On the spectrum of political own goals, it was less match-decider, more something to spice up a highlights reel – but enough to raise the eyebrows of those paying attention.
In a Tasmanian election campaign yet to raise its voice much above a background hubbub, Liberal premier Will Hodgman reached to land a blow last week on Labor opposition leader Rebecca White by accusing her of accepting “money under the table” from the gambling industry while planning to ban poker machines from pubs and clubs.
Hodgman said a revelation that White attended a private fundraising dinner in Melbourne last year, hosted by hospitality company ALH Group, was evidence of hypocrisy. “That shows that you can’t trust Labor. You don’t know what they stand for, you don’t know what you’ll get.”
When journalists pressed Hodgman with the obvious question that raised – was he suggesting politicians should give donors what they wanted in exchange for their funds – he would not answer directly. “It’s important that any political party that receives donations discloses them and is prepared to stand by them,” he ultimately said.
While Labor claimed the exchange showed Hodgman was “bought and corrupted by the poker machine industry”, political analysts say it highlights that no party in Tasmania has to publicly stand by any political donations until early 2019, nearly a year after voters have their say on March 3.
Tasmania has no campaign-finance disclosure laws. It is subject to federal legislation requiring annual release of the total a party has received and the specifics of any donation greater than $13,200.
As the data for 2016-17 released this month showed, the national laws gave voters a belated and partial picture. It revealed the state Liberal party had declared total receipts for $2.39m, Labor $751,411, the Greens $235,232 and the fledgling Jacqui Lambie Network $2750. But the overwhelming bulk of the cash arrived in anonymous sums below the individual disclosure threshold.
Political donation reform is a perennial issue, but it is in sharper focus in this campaign, partly because other jurisdictions are introducing tougher and timelier disclosure laws, partly because of a historic policy shift by Labor late last year.
White’s pledge to remove poker machines from all pubs by 2023 ended decades-long bipartisan support for Federal Group, the company owned by the Sydney-based Farrell family that has enjoyed exclusive and lucrative rights to licence poker machines in the state. The Farrells have traditionally donated to both major parties but, with the company and hospitality industry running campaigns accusing the ALP of threatening jobs and denying punters a choice, that seems unlikely this time.
Meanwhile, the Liberal party is significantly outspending Labor, and running what observers agree is a better organised campaign. The government has been paying for TV advertisements attacking the ALP’s record since the Ashes cricket began in November, and added positive messages from the premier once the election was called. Labor advertisements have been much harder to spot. It ran none last week so it could afford some in the final sprint to polling day.
Asked what the gaming industry was contributing to the Liberal campaign, Hodgman said he was not across donations.
The independent federal MP Andrew Wilkie, a long-time anti-pokies campaigner, said that defied belief. “The public have a right to know how much the poker machine industry is pouring into the Liberals’ campaign,” he said.
Political analysts say reform is overdue. Professor Richard Eccleston, director of the University of Tasmania’s institute for the study of social change, says the laws governing Tasmania may not have been out-of-step when the Hodgman government came to office in 2014, but they are now. He says the state will be left behind if the Victorian Labor government delivers promised laws requiring public reporting of all donations greater than $1000 within seven days.
Opinions on threshold levels vary and many say the US experience shows spending caps on parties are ineffective as the spending just moves elsewhere, but experts stress that rapid disclosure is crucial.
Analyst Richard Herr says: “If you want to influence public debates, you should show the extent of the influence you want to have.”
Professor Joo-Cheong Tham, director of the electoral regulation research network at the University of Melbourne, believes Australia could do worse than looking to Britain, where donation information is available quarterly during a normal year and weekly during an election campaign. “If we compare the federal disclosure scheme that applies to Tasmania to countries like Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom, it compares very poorly,” he says.
Hodgman maintains the federal legislation is adequate. White says Labor would improve transparency by capping political party expenditure and reporting all donations above a much lower threshold – between $1000 and $2000 – within 14 days, but will not do more than the existing law requires unless it is changed.
Minor parties are moving ahead of the law. The Greens launched their election campaign with a call for election finance reform, and say they will reveal donations on their website as they receive them. Jacqui Lambie makes all donations public, whatever the sum.
Some doubt whether a well-funded advertising blitz will be decisive – election analyst Kevin Bonham says people now get their political information from a variety of sources, not least social media, and are likely to tune out.
But Eccleston says the latest stoush between Hodgman and White over donations is a significant step in the debate.
“It ends the convenient myth, long-pedalled by all sides of politics, that donations don’t buy influence,” he says.
“The broader picture is this is a test of democracy in Tasmania … given there are significant business interests at play, are we going to know who is funding what is undoubtedly the most expensive election in Tasmanian history? The answer is: no, we won’t.”
