Looking into Australia Together - Part 7
Strategies for electoral reform in Australia.
In this series of articles I’m providing brief summaries featuring some of the Targets and Strategies in Australia Together.
Australia Together is the nation’s first long term, integrated plan for a better future for everyone. It is being progressively developed by Australians for Australians so that we can tell our governments what we want them to do for us as a cohesive, democratic community. Read the latest draft of Australia Together - Issue No. 7 - here.
In Parts 1 to 6 of this series I summarised the Targets and Strategies in Australia Together for:
fixing Australia’s housing crisis,
reforming Australia’s Constitution,
stopping climate change,
achieving peace, security and independent defence of Australia,
ensuring prosperity for everyone through lifelong educational opportunities, and
strategies for fairness in Australia including a National Accord on Wealth, Welfare and Wellbeing and a "universal basic income" for all Australians.
But if we are to make progress with these Targets and Strategies, we need to vastly improve the laws governing our electoral systems, particularly the funding of elections. At present these laws are set to exclude Australians from fair participation and influence in their democracy as political equals. They disproportionately favour those large donors and corporations who can afford to - and do - buy elections. We need to reverse this. Australia Together is designed to help.
How does Australia Together help Australians to elect parliaments that work for them?
Some weeks ago in the introductory episode for this series I spoke of how Australians can now elect parliaments that work for them. I showed how they can do this with the help of:
a community-designed, long term, integrated plan for the nation like Australia Together, and
progress reports on that plan just before elections - like The State of Australia 2022 and the forthcoming State of Australia 2025.
With these tools Australians can vastly improve their relationship with and trust in those they elect – an improvement which is vital to their capacity to make their vision for a better future a reality.
Australia Together is an essential tool in building that better relationship of trust because it does not attempt to remove or override the powers of parliaments or governments once elected. It’s simply a means of helping Australians tell governments what they want them to do with that power, and what they don’t want them to do.
In effect, Australia Together gives federal political candidates a job description and it gives Australian electors a yardstick by which to judge the fitness of candidates for the job we prefer them to do. If candidates can commit to the agenda set out in Australia Together then we can know they have the public interest at heart. That will afford everyday Australians a very significant increase in influence and greater confidence that they have selected candidates who will put their wellbeing above all else.
However, if the electoral system itself is still awash with huge donations from corporate and sectional interests the voices of Australians will continue to be drowned out. Their votes will make little if any difference to their chances of creating a truly democratic election system where one vote really does equal one value.
So today’s focus is on the Strategies in Australia Together that are designed to give Australians their best chance of establishing an electoral system where one vote really does equal one value - and no more or less than that. This is essential if we are to transform our current merely representative system of government into a full participatory democracy in which all Australians have agency as political equals.
As I’ve noted in the earlier parts of this series, Australia Together is a map through time of the safe routes to a destination of wellbeing and security for every single Australian by 2050 or sooner. Every Target and Strategy has a coloured map reference number. You can follow the map by using the map references or simply by searching on keywords which relate to your topic of interest.
Strategies in Australia Together for electoral reform
Most of the Targets and Strategies in Australia Together for electoral reform appear in Chapter 8 in the section headed Governance 8 – Electoral system & funding reform. At the moment they tend to focus more on reforming the way we fund elections than they do on electoral systems themselves. Future Issues of Australia Together may include strategies for reforming the mechanics of elections. But the main Strategies at present are:
Gov08.01 – which proposes introduction of legislation requiring truth in political advertising.
Gov08.02 – which requires community engagement on electoral funding reform in association with a wider program of engagement on constitutional reform. The purpose of this is to determine informed community support for reforms of electoral funding laws so that they increase the possibility of fairness in elections and equality for citizens as electors – in other words, so that one vote equals one value.
Gov08.02.01 – which requires prohibition of certain types of donations and regulation of the remaining permissible donations to political parties and candidates.
Gov08.02.02 – which requires imposition of spending caps for political parties and candidates in pre-election periods.
Gov08.02.03 – which calls for protection of democracy through introduction of equitable taxpayer funding of elections.
For full details see Australia Together, Chapter 8 - Electoral system & funding reform.
However, these Strategies can be compared and contrasted with others that are currently under discussion by federal parliamentarians. The debate is live on this issue. So it is worth looking at the suggestions coming from the parliamentary arena. They’re somewhat different to those in Australia Together and I’ll talk now about why.
