Voters will also need to prove identity at voting time, raising concerns it could marginalise some Aboriginal voters

This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

Queensland has scrapped limits on political donations and election spending, and lifted the threshold at which donations have to be reported.



The wide-ranging changes, which passed on Thursday evening, will also mean a windfall of public funding for major parties, including a new “policy development payment” that will be denied to independents and smaller parties.

Voters will also be required to prove their identity at the ballot box, raising concerns some Aboriginal voters could be disenfranchised.

The premier, Campbell Newman, said it was necessary to raise the non-disclosure limit for donations from $1,000 to match the federal limit of $12,400, because advice from the crown solicitor said it was vulnerable to a high court challenge.

"Constitutionality, laws get struck down if a federal law overrides it," Newman said. "If the federal government drops the disclosure threshold, automatically Queensland law will line up with that.”



"We want the federal government to lower the threshold, they should do that."



But a University of Queensland professor and electoral law specialist, Graeme Orr, said the crown solicitor’s advice was “weak” and “just not a plausible argument”.



“How can that be right when other states – New South Wales, the ACT and, soon, South Australia – all have regular disclosure at lower levels than the commonwealth?” he said.



The Liberal National party-dominated committee that reviewed the bill said the $1,000 disclosure limit created “administrative burden for no worthwhile gain”.



In the last six months of 2012, only 15 of the 352 donations to the LNP and six of the 161 donations to Labor were of more than $12,400, AAP reported.



Donation records will now be released annually, rather than twice a year.



The amount of the new payments to help fund policy research will be decided by the attorney-general, Jarrod Bleijie. Only registered parties with an elected MP will qualify for the money.

In a submission on the bill, the Electoral Commission of Queensland said there was no way it could guarantee the money would be spent on policy. “There’s no strings attached,” Orr said. “You could use it for anything.”

Donation limits of $5,000 for parties and $2,000 for individuals – passed by the previous Labor government in 2011 after a string of scandals, including the jailing of one former Labor government minister for corruption – have been removed.



Caps on election expenditure, described by Bleijie as “unnecessarily restricting participation in the political process”, were also scrapped.



Gladstone’s MP, Liz Cunningham, told parliament on Thursday changes to public funding available to independents such as herself were “offensive in the extreme”. Under the new laws, registered parties that poll more than 6% in an election will receive $2.90 per vote in public funding, compared with just $1.45 per vote for independents.



The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice commissioner, Mick Gooda, criticised the law’s requirement that voters must show some form of ID before entering the polling booth, warning it could “intimidate” and “further marginalise” Indigenous voters.



Research showed only 38% of Aboriginal people held driver’s licences in some parts of the state, compared with 90% of the rest of the population, Gooda said.



Bleijie said the voter ID laws would help protect against electoral fraud, though his department has said there was “no specific evidence” of widespread voter fraud in Queensland, and just one case was identified at the 2012 state election.

The bill passed along party lines late on Thursday, with rogue LNP MP Chris Davis abstaining, saying parts of the bill were contrary to his "judgment and conscience in the public interest".

Davis announced on Friday he was quitting parliament, writing on Facebook: “Recent government legislation affecting critical aspects of our democracy goes contrary to my value system and that of the majority of my electorate.



"I would never have stood for parliament on such a platform, nor do I believe I would have been elected," he said



Davis was sacked as assistant Health Minister on 13 May for breaching cabinet solidarity when he spoke out against changes to the state's corruption watchdog.