Election Funding, Expenditure and Disclosures Amendment Bill 2011 (NSW) bans trade union donations

The NSW Government yesterday introduced the Election Funding, Expenditure and Disclosures Amendment Bill 2011 which limits political donations to those on the NSW electoral role, effectively banning donations from corporations and trade unions.

s 96I of the Election Funding, Expenditure and Disclosures Act 1981 (NSW) is to criminalise the acceptance of a donation from a corporation or other entity not on the electoral roll.

The Bill also treats spending by affiliated organisations as contributing to the maximum expenditure of a Party on political advertising during an election.  

The Premier, Barry O’Farrell stated in his agreement in principle speech:

Unfortunately, these party expenditure caps are not currently affected by the expenditure of organisations that are affiliated with a political party. This leads to organisations intimately involved in the governance of a political party, sometimes even with office bearers in common, campaigning on behalf of a party with no corresponding offset to the party's own ability to spend.

The reform has been perceived as an attack on trade unions, which as third parties, had a cap of $1.05 million to spend on political advertising during elections. Given that many unions are affiliated with the Labor Party, the proposed reforms to the Act will treat their expenditure as that of the Labor Party’s. 

To achieve this, the Bill amends s95G of the Election Funding, Expenditure and Disclosures Act 1981 (NSW) to include:

In subsection (6), an affiliated organisation of a party means a body or other organisation, whether incorporated or unincorporated, that is authorised under the rules of that party to appoint delegates to the governing body of that party or to participate in pre-selection of candidates for that party (or both).

Therefore, if a trade union does not appoint delegates to the governing body of the Labor party, the ban on advertising will not apply.

The influence and affiliation of unions with the Labor Party has been a long standing and controversial issue, tracing its roots back to Vere Gordon Childe’s classic, How Labor Governs. Such criticisms were echoed by former leader, Mark Latham in the Latham Diaries and earlier this year, Labor MPs Kevin Rudd and John Faulkner criticised the Labor party’s factional power broking system which finds some of its roots in union support.  

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