TRANSCRIPT
Crossbench politicians are calling for changes to the electoral system, to be legislated in time for the next federal election.
The Greens have teamed up with 14 independent politicians on the Fair and Transparent Elections Bill.
The goal is to increase transparency, ban lies in political advertising, reduce financial influence, and limit political donations.
Greens MP Larissa Waters says it's time for change.
"Well, we've been waiting for 18-odd months now for the government to come good on their promise at the election to try to clean up politics. The crossbench in the Greens have joined forces to put a proposal to government to say, look, we can do this today. We could actually bring integrity back to the parliament with these electoral reforms."
Labor has been exploring electoral reform since forming government.
A parliamentary committee has recommended capping donations, and bringing in laws to promote truth in political advertising.
The government has not indicated what recommendations it would legislate.
Independent MP Kate Chaney says there should be some independence in making these decisions.
"Now we don't let Coles and Woolies make the laws about competition in supermarkets, but we seem to be letting the ALP and the Coalition make the laws about political competition."
The proposed legislation focuses on two things - political donations and advertising.
For donations, it includes a real time donation disclosure threshold of $1000, a ban on donations from 'social harm' industries and government contractors, and a cap on individual donations, to the tune of about $1.5 million.
Deputy Program Director of Budgets and Government at the Grattan Institute Kate Griffiths says the current donation rules are weak.
"Australia has political donations rules at the federal level and across all the states. And the federal rules are particularly inadequate. They're very basic, essentially, and some of the states have quite strong rules, but a weak federal system actually undermines the state rules at the federal level."
Dr Griffiths says the public deserves to know who is donating money.
"So the public deserves to know who's donating to political parties because there's the potential for donations to have an influence on public policy decisions, and that needs to be called out by a whole range of voices. And putting that information out in the public domain gives journalists, gives the parliament, gives the general public the opportunity to call out where they think there might be undue influence."
The bill doesn't include a cap on spending for electoral campaigns, despite some independent MPs pushing for that in the past.
Independent MP Andrew Wilkie says he has changed his mind on the issue.
"I've actually moved a political donation bill twice now during my time in the Parliament, and that bill did in fact, include a cap. However, I'll be upfront with you, I've pulled back from that position, because I think it's very important to allow anyone who wants to participate in the electoral process to to infect participate. You know, let's say you have 10 million donors, we'll give you a goal. Well, then you have an obligation, I think, to spend that $10 million."
Dr Griffiths says limiting spending would be a sensible way forward.
"If you were to limit how much political parties can spend during election campaigns, then you actually take the incentive away to raise more and more funds to chase more and more donations. And you take some of the dependency that currently exists in the system where political parties need that money to spread their message. And so they're a bit dependent on donors, especially big donors."
The other part of the bill deals with political advertising.
Prior to elections, Australians are used to seeing ads with big claims, with little information backing them up.
During the 2021 election, Independent Senator David Pocock successfully challenged a misleading ad, which showed an image of him wearing a Greens party shirt.
Senator Pocock says Australians expect more from their democracy.
"Australians recognize that we have a great democracy, but they want to make it better. They want more transparency, and they want choice come election time. We need to get the balance right with electoral reform, to have more transparency to ensure that we know where the money is coming from."
The legislation will look to clean up untrue, or misleading political ads.
Political marketing expert with the Australian National University, Dr Andrew Hughes, says currently there is little regulation.
"Basically they're quite broad. You can really do anything you want with local advertising in Australia. Regardless of jurisdiction area, so even local levels, you can really get away with anything you want, because it comes under political freedom of speech. And that's why the law is so open and so broad, but I think that's important as well."
Dr Hughes says for commercial advertising, there are stricter rules.
"There's strict laws on other types of advertising. But whoever ties in is though free of all that. So other commercial advertising, you do have misleading deceptive conduct. You have also misrepresentation you also have fraud. There's a whole range of laws you can call guilty of, if you do the wrong type of advertising. And you will very quickly by the way nowadays, the ads usually pull very quickly, and only legal actions taken very quickly."
The bill will also look to limit to the use of government funds in pre election advertising.
Dr Hughes says there's little appetite from the government to reduce that spend.
"It really picked up in the era of Kevin Rudd, but ever since then, all governments all persuasions use government advertising, before elections now, and therefore it's a huge advantage. But neither of them have any appetite to change that."
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says he is looking in to electoral changes.
“We are consulting very broadly including with members and representatives of the crossbench. And the minor parties, as well as across the major parties to see if reform as proposed by the minister, Minister Farrell can receive very broad support, because one of the objectives that we have here is to land reform that stays not reform that comes in then goes with changes of government. My view has been very clear that there needs to be transparency when it comes to political donations.”
