Malcolm Turnbull has given his strongest signal that he wants to limit political donations to Australians on the electoral roll and flagged efforts to restrict the campaign activities of trade unions and groups such as GetUp.
Speaking to travelling reporters in Laos, the prime minister said he had argued for many years that “ideally, donations to political parties should be limited to people who are on the electoral roll – voters”.
“I would like, if we can manage it, financial participation in the election process to be limited to those people who can vote and that’s where we should get to,” the prime minister said.
Turnbull said limiting donations to people on the electoral roll would exclude foreign donations, corporate donations and trade union donations from the system but he flagged it was a complex area, because of the implied freedom of political communication. “We do have big legal issues and some constitutional issues,” he said.
The prime minister said any overhaul of the donations and disclosure system would also have to take into account activism by groups outside the formal political system.
“In many respects what we’ve seen is an evolution in political campaigning, where, particularly on the Labor side, the Labor party itself has become, in many respects, just a brand, and the real players in the election campaign have been trade unions and organisations like GetUp for example,” Turnbull said Thursday.
“If you pass a law that affects donations to political parties that does not address the full range of financial involvement in the political contest, then you may actually be achieving very little indeed.”
The Coalition has been spooked during the most recent federal election by the extensive field operation rolled out by Labor, the trade union movement and also the marginal seats campaign sorties of GetUp, which are said to have had a significant impact in states like Tasmania, where the government lost several seats.
Internal recriminations about the lack of a field operation spilled over into the public domain immediately following the election on 2 July.
The Liberal senator Cory Bernardi has talked of building up a new grassroots conservative movement to counter some of the ground advances seen over recent electoral cycles by progressive political parties and activist groups.
On Thursday, Bernardi said he would not be concerned if a group such as Australian Conservatives faced curbs on its grassroots activism during election campaigns.
There is some talk in Coalition circles about a Canadian provision that restricts campaigns by third-party groups during election seasons.
Under electoral law in Canada, third-party activist groups are permitted to spend what they like on advertising before the start of an election campaign but, once the writs are issued, spending is capped, which works to limit the influence of these groups.
Canadian activist groups have to register once they have run up election advertising expenses over $500 and the campaigns have to clearly identify the activist group and the state that has authorised the expenditure.
Labor has signalled it would support a ban on foreign donations, continuous disclosure of donations, lower thresholds at which donations are publicly declared, an end to donation splitting and an increase in public funding.
Even though the trade union movement in contemporary times runs an independent field campaign, donates to parties other than the ALP and provides campaign infrastructure to support crossbench candidates, Labor is highly unlikely to support changes that would limit its institutional funding through trade union donations.
The Greens, also beneficiaries of trade union support, are long-term advocates for a ban on overseas donations and donations from for-profit corporations, and strict caps on donations from individuals and from not-for-profit organisations.
The shift on reforming the donations and disclosure system at the federal level follows a week of controversy about the Labor senator Sam Dastyari’s decision to ask for and accept a payment of $1,670.82 from the Chinese businessman Minshen Zhu – a controversy that resulted in Dastyari exiting the Labor frontbench on Wednesday night.
Turnbull declared on Thursday that the Labor leader, Bill Shorten, lacked the integrity to stand down Dastyari himself. He asked what is was “about this Sussex Street operator’s control of the numbers in the Labor caucus” that caused Shorten to be “frozen, terrified, by this 33-year-old junior senator”.
“Dastyari had to do it himself, bereft of a leader, he had to take the sword into his own hands and dispatch himself,” the prime minister said. “It’s an indictment on Bill Shorten’s lack of leadership, lack of courage.”
Speaking in Sydney on Thursday, Shorten told reporters the prime minister was “hardly one to throw rocks about political courage”.
He said Turnbull was unable to stand up to the right wing of his party on a range of issues and thus far had made no concrete commitment to reform Australia’s electoral laws.
Shorten faced a number of questions from reporters about the conversations he’d had with Dastyari over the course of Wednesday that ultimately resulted in his resignation from the frontbench – but he declined to reveal details.
