Can you suggest ways that the legislation could be amended so that blogs and similar projects were clearly excluded so that we don’t have to rely on the AEC’s interpretation? I realise Andrew N would like many aspects abolished entirely, but surely we can all agree that it would be good to change the legislation so it can only have the intended effect, not occasionally and arbitrarily be applied to the cases raised.

In many cases that commentary has few if any partisan implications. For example, the CIS pays me more than $1000 a year to comment on higher education issues. If that was deemed an election issue, it would arguably come within the Act and require disclosure, even though I never have and never would advocate a vote either way on this basis.

But even if there was some justification for large campaigns that might possibly swing significant numbers of voters, it is hard to see how $1,000 or even $10,600 could possibly be significant influences on the election.

I think you’re missing the point. It’s not solely about influences on the election, but also about influences on the representative. A donation by a third party of $10,000 to help get a candidate elected, whether directly to the campaign or to another third party campaign, might represent (for a major party in a winnable seat) between a tenth and a fifth of the campaign costs for that seat (not counting general party advertising etc). That’s going to be significant; if that candidate gets elected, s/he’s going to remember where that $10,000 came from, and be hoping for another $10,000 in three years time.

I think we are talking about the same thing. Third parties have had disclosure requirements of various sorts for some time and certainly more will be caught if the disclosure threshold is $1000 rather than $10 000 +.

I agree the current definition of “political expenditure”, which includes expenditure on “public expression of views on an issue in an election by any means” reads like it would catch blogs (and plenty of other things).

But my point is that the way that wording of the law is currently administered, it is unlikely the AEC would consider general blogs to come under it (perhaps because political expenditure does not include “administration”). I don’t believe that is the intent of the current wording. However, if someone were to try to test in Court for some reason, who knows what the result would be.

The issue in my view boils down to what constitues electoral or political expenditure, and in this case “political” is defined in the narrow partisan electoral sense, not the wider “personal is political” sense. Where the threshold should be is secondary to the issue of who is required to disclose.

If you are going to have any sort of credible disclosure regime of electoral or political expenditure, you have to include third parties, otherwise you leave a loophole a mile wide.
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(FWIW, I don’t know if LP would spend $1000 a year on publishing, and whether the definition of “publishing” costs would include domain names, ISP fees etc. I would assume this would come under “administration”, so I’m not sure what direct expenditure they would have which could isolated as a cost of “public expression” of people’s views. I don’t really know how you could isolate the cost of this sort of expenditure.)

The $10,600 threshold keeps most individuals and small campaigns free of the disclosure requirement. The $1,000 threshold would widen the net considerably.

I am not convinced that there is any justification for applying disclosure rules to issue campaigners. But even if there was some justification for large campaigns that might possibly swing significant numbers of voters, it is hard to see how $1,000 or even $10,600 could possibly be significant influences on the election.

I don’t see how the “legislation already in the Parliament” will catch blogs, as you suggest at comment #20.

In regards to this area, the main change the current legislation makes is to drop the disclosure threshold back to around where it was before (down from over $10 000 to just $1000 – it was $1500 previously). If it didn’t catch blogs before, it won’t now.

There was a greater obligation on media organisations prior to 2005 to do some reporting, but that aspect was removed and as far as I can see, isn’t being put back in the current legislation.

The Green Paper may be another matter – I will read it more closely with this issue in mind. It is bound to catch overt campaigns like GetUp! or Your Rights at Work or other third party advertising such as has been done by business or environment groups from time to time, but I very much doubt it is the intent of the government to catch general comment style blogs like LP or yours.

Of course, how the AEC decides it should interpret the precise wording of the law can be different to what is intended. It has happened before where changes were made for a specific purpose which ended up having a wider net then intended.

Alternatively, changes which had the intent of stopping a certain practice have also been interpreted by the AEC not to have that effect – witness the recent decision of the AEC to permit the Liberty and Democracy Party to change their registered name to the Liberal Democrats. The Liberals specifically changed the Act with an intent to stop this sort of thing – they had Liberals for Forests specifically in mind, but they objected to Liberal Democrats being registered for the same reasons (as did the Australian Democrats I believe). The AEC decided otherwise (although I imagine it may be possible the Libs will try to appeal this).

Anyway, its a long winded way of saying people should respond to the Green Paper with any concerns they have on this matter. I doubt politicians will be very aware of the possible consequences or give it much thought unless someone brings it their attention. Most of them will be like Mr Briggs and just look at what they think might be the short-term partisan advanatges and disadvantages. (although to give John Faulkner his due, I don’t think that is his primary motivation in this case).

