From a public policy perspective, it's obvious enough why we've made electoral bribery a crime. So what can we learn from allegations that two candidates in the upcoming election may have fallen foul of the law? Michael Bradley writes.

When I saw the words Leyonhjelm, Christensen and electoral bribery in the same sentence, I thought, "Ooh, finally this election campaign has produced something interesting".

As elections mean no law-making for an extended period, I confess I'm left scratching around for topics differentiated from the endless debate over whether we've seen the real Malcolm yet, but I figure that bringing section 326 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act to life is a worthy challenge.

So, what's this all about? Two high-profile political figures have been investigated by the Australian Electoral Commission lately, and reports indicate both have now been referred to the Federal Police for possible prosecution. The allegation in each case is electoral bribery.

Potential Public Enemy 1 is Roostam Sadri, a South Australian candidate for the Senate for David Leyonhjelm's Liberal Democratic Party. Mr Sadri, according to leaked documents obtained by Fairfax, may have agreed with the LDP to hand the party $500,000 on condition that he be made its No. 1 Senate candidate in his chosen state. He has said that no agreement was signed and he didn't pay that much money, although he is the LDP's only Senate candidate for South Australia. His case has apparently been referred to the AFP following an AEC inquiry.

PPE 2 is George Christensen, the colourful Liberal National Party MP for parts of Far North Queensland. He can be described in many ways, but "avid Trump fan" should suffice.

Anyway, Christensen put a (since deleted) post on his Facebook page on May 31 praising the work of EcoBarge Clean Seas and the Whitsunday Turtle Rescue Centre and saying:

[They do] such a great job cleaning up the marine environment in the Whitsundays and nursing injured turtles back to health. That's why last night I was happy to announce a $12,000 personal contribution in 2016/17 to [EcoBarge] if I'm re-elected as the Member for Dawson.

This offer attracted the attention of advocacy group GetUp!, which wrote to the AEC asking it to investigate what it called a "possible breach of important anti-bribery provisions under Commonwealth electoral law." The AEC has now referred this matter to the AFP.

Section 326 makes it a criminal offence to give or confer, or promise to give or confer, any property or benefit of any kind to anyone if you have one of a number of specified intentions.

In Christensen's case, that is the intention of influencing or affecting how people vote or their support for him or his party (basically, buying votes); in Sadri's, it's the intention of influencing or affecting the order in which Senate candidates appear on the ballot paper (putting him at No. 1).

Section 326 is titled "Bribery" and carries penalties or $5,000 or two years in prison, so it's a serious piece of law. Importantly, it specifically excludes a "declaration of public policy or a promise of public action", so vote buying (or pork barrelling to use the technical term) as we ordinarily understand it is not a problem. If Christensen had promised to give $12,000 of federal government money to EcoBarge, rather than a personal donation, he'd be in the clear absolutely.

The editor will never let me get away with pre-empting the outcome of a possible criminal prosecution, so I can't say whether I think section 326 has been contravened in these particular cases.

For his part, Christensen said the referral to the AEC was "quite ridiculous", but did confirm that he had withdrawn the offered donation "to avoid any confusion with electoral laws".

He also noted that "turtles don't get to vote", which isn't much of a defence unless he was genuinely planning to give his money to them. More seriously, he commented that: "It's a terrible day in Australia where saying to someone 'I'll give you a donation if I have the income to do it' turns into a criminal offence."

Sadri's situation is certainly unusual and there have been reports that AEC insiders are calling it an "open and shut case", a statement which could only be made by someone completely ignorant of the criminal law. I can see several truck-sized possible holes in a prosecution of either case without knowing anything more than what's been publicly reported.

From a public policy perspective, it's obvious enough why we've made electoral bribery a crime. Paying people to vote for you is self-evidently a bad thing. It's also appropriate that the offence provision be widely drawn, to limit the potential for loophole exploitation. That can lead to unanticipated outcomes, including for turtles, but the risks to democracy from an insufficiently tightly drawn set of protections outweigh those arising from random anomalies like Christensen's case.

If you want to know what happens when a law designed to protect the integrity of the democratic process is drafted loosely, consider the rampant damage that continues to be caused to our system of government at all levels by the symbiotic engagement between political parties and big money (corporate and union money, in particular). Some of this is illegal; mostly it isn't. The refusal of either major party to even talk about a federal anti-corruption body, and their mutual abject failure to get serious about campaign finance reform, says everything we need to hear about how badly screwed the system has become.

In that context, taking Christensen to task seems an unnecessary expenditure of the authorities' energies, but they had no choice once the question had been asked. On the other hand, if the allegations against Sadri are ultimately proved, that'll be a very big deal.

Of course, we know about Sadri's case only because of a leak to the media. We'd all like to think that nobody can bribe their way into Parliament, but we have no idea how often that's happened. Our safeguard, such as it is, is that all arms of democracy - legislature, executive, judiciary and a free media able to offer adequate protection to whistleblowers - are functioning effectively and that at least one of them will be able to step outside the reach of corrupting influences to raise the alarm when something smells rotten.

We should be mildly reassured that the Sadri case came to light and is being dealt with in the appropriate way, regardless of the outcome. As for Christensen, I share his turtle-loving regret.

Michael Bradley is the managing partner of Sydney law firm Marque Lawyers, and he writes a weekly column for The Drum. He tweets at @marquelawyers.