A broad political consensus has emerged on new electoral finance laws, allowing them to be put in place before the next election, Justice Minister Simon Power said today.Critics labelled the original legislation, the Electoral Finance Act 2007, an attack
A broad political consensus has emerged on new electoral finance laws, allowing them to be put in place before the next election, Justice Minister Simon Power said today.
Critics labelled the original legislation, the Electoral Finance Act 2007, an attack on free speech.
The Electoral Legislation Select Committee today reported back to Parliament on the Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill.
Some of the changes to the bill include:
• Further refinement of the regulated period so it is more likely to result in a regulated period of approximately three months.
• Prohibiting third-party promoters from spending more than $300,000 (GST inclusive) each on election advertising during the regulated period.
• For the definition of ‘election advertisement’ – clarifying the proposed exemptions for editorial information and personal views published on the Internet.
• For promoter statements – requiring additional information to be included if the promoter is a body corporate or unincorporated body, and requiring promoter statements to be clearly visible or audible.
• Minor increases to the candidate and party campaign expenditure limits for general elections and by-elections.
• Increasing the disclosure threshold for candidate donations and the prohibition on overseas and anonymous donations from $1000 to $1500, and increasing the disclosure threshold for party donations from $10,000 to $15,000.
Mr Power said the Government has listened to submitters, including the need to have spending caps on parallel campaigners, and supports the limit set by the select committee.
“That limit is more than double that in the 2007 law, and the Government believes it strikes the right balance between addressing concerns that elections can be unfairly influenced and rights of freedom of expression.
“The bill also clarifies that the regulated campaign period is approximately three months from polling day, rather than up to 11 months under the 2007 legislation, which imposed undue restriction on freedom of expression.”
Mr Power said it was “vital that the government achieve a broad public and political consensus for this legislation so we can avoid a repeat of the 2007 Electoral Finance Act, and so far we have managed to do that.”
