spending cap per seat should be “significantly higher for new entrants and independent candidates”.
Labor also wanted truth in political advertising laws “to further enhance transparency and improve the integrity of federal election campaigns”, a move that Climate 200 backed.
But Hirst submitted Labor lacked a mandate for this reform, and accused it of “dishonest and deceptive” claims in previous campaigns including the “blatantly untrue” claims in 2016 that the Coalition would privatise Medicare and in 2022 that it would force pensioners on to the cashless debit card.
The Liberals warned that real-time disclosure of donations may lead to “greater harassment and bullying of individuals and small businesses” who wish to help political candidates. Hirst submitted the “prospect and fear of abuse and intimidation … is real and credible”.
The Liberals rejected claims of “malapportionment” – that some Australians are underrepresented in parliament – by noting the Australian Capital Territory “has more senators per capita than three states” while the Northern Territory has “more senators per capita than five states”.
The Liberals asked the committee to inquire into whether social media influencers were paid to sway votes by criticising Scott Morrison, and whether this required political authorisation.
The Nationals also rejected spending caps, but proposed reforms to increase public funding of political parties for their back-office administration, based on their recent parliamentary representation.
