NSW Election Law Passes Parliament
Friday 31 October 2014 @ 2.01 p.m. | Legal Research
The NSW parliament has passed the Election Funding, Expenditure and Disclosures Amendment Bill 2014 resulting in the government ditching a proposal that would have cut the amount of taxpayer funding smaller parties can claim if they don't get a member elected to the Legislative Assembly, or lower house.
The Parliament has also voted to hand political parties potentially millions of dollars in extra taxpayer funds for administrative purposes. The new laws were introduced by NSW Premier Mike Baird after evidence of significant breaches of donation laws by Liberal candidates and private donors before the 2011 state election emerged at the Independent Commission Against Corruption. The laws will see an increase in the penalties designated for the breach of donation laws and will also deliver the major parties millions of dollars in extra taxpayer funding for the March 2015 election. The idea would be to ease the pressure on the major parties to raise private political donations.
However, despite corruption concerns raised by the ICAC, the laws will not reduce the amount of private donations able to be raised and spent by parties. The original version of the bill sought to cut the amount that third-party organisations, such as unions and business groups, may spend on election advertising from $1.1 million to $250,000. However, this proposal was rejected and parliament had voted to leave the spending cap at $1.1 million.
A proposed provision that would see smaller parties penalised for failure to get candidate nominated in the Legislative Assembly was also rejected. The original bill stated that if they did not win a lower house seat they would not be eligible to claim back their expenditure at a rate of up to $4 per vote their received in the Legislative Assembly at the election.
TimeBase is an independent, privately owned Australian legal publisher specialising in the online delivery of accurate, comprehensive and innovative legislation research tools including LawOne and unique Point-in-Time Products.
