• Marian Sawer

08 June 2006
Australia doesn’t compare well on electoral reform, argues Marian Sawer




IS IT TRUE that the Howard government is making it harder to vote but easier to make secret donations to political parties, as the opposition has alleged? All democracies are confronting the problem of loss of public trust in political institutions, a problem exacerbated by the belief that political parties care only for the interests of those who fund them. Regulation of political finance is essential to allay mistrust and to ensure a level playing field for electoral competition. But as a draft report on political finance and government advertising has found, over the past decade Australia has been falling behind comparable democracies in this area.



The report, Political Finance in Australia: A Skewed and Secret System?, by Sally Young and Joo-Cheong Tham, is the seventh published by the Democratic Audit of Australia in a series of reports on the health of Australian democracy. It is a comprehensive and comparative examination - in the interests of debate over the government’s latest amendments to the Commonwealth Electoral Act - of how Australia has been regulating the role of money in electoral politics.



Australia (apart from the Legislative Council in Tasmania) imposes no limits on campaign expenditure and no caps on donations to political parties or candidates. Nor does Australia impose any restrictions on who can donate to political parties; unlike comparable democracies we allow both foreign interests and government contractors to donate to our political parties. When Peter Andren moved in the House of Representatives on 11 May for expenditure caps of $50,000 on federal election candidates, in the interests of a level playing field, the only parliamentarians to vote for his amendments were the three Independents. By contrast, the new Conservative government in Canada has moved to further tighten a system that is already rigorous by Australian standards. On 11 April it introduced into the House of Commons Bill C-2, the Federal Accountability Act. This bill will amend the Canada Elections Act to further reduce the role of private money in elections. It will introduce a limit of $C1000 (previously $C5000) on the amount an individual may contribute to a party or candidate in a given year. It will also introduce a total ban on contributions by corporations, trade unions or associations, previously allowed to contribute up to $C1000.



The fact that comparable democracies are doing more to tighten up the regulation of political finance doesn’t mean they have escaped scandals relating to political money - the ‘loans for lordships’ in Britain and the long-running ‘sponsorship’ scandal in Canada, which brought down the Liberal government early this year, are evidence to the contrary. In both countries, however, legislative and other action has been taken to address the problems rather than to ‘normalise’ the role of money, as in Australia.



In New Zealand there are limits on campaign expenditure as well as a strict allocation of broadcasting money by the Electoral Commission. The money is allocated in accordance with electoral support, measured by votes at the last election or support in opinion polls. This is to ensure that capacity to communicate with the electorate through buying advertising is afforded all parties that enjoy electoral support, and is not determined by the depth of pockets of the party or its backers. The New Zealand police recently investigated breaches of the limits on campaign and broadcasting expenditure by both the (governing) Labour Party and the Opposition National Party. The Electoral Commission reported the Labour Party to the police for overspending the limit on campaign expenses by some $440,000. The party argued that because this money was spent from its allocation for communicating parliamentary business, it fell outside the statutory definition of electoral expenses.



It is difficult to imagine the Australian Electoral Commission initiating a similar police investigation of the Liberal Party, even if Australia had such a limit on electoral expenditure or attempted to prevent the use of parliamentary allowances for campaign purposes. The NZ Nationals admitted to overspending their broadcasting allocation by some $100,000 because it failed to ensure that all its bills were GST-inclusive. In both cases the police decided that a ‘stern warning’ would suffice: while a case would probably succeed against the prime minister’s chief of staff, it would be inequitable to single her out, as other parties also used their parliamentary funds for political advertising. The auditor-general is now reviewing spending on communications by parliamentary parties and MPs in the three months before the election to ensure that it was within the scope of the spending authority given by parliament.



Another ‘level playing field’ development in New Zealand was a High Court decision in the 2005 election that arbitrary decisions could not be made by television channels to exclude the leaders of parliamentary parties from leaders’ debates, resulting in the inclusion of eight party leaders (rather than the six intended) in the debate on commercial television.



While the Howard government has been weakening the requirements for disclosure of political donations, it has been tightening up enrolment procedures, making it harder for new voters to get on to the roll. There has been much urban mythology about voters enrolling at false addresses (for example, at the addresses of other family members) in order to affect results in marginal seats. The Australian National Audit Office has not been able to find evidence of this. The large enrolments in federal electorates (averaging 87,000 in 2004) and the guaranteeing of high turnout through compulsory voting make it unlikely that results could be affected in this way.



Nonetheless, the government has been determined to introduce evidentiary requirements for enrolment and to prevent the rush of enrolments after an election is called. The gaining of a majority in the Senate has finally enabled it to achieve these objectives. The changes to the Commonwealth Electoral Act were pushed through the House of Representatives on 11 May, after minimal debate and three gag motions. They include the closing of the electoral roll at 8pm on the day the writs are issued, removing the week’s grace previously available for new voters to get on the roll. On average about 80,000 new voters enrol in this grace period and now will be unable to do so. The time available for enrolled voters to change their details will also be reduced from a week to three days.



These changes have, in the past, been strongly opposed by the Australian Electoral Commission, on the grounds that they were likely to reduce rather than enhance the accuracy of the rolls, the government’s stated policy objective. Under a new Electoral Commissioner there has been a backflip on the issue, causing Peter Andren to question whether the commission has been able to maintain its independence from government, so important for electoral watchdogs. Since the House of Representatives does not have fixed terms, eligible but unenrolled voters may easily be ambushed by the snap announcement of an election and the immediate issuing of writs and closing of the rolls - as in 1983. Democratic Audit data shows that the Commonwealth electoral roll will now close much further ahead of an election than is the case in our three main comparable democracies.



While the Commonwealth roll will close a minimum of 33 days before day, in Britain the roll will close 11 days before polling day, in New Zealand the day before polling day and in Canada voters can enrol at the polling booth on the day. Australia once prided itself on the comprehensiveness of its roll - in 1903 electoral officials claimed to have enrolled 96 per cent of the adult population. The current changes prioritise ‘integrity of the roll’ and will disproportionately affect new voters and disadvantaged groups. The changes will be debated in the Senate when it resumes sitting on 13 June. •



Marian Sawer leads the Democratic Audit of Australia at the Australian National University. This article first appeared in the Canberra Times.



Photo: Andrew Jeffrey