This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Trade unions across New South Wales will meet this week to discuss a significant ramp up of spending in the upcoming New South Wales state election following a high court ruling which effectively scrapped caps on third-party campaigns.

In a unanimous decision on Tuesday the court found the Electoral Funding Act – which halved the amount third-party groups can spend on state campaigns from $1.05m to $500,000 – infringed the implied freedom of political communication.

The law, which passed in May last year, was challenged by a collection of unions led by peak body Unions NSW on the basis they were designed to handicap “disfavoured voices”.

High court strikes down NSW's $500,000 cap on third-party campaigns Read more

With less than two months until the NSW election, the decision is likely to have a profound impact on campaigning because it has the effect of removing any cap on third-party spending.

“In short, yes, we’ll be reviewing our budget,” Brett Holmes from the NSW Nurses and Midwives Association told Guardian Australia on Wednesday.

“We can only speak for ourselves, [but] we’re a large union in NSW and we can afford to dedicate significant resources to campaigning on the issues that matter to our members. We’ll be considering the options that are open to us [but] yes we will be increasing our spend.”

Following the decision on Tuesday, the NSW treasurer, Dominic Perrottet, said the decision gave unions “the ability to exercise free rein on spending their member’s dues”.

He said there was “a real risk” that union funding would “disproportionately dominate the coming election campaign”.

But Holmes told Guardian Australia the movement was “forward thinking enough” to know the government would look to review the cap if it was re-elected.

“If you went crazy with your expenditure that would be looked at carefully when the government reviews this legislation which I have no doubt they will when they return to parliament if they’re re-elected.”

However, he said it was “very easy” for a third-party campaign to cost well in excess of $500,000.

In the 12 months leading up to the 2015 NSW election, the NMA spent $907,831 on campaigning. Others, like the Electrical Trades Union, spent close to $1m campaigning against the government’s privatisation of the state’s electricity network.

During the high court challenge, Unions NSW said it spent $843,283 in 2015, including $380,000 on advertising and $264,000 on the production and distribution of electoral materials.

While the cap only applied to the six months leading up to an election, Holmes said it was not inconceivable that a third-party organisation could reach that figure.

“If you want to run a media campaign in NSW that has any level of impact $1m doesn’t go very far at all,” he said.

“One 30-second TV ad in Sydney is about $30,000. So you very quickly burn through $500,000. We would not have been able to run a campaign that included that kind of advertising under a $500,000 cap.”

In its judgement the court found it was unnecessary to decide on a separate provision of the Electoral Funding Act which prevented groups such as unions acting in concert to exceed the cap because there is now “no cap” for it to operate on.

It opens the door for organisations to work together in the upcoming campaign, and unions affiliated with Unions NSW will meet this week to discuss a new strategy following the decision.

“The cap is one side, but we were prohibited from acting in unison with each other which made campaigning on any issue extremely difficult,” Stuart Little from the Public Service Association told Guardian Australia.

“Use Tafe as an example. We cover non-teaching staff, so if we were to act in unison with the Teachers Federation to campaign against cuts to Tafe, our combined cap was the same.

“It’s arguable that you could have a cap of some sort [but] this law was a way of stopping democratic oversight from community groups and trade unions.”