Via The Guardian:
State bans on political donations from developers and stricter caps on donations, expenditure and disclosure will be overridden by new Coalition amendments to a campaign finance bill, academics have warned.
Prof Joo-Cheong Tham, of the University of Melbourne, has said the amendments would undermine states’ ability to “protect the integrity of representative government from the dangers of political money”, thwarting cases such as the Operation Spicer investigation into the New South Wales Liberal party allegedly taking developer donations in breach of state laws.
The amendments to the electoral funding and disclosure bill – released by the Coalition for consultation and now before the joint standing committee on electoral matters – caught Labor by surprise because they were not recommended in a bipartisan report agreed in April.
Under the two new amendments donors would gain immunity from state and territory laws prohibiting gifts and imposing obligations to disclose donations, provided there is a connection to federal election spending.
The amendments reverse the current position – expressed by the Queensland supreme court in the 2018 Awabdy decision – that federal donations laws do not override state laws, which can set more stringent disclosure requirements than the federal threshold of $13,800.
In a submission to the committee, Tham warned that the immunity is triggered if donations “may be used” for commonwealth electoral purposes.
“Hence, amounts to state-based political parties which are made without any conditions would trigger the immunity,” he said.
Tham said the federal law would “significantly preclude the operation” of state laws that cap electoral expenditure, caps donations, ban foreign donations and regulate other special categories of donors.
Tham told Guardian Australia that – given the breadth of the immunity – property developers could donate to the NSW Liberal and Labor divisions to spend “as they see fit”, which would trigger the immunity and “preclude the operation of NSW laws”.
Sigh. Developers also equals China. The Labor’s Party’s NSW Right will be cock-a-whoop.
