Towards a More Democratic Political Funding Regime in New South Wales (PDF), a new report by the Audit’s Joo-Cheong Tham, was prepared for the New South Wales Electoral Commission. The report includes a blueprint for reform, covering: a more robust disclosure scheme; election spending limits; contribution limits (with an exemption for membership fees); stricter regulation of fund-raisers; a Party and Candidate Support Fund; and enhanced accountability of government advertising.
The Tax Laws Amendment (Political Contributions and Gifts) Bill 2008 completely its journey through federal parliament on 25 February. The legislation brings into effect the government’s election commitment to abolish the tax deduction for donations to political parties and independent candidates and members. It limits existing provisions that allow tax deductions for gifts and contributions by businesses to political parties and independent candidates and members. Meanwhile, parliament has begun debating the government’s bill to restore the seven-day period of grace to enrol after an election is called, remove the need for voters to show photo ID, and other matters. Antony Green discusses the bill here.
In late February the chair of the Gov 2.0 Taskforce, Nicholas Gruen, spoke about the taskforce report at a vital issues seminar at Parliament House in Canberra. The audio of the seminar is available here. According to the report, “Government 2.0 involves a public policy shift to create a culture of openness and transparency, where government is willing to engage with and listen to its citizens; and to make available the vast national resource of non-sensitive public sector information. Government 2.0 empowers citizens and public servants alike to directly collaborate in their own governance by harnessing the opportunities presented by technology.”
Australia’s new freedom of information commissioner, the former Commonwealth ombudsman John McMillan, was appointed in February to oversee the federal government’s new FOI laws, which will soon be enacted. He discussed his role with Elizabeth Jackson on ABC radio’s AM. According to Professor McMillan, “One of the roles of this new commission will be to take a central leadership in the development of a pro-disclosure culture in government. And we’ll do that through familiar ways; through training, through publication of manuals and guidelines, through getting agencies to develop best practice in web publication, but also reaching out a lot more to the community, to journalists and to members of parliament to provide them with essential information about making document and information requests to government.”
In a new paper, Minority Governments in Australia 1989-2009: Accords, Charters and Agreements, Gareth Griffith from the NSW Parliamentary Library and Research Service discusses a period of two decades in which there have been at least ten examples of this political phenomenon in the Australian states and territories. The paper confines itself to those instances in which a minority government has been based on an agreement, charter or accord between major parties on one side and minor parties and/or Independents on the other; in particular, in the context of the ACT, it looks only at the minority governments formed in 1998 and 2008.
In a new paper from the NSW Parliamentary Library and Research Service, Political Donations and Electoral Finance (PDF), Jason Arditi reviews the current state of play in NSW with respect to the public and private funding of political parties and examines the possibility of instituting bans or caps on political donations and/or campaign expenditure. The paper also builds on the issues considered an the earlier publication, Political Donations Law Update (PDF).
The Australian Electoral Commission has announced the enrolment quota for the Victorian redistribution of federal electoral boundaries, the first step in the process of redistributing federal electoral boundaries in Victoria. Public suggestions and comments about the redistribution will be invited in early March. The redistribution process is expected to be finalised on 17 December this year. Should a federal election be called before this date then the electoral boundaries for Victoria that applied at the 2007 federal election will be used.
The Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters has released the report of its inquiry into the implications of the Parliamentary Electorates and Elections Amendment (Automatic Enrolment) Act 2009 (NSW) for the conduct of Commonwealth elections. The report recommends that the Commonwealth adopts a system of automatic enrolment of voters similar to the proposed New South Wales system. The Audit’s Peter Brent outlined the case for automatic enrolment in this 2008 discussion paper (PDF).
The idea of a “recall” election has been debated recently in New South Wales. In a recent paper (PDF) for the NSW Parliamentary Library and Research Service, Gareth Griffith examines the proposal that the law could be changed to allow a recall petition to be used to trigger an early state election, presenting the electorate with the opportunity to remove an ineffective or unpopular government.
In a democratic system the parties themselves should practise internal democracy, argues the Audit’s Norman Abjorensen in Inside Story.
The annual data on who donated how much to which political party was released on 5 February by the Australian Electoral Commission. Because of the global financial crisis and the fact there was no federal election, the amount declared in donations to both major parties was down about 60% on the previous financial year, 2007–08. The Audit’s Graeme Orr discussed the list, and the policy issues it raises, with Peter Mares on Radio National’s The National Interest.
This year sees four Australian elections – in South Australia and Tasmania on 20 March, in Victoria in November, and federally at a date yet to be announced. In Inside Story, Audit member Peter Brent discussed the prospects in each of those polls.
Sweeping changes need to be made to the process of informing Australians before a referendum, according to a new report from the House Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs. The Committee found the written material provided to all electors before a referendum is insufficient, and that a greater range of communication is needed to properly inform the public. The report makes 17 recommendations, with the key proposal being a Referendum Panel to be established prior to each referendum. The Panel would be independent of government and would be responsible for developing an overarching communications strategy for the referendum; it would identify what material should be provided so that electors can make an informed vote. [click to continue…]
In a new report from the ANU Parliamentary Studies Centre, A Statistical Analysis of Government Responses to Committee Reports: Reports Tabled Between the 2001 and 2004 Elections, David Monk judges the success of committees in eliciting changes in government policy over this period.
In the report of its inquiry into Australia’s judicial system and the role of judges, the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee examines the procedures for appointing and terminating the appointment of judges, terms of appointment, jurisdictional issues, and the judicial complaints handling system. Among its sixteen recommendations, the committee calls for the federal government to establish a federal judicial commission modelled on the Judicial Commission of New South Wales.
