A prospective constitutional challenge to Victorian campaign finance laws may have flow-on consequences for Commonwealth campaign finance reforms, which have currently stalled in the Senate.
Four independent candidates, who were defeated at the last Victorian election, have banded together to threaten a challenge to aspects of campaign finance laws they regard as seriously disadvantaging independent candidates and new parties in state elections.
The Andrews Labor government introduced these reforms in 2018. They imposed a very low cap on political donations, but no cap on electoral expenditure. Instead, electoral expenditure is limited to money that comes out of a special campaign account, into which all the capped political donations are deposited.
