The Audit’s Norm Kelly and Marian Sawer made a detailed submission (PDF) to the ACT Legislative Assembly’s inquiry into campaign finance reform, which is being conducted by the Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety. The submission proceeds from two general observations. First, parties play a crucial role in representative democracy and they need income to maintain their administrations and discharge their important functions both during and between elections. Reform should not, therefore, have the effect of impoverishing parties or damaging their capacity to communicate with the electorate. Second, because of the fungibility of money, all funding and disclosure regimes will have loopholes and it would be counter-productive to attempt to close all of them.
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