How do Strategies for electoral reform in Australia Together compare with parliamentary proposals?
The federal parliament has held an inquiry into the conduct of the 2022 federal election and has made several recommendations for electoral reform, the most far-reaching of which are about election funding. They include:
lowering the donation disclosure threshold from $16,300 to $1,000;
introducing donation and spending caps (although the amount was not specified);
real time disclosure of donations; and
a new system of increased public funding for political parties and candidates, recognising the impact that a reformed system of capped donations would have on private funding of candidates in elections.
Subsequently, some crossbench MPs have introduced a few private members’ bills for electoral reforms:
Zali Steggall, the Member for Warringah, has introduced the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Voter Protections in Political Advertising) Bill 2023;
Kate Chaney, the Member for Curtin, has introduced the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Fair and Transparent Elections) Bill 2024; and
Independent and Greens Senators David Pocock, Jacqui Lambie, Lidia Thorpe and Larissa Waters have also introduced bills to reform electoral funding.
The Labor Government is considering a bill of its own.
The Strategies for electoral reform in Australia Together are not substantially different from those suggested in the reports and bills, at least insofar as they all support a fundamental principle of “equalising the electoral field”. The reports, bills and the Strategies in Australia Together all aim to ensure a level playing field for political parties and candidates by:
electoral reforms outlawing misleading or deceptive material and advertising; and by
reducing disproportionate financial influence in elections.
The reports and bills, however, tend towards strategies which level the playing field for candidates but do not level it for voters.
A laudable intention of the bills is to help ensure that established political parties and new independent entrants to parliament both have a reasonable chance of competing for a seat, based on their personal and policy merit. Hence the focus on banning lies in political advertising, achieving transparency in donations, requirements for real time disclosure, reducing the donations disclosure threshold, and expanding the definition of “donation”.
Two of the bills also propose prohibition of donations from current and potential contractors to government and from “social harm industries” (eg., fossil fuels and tobacco). But they propose no other limitations, such as for unions or NGOs.
If legislated these measures would indeed significantly reduce the influence of commercial entities but it would also leave open the possibility of those entities donating by a different route (possibly uncapped). Nor do the bills level the playing field by prohibiting large donations from the wealthy. Ms Chaney’s bill suggests a cap of no more than 2% of public funding from the last election, but if this were applied for the 2025 election that would still enable major donors to donate up to about $1.5m each. Again, this would do little towards stopping the disproportionate influence of wealthy individuals, businesses, corporations, unions and NGOs. They could still easily buy elections.
There is agreement across the parliamentary reports and bills on the need to cap donations, lower the disclosure threshold to $1,000, and introduce real time disclosure. But the donation and spending caps have either not been specified or in the case of donations have been left at around $1.5 million for individuals. And while the lower thresholds for disclosure and real time disclosure might seem like a step towards transparency, they don’t actually do much at all to improve transparency if only because few if any electors have the time to scrutinise the thousands of donations anyway and very few journalists bother to plough through the voluminous lists.
The cleaner way to provide confidence for voters that vested interests and the wealthy are not rigging elections is to prohibit all donations by entities that are not natural persons and limit donations from individuals to much smaller amounts than those suggested by Ms Chaney.
Accordingly, the Strategies in Australia Together start by ruling out donations by non-humans – in other words from corporations. Unless donations from these non-human entities are ruled out there can be no assurance at all that one vote equals one value and that the vote of an individual is not unreasonably outweighed by a group entity or, for that matter, another individual.
Building on the starting point that in democracy a vote is a human right for individuals, not a corporate right, the current Strategies for electoral reform in Australia Together seek to ensure that no laws shall be permitted which do not promote or which militate against equal suffrage. Therefore Australia Together includes the following Strategies for reform:
a) in relation to donations – the Strategies require:
prohibition of donations by corporations, non-profits, unions and any other incorporated body or commercial/industrial/for-profit entity;
prohibition of donations to any political party by individuals other than by membership fees capped on an annual basis at $1,000 per membership;
prohibition of corporations and any entity that is not an individual natural person from seeking and being granted membership of a political party and prohibition of any transaction between such an entity and a political party that may amount to provision or acceptance of membership fees;
specification of permissible donations – this permits donations by individuals to any and all approved independent candidates (i.e., any candidate unaffiliated with a registered political party) but limited to $6,000 per candidate from any single donor over the three years prior to the election for which the candidate is seeking office; and
prohibition of all other possible forms of donations to any candidate or political party by any individual, corporation or other entity including for events, dinners, merchandise, sponsorships and other forms of fund raising.
