COOL: Parliament Just Passed A Shady Political Donation Law While We Were All Distracted

political donation laws

Australia’s Federal Parliament this week weakened our political donation laws while we were all distracted by the madness of the US presidential election. It’s not good.

Yep. While we’ve all been debating about the US democratic system and how fucked it is, both of our own major parties have gone ahead and passed a bill that will make it significantly easier for them to take cash from property developers.

What Were The Political Donation Laws?

Back in 2019, the government of Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk banned political donations from property developers under the advice of the Queensland Crime and Corruption Commission.

Under this law, property developers and other prohibited donors can’t make donations to state or local campaigns, nor can they make “general” donations to political parties.

Basically, this is designed to prevent big developers from swaying elections or political decisions with big fuck-off bags of money.

In addition to the prohibited donor laws, which are mirrored in NSW and the ACT, there are also regulations about disclosing donations.

Any donation made to a political party in NSW or Queensland that is over $1,000 must be disclosed. Again, this is to prevent corruption from big property developers, who could otherwise essentially buy their way into politics.

What’s Changed?

However, when the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures) Bill 2020 was passed last week, all of those protections were essentially thrown out the window.

The new legislation, which was supported by both Labor and the LNP, basically allows prohibited donors to bypass state laws, provided they’re making donations for “federal purposes.”

This means that although they can’t donate to a state campaign, a property developer could throw some money behind the federal effort, which would – in theory – free up some other cash that could be used for state purposes. If it sounds dodgy to you, that’s because it probably is.

But that’s not even the real kicker here, so brace yourselves.

Under the new legislation, donors can also bypass the disclosure laws at a state level.

This means that instead of having to disclose anything over $1,000, they only have to declare donations in excess of $14,300. Obviously, that’s a huge difference and literally means that a prohibited donor could donate $14,299 without ever having to publicly make that information available.

What Does This Mean?

Although Finance Minister Mathias Cormann claims the laws “better clarify” the relationship between federal and state electoral laws, it’s easy to see how the new laws allow a massive loophole for corruption.

Under the new laws, a property developer can chuck $14,299 at a Queensland or NSW party under the guise of it being for “federal purposes” and the general public will be none the wiser.

Obviously, they have to keep this money in a separate bank account, but it’s not hard to see that adding $5,000 to the federal savings account would free up $5,000 of ‘clean’ money for state purposes.

Independent Tasmanian lower house MP Andrew Wilkie has already called it out for being “brazen money laundering.”

Similarly, fellow independent Jacqui Lambie called it a “doozy” of a way “to hide big donor money from the voters,” asserting that it’s “the latest in a long line of betrayals of the public’s trust.”

To put it simply, the bill means that political parties can pocket cash from sources that the Crime and Corruption Commission is already wary of without having to answer for it.

You can read the full bill on the APH website here.

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