Donation Caps in Queensland Elections

The Legal Affairs and Community Safety Committee of the Queensland Parliament in its report [PDF] on the Electoral Reform Amendment Bill 2013 (Qld) has endorsed the controversial Bill.

The policy objectives of the Bill are to amend the Electoral Act to "ensure the opportunity for full participation in Queensland’s electoral process" and "enhance voter integrity and voting convenience" through -

• removing the caps on donations and expenditure as unnecessarily restricting participation in the political process; 
• increasing the disclosure threshold to $12,400 to more closely align with the threshold applying at the Commonwealth level; 
• returning the basis for electoral public funding to a stated dollar amount per vote and increasing the threshold for entitlement to public funding from 4% to 10% of the primary vote to reduce the cost of funding to the community. 

The existing legislation imposes limits on expenditure of $80,000 per party per electorate and $50,000 per candidate, in each case, per financial year. The existing legislation also restricts the amount of donations that a person may make per financial year to a political party and to a candidate. The amounts are $5,000 to the party and $2,000 in total to candidates endorsed by that party.

Queensland academic Graeme Orr commented

Unlimited donations risk political integrity. They allow wealth to buy an unequal share of political influence and voice. Democracy and the universal franchise are meant to make all citizens equal in political worth. Unlimited donations skew money to the governing party of the day (or, occasionally, to an opposition on the brink of power), because private donations follow power. Power in Queensland has few enough checks/balances, given the lack of an upper house or bill of rights.