In effect, these Strategies mean that funding for political parties may only be supplied by means of membership of the party, but because independent candidates do not have party structures donations are still permissible for them. Auditing of compliance with membership fee rules and donation rules would need to be undertaken by the Australian Electoral Commission, just as it is now.
More detail on the rationale for these proposals is supplied in Australia Together but the overarching objective is a system of donations which fosters equality for the electors as well as the elected and stops wealthy people from buying elections.
b) in relation to spending in election campaigns – the Strategies in Australia Together require:
imposition of spending caps for the six week period prior to any election of:
$100,000 per candidate for the house of representatives, and
$75,000 per candidate for the senate (capped at six candidates on a party ticket per state or two per territory).
c) in relation to increased public funding of elections:
The current Strategy for this in Australia Together is a proposal to transform the basis on which political parties and registered independent candidates may all qualify for public funding and may do so in a manner that is consistent with the need in a democracy to foster equity in elections and the principle of “one vote equals one value”. This includes proposals to establish (in addition to current public funding provided for elections):
a Parliamentary Candidate Research and Policy Development Fund of $50 million per annum (thereafter indexed to CPI) that can be accessed by registered candidates for their use in policy research and development; and
a Parliamentary Candidate Community Engagement and Communications Fund of $50 million per annum (thereafter indexed to CPI) that can be accessed by registered candidates to fund their community engagement and political communication.
Access to these funds would need to be equitable, meaning all candidates would probably need to receive the same amount unless another form of fair and equitable distribution can be established.
Implementation of these Strategies would largely dispense with the need for reporting of donations (in real time or otherwise), because most of the donations themselves would be a thing of the past. This of course would not be preferred by politicians, as is shown by their failure to suggest it in their reports and bills. Their focus on real-time reporting arises from their desire to be able to continue relying on corporate donations and to control the ability of new candidates to share in that source of funding. This has been leading them to unnecessarily complicate the reforms and even to put up all manner of excuses for not pursuing straightforward reforms for reducing the role of private money and wealthy donors in elections. These excuses are groundless.
The proposed shift from private funding to greater (but not sole) public funding for elections can be summarised as a shift from a system based on bribery to a system ensuring fair sharing of the cost of elections. Big donations are bribes, not legitimate gifts intended to foster so-called “political communication”. Politicians should clamour to be free of them if they wish to be free to use their office for the good of every Australian.
As to the extra cost of elections with a greater degree of public funding, there are two points to be made. One is that the nation is more likely to save money by being released from corporate corruption. And the other is that if democracy is worth having it is worth paying for.
View the detail of current Strategies for electoral reform in Australia Together here.
The above Strategies are the product of research by a range of experts. ACFP is particularly indebted to the Parliament of Australia, the Australian Electoral Commission, Guardian Australia, the Conversation, the Grattan Institute, and the Australia Institute.
National Integrated Planning & Reporting - inclusive, community-driven national planning
Australia Together is generated using a process developed by ACFP called National Integrated Planning & Reporting or National IP&R. This process allows any and all Australians to select Targets and Strategies that are safe and discard ones that are unsafe or which will have the effect of disabling other safe Strategies. The plan contains 57 generic safe Direction statements for our society, environment, economy and governance. These function as a signpost system for arriving at our preferred future without excluding anyone, without tripping each other up and without slowing our progress. They chart the safe course towards realisation of the Vision for Australia Together.
Any Australian can comment on or make suggestions about the Vision and Directions for Australia Together at any time. Provide feedback on the Vision and Directions here.
Any Australian can also suggest targets and strategies for inclusion in Australia Together. Find out how to suggest inclusion of a Target or Strategy in Australia Together here.
What’s next on The State of Australia on Substack?
This was the final article in this series on the State of Australia Substack about Targets and Strategies in Issue No. 7 of Australia Together that have significant potential to help us create a better future for everyone. A new series of articles will be posted once Issue No. 8 is released later this year.
In the meantime, the Australia Together Podcast this week will feature a conversation about strategies for electoral reform that will give Australians political equality. A link will be circulated in a couple of days.
Find out all about ACFP
Become involved in building plans for a better Australia here.