What made them so bad was that a political party could be funded anonymously by someone chanelling enormous amounts of money from potentially any source at all. I don’t think that’s a good situation, which is why most democracies amke some effort to have transparency on donations and funding.

Perhaps having lived through the Bjelke-Petersen era with its brown paper bag donations makes me biased, but I believe transparency in regards to significant funding sources is at least one way of maintaining some public faith in the democratic system. Which isn’t to say that some dodgy deals don’t still occur, but at least there some constraints and some scope for red flags to go off, giving people some idea where to look.

However, I think the point is similar. It is usually clear if something is advertising, but there may sometimes be a grey area in what is campaign material rather than public comment. However, the fact there may be a small grey area doesn’t negate the fact that most blogs clearly are not political campaign sites.

A newspaper doesn’t have to disclose all of their income just because they run political advertisements or political commentary or letters to the editor (they used to have to disclose funding received for electoral advertisements), but don’t at the moment). Neither does a blog – unless it specifically got funding from a political party or an associated entity for the purposes of boosting a campaign.

More broadly, as with a number of other areas, the ability of the electoral law to cover the internet and other new technologies in the same way it dealt with old media often comes up against some difficulties, so it is worth keeping an eye unintended consequences.

For anyone interested, John Quiggin’s submissions to the Committee inquiry in question is at this page – subs 44 and 180. He also gave evidence before the Committee – the July 6 hearings on this page. The issue is covered briefly in Chapter 12 of the Committee’s report.

What made them so bad?

Not asking rhetorically or making a point, I’m just curious.

AFAIK the law didn’t catch blogs in the past when the disclosure level was lower. The issue was considered in a previous Electoral Matters Committee report on disclosure laws a few years ago – from memory John Quiggin put in a submission and might have even appeared as a witness. I don’t see why independent blogs such as this would suddenly come into play now if the disclosure level was lowered again.

IRT the Green Paper, I haven’t read the fine print of that enough to comment, but that’s why it’s a Green Paper – so people who are interested or concerned can comment.

It is true that whatever rules you put in place, someone will try to find a way around them – witness the USA, which has bans on foreign donations (I couldn’t donate to Obama’s campaign or even buy a t-shirt off them), donation limits, expensiture limits in some circumstances. But I am not convinced that compliance costs or the potential for loopholes means we should just go back to the bad old days of no disclosure and no constraints.

And while I agree with Mark and Grace that this is not aimed at bloggers, and that the AEC will do all it can not to have to monitor every political activist and group in the entire country, that’s not what the law says. It will end up being like carrying some drugs for personal use; illegal but rarely enforced. I say keep dumb laws off the statute books and don’t turn activism into a potential offence unless you fill in forms and spend your evenings with your accountant.

Scepticlawyer – The draft bill would make foreign donations illegal if ‘the donor’s main purpose in making the gift of foreign property was to enable the recipient to incur political expenditure’.

Combine this with Conroy’s internet censorship plans, and we should all feel nostalgic for the relatively liberal Howard years!

That sounds like complete rubbish to me Andrew. The AEC would be telling the government that it operates on a shoestring thanks very much, and does not have the capacity to monitor blogs all day and night. Really.

And do you really believe that Faulkner et al are interested in blog disclosure? That would go straight to free speech issues and provoke a huge barny nobody wants.

Both sides are trying to financially knobble the really big donors, the unions on one side, and the front corporations on the other. That’s where the real game is, and the discussion is getting interesting, elsewhere.

There is only one thing worse than explaining a failed gag and that is being a pollie publishing your quarterly accounts which show you took money from both Family First and the Eros Foundation.

One day this could be almost true.

All registered political parties should have their full fiancees finances available online, updated regularly on pain of massive fines or eventual disenfranchisement.

It’s that simple. No one can run for public office, and therefore control of public finances, without disclosing to the satisfaction of the law and the curiosity of the punters how much money they really have. And how they’re spending it. Normal media and citizen blogger prurient interest should then chase down and/or fill in the blanks.

In short, pollies and political parties shouldn’t just declare donations once a year. They should publish financial reports at least once a quarter…like any other public company.

Not that that makes it ok of course!

The reporting burden is quite absurd, because many of the people or groups who could be caught would have unsophisticated or non-existent accounting, and even those which do have staff looking after the finances (eg the CIS) do not have election issues as an organising concept and so no easy way of determining how much is spent.

There are also serious rule of law issues, as this requires annual disclosure. So the people whose declarations will be revealed next February (ie those spending more than $10,600) for their 2008 activities will be reporting on their spending on 2010 election issues -while we can guess some, there are lots of borderline calls to be made.

We don’t rely on a donation model any more, but I agree that it’s a very concerning move.