Scott Ryan isn’t one of the show ponies of Australian politics. He’s a head-down, bum-up, detail-oriented politician, with a habit of stress testing propositions down to the fine print.
When he came to the portfolio of special minister of state, Ryan seemed to be able to notice very promptly what his predecessors hadn’t: there was a potential problem with the election of the Family First senator Bob Day. Having noticed the problem, he set about fixing it. This is the Ryan modus operandi: see a problem, crack on and fix it.
Another issue that preoccupied Ryan upon coming to his portfolio was the increasing influence of third-party activist groups in the political system.
Members of the Coalition couldn’t exactly miss this phenomenon. Government MPs were completely walloped on the ground during the last federal election campaign by progressive field campaigns mounted by the ALP, the trade union movement, a range of community groups, and GetUp.
At the time Ryan assumed the portfolio, pressure was mounting for reform of Australia’s donations and disclosure regime, and there was a “do something” drumbeat around foreign money and the potentially pernicious exercise of soft power in our political system.
As the responsible minister, Ryan sent a reference to the joint standing committee on electoral matters asking it to canvass options for reform of foreign donations in the wake of controversy that erupted over a decision by the Labor senator Sam Dastyari to ask a Chinese businessman to cover a travel overspend.
There was an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. Ryan never hid his intentions. He told me in an interview six months ago there was no point looking at regulations covering political actors while completely ignoring the activities of other relevant players.
“People rightly focus on political parties and the disclosure of donations but I think one of the big changes that’s happened in the last decade is the growing role, activity and influence of third parties and single-issue groups,” he said. “They aren’t subject to the same regimes political parties are yet it is clear they can have a political impact.”
Ryan’s point is entirely reasonable.
If we stop and think about this trend for a few minutes, really focus on it – I suspect most people would not want to see a situation where interest groups are permitted to become more powerful than the people elected to represent us, people we can sack if they fail to do the job.
We have seen just that situation develop in the United States, where cashed-up rentseekers campaign without restraint and exert disproportionate influence in the political system, to the detriment of citizens. We have seen citizens become so infuriated by their broken political system that they actually elected Donald Trump to the presidency.
So fair cop in principle. Let’s look at the whole regulatory picture and see if it is serving the public interest.
The joint standing committee on electoral matters set about doing just that, and the Liberal and Labor parties were close to reaching an agreed position on banning foreign donations, and how far that ban would extend, but the bipartisanship collapsed at the last minute.
Labor made the point throughout the inquiry that it was prepared, in principle, to examine the merits of treating all groups equally – political parties and campaign entities of various stripes – but it wasn’t interested in imposing regulation that would have the practical effect of curbing activism in a democracy.
By the end of the inquiry Labor members of the committee formed the view the government was intent on crossing that line.
In their dissenting report, the Labor members argued that the government was prepared to implement a system of regulations that would impose wide-ranging restrictions on the capacity of not-for-profit organisations to draw attention to their causes.
The committee process also flushed out the mining industry’s profound objections to environmental groups campaigning against big projects, inclding the controversial Adani coalmine in Queensland, while they were registered as charitable organisations.
The Minerals Council (an activist business group representing some of the world’s largest multinational mining giants, which was responsible for mounting a full-throated, generously funded and entirely self-interested political campaign against the mining tax a couple of years ago) stamped its well-shod foot during the committee process about charitable status allowing environment groups to avoid declaring the source of their foreign and domestic funding.
It was interesting to see the Minerals Council’s irritation with the status quo feature extensively in the government members’ report. As they say in the classics, you wouldn’t be dead for quids.
In any case, this issue has a way to run.
Now that Labor has declined to sign up to a policy which would, in essence, extend the fundraising and financial disclosure obligations imposed by the Electoral Act to capture all third parties that are in any way involved in public campaigning – the government will have to decide whether to try to recut its cloth to get the ALP back on board, or whether to proceed with a proposal that might win crossbench support.
I’ve already made it clear I think it’s entirely valid to consider ways of treating all actors in the political system equally.
I think we should all be wary of allowing unelected, unaccountable groups (whether we agree with their values or whether we don’t) to gain disproportionate influence in our political system at the expense of the people we elect to represent our interests, and have the power to boot out every three years.
Democratic politics might be intent on breaking our hearts and hurting our brains at this point in history but it remains the only thing better than the alternative.
I also think that when it comes to foreign money, the soft power issue is a valid threat, security agencies think it’s a valid threat, and sovereign governments need to take care to ensure there isn’t meddling.
But I’d say this as well. Where you draw these lines matters.
And, after all, this government is supposed to be the freedom warriors.
We saw this week a government so committed to freedom it is prepared to rip away protections in the Racial Discrimination Act against the objections of Liberals defending marginal seats with large ethnic populations – because, you know, Freedom™.
This is a standard the Turnbull government has set for itself.
If you believe in freedom as an absolute, not just a cause of convenience, then you need to be very careful as a government about then turning around and pursuing policies that have the practical effect of restricting freedom to take part in the electoral process.
If this process of electoral reform ultimately crosses the line from being a collaborative and clear-headed assessment of what we need to do to ensure integrity in our political system, to the implementation of policies that work to chill robust civil society, members of the Turnbull government might look as though they are settling scores for a near-death experience at the 2016 election.
I’ll go one step further.
They will look like total hypocrites.
