The Institute of Public Affairs has rejected the Turnbull government’s proposed ban on foreign donations and changes to associated entities’ disclosures, labelling them “potentially very dangerous”.

The libertarian thinktank joins Labor, the Greens and GetUp in opposing changes that may force third party campaign groups to register as associated entities of political parties merely because they campaign against certain policies.

The changes, contained in the electoral funding and disclosure reform bill introduced by the government in December, would mean associated entities face more stringent reporting requirements, including disclosure of donations.

The executive director of the IPA, John Roskam, told Guardian Australia although he believed the IPA would not be affected by associated entities changes, the law may catch many organisations including civil society groups, professional organisations like the Australian Medical Association, the National Farmers Federation and even the churches.

“My concern is it will cast a very wide net at anyone expressing a political opinion,” he said. “It’s potentially very dangerous.”

Roskam also queried why media organisations were exempt from the changes.

“If the concern is expression of political opinion, whether you are a media organisation or not should make no difference – it’s inconsistent,” he said.

The IPA also opposes the proposed ban on foreign donations. Roskam explained the IPA believes that donations are a form of political speech and it therefore has a philosophical objection to the law.

Legal precedent on the point is mixed. The high court struck down a New South Wales law that banned union and corporate donations as a breach of the implied freedom of political communication but upheld a law banning developer donations. Legal experts have warned the foreign donation ban could be challenged on the same basis.

Roskam said the foreign donation ban was “unnecessary” and it was not clear what problem the ban sought to solve because national security issues could be dealt with separately “without restricting freedom of speech and free debate”.

Roskam warned the foreign donation ban is a “dangerous precedent” that could lead to calls to restricting all political donations in Australia. He labelled it “inconsistent” of the major parties to oppose foreign donations but not domestic ones.

Roskam believes a system of purely publicly-funded elections will benefit the major parties by “entrenching the position of the existing political parties and shutting out dissenting voices, whether from the left or right”.

He said the IPA would not be affected by the foreign donations ban because it did not receive them, with the exception of an international prize it won a few years ago for its work on climate change.

Unlike the IPA, the Greens support a ban on foreign donations in-principle, as does Labor, although the opposition wants the ban only to apply to donations to political parties and associated entities but not third party campaign groups.

GetUp is opposed to the associated entities changes, believing they are aimed at forcing it to register as an associated entity of Labor and the Greens following a warning from the Australian Electoral Commission that it may have to do so.

The special minister of state, Mathias Cormann, has said that the bill aims “to ensure all organisations involved in relevant political expenditure and activity are subject to the same transparency, disclosure and reporting requirements”.

He said the bill “clarified an ambiguity” about the meaning of associated entities operating for the benefit of a political party but said this did not amount to an extension of scope.

“GetUp is plainly a political campaigning organisation engaged in political activity and incurring political expenditure,” Cormann said, adding it was “entirely appropriate” it be subject to the same disclosure requirements as other political actors.

In December the national director of GetUp, Paul Oosting, warned the new “GetUp clause” was “an unprecedented case of government overreach”.



“[It] is aimed squarely at shutting down Australians from working together, independent of political parties, to make our country a better place to live,” he said.

Oosting said GetUp is “independent to our core, independence is in our DNA”.

The Liberal senator Eric Abetz has labelled GetUp a “leftwing front” because it targeted Coalition MPs including Peter Dutton, George Christensen and Andrew Nikolic at the 2016 election.