If we take a look at the political landscape around the world it is abundantly clear that voters are telling establishment politicians they want something different.



Voters are doubting the integrity of their political systems. They are wondering whether the system is serving their interests, and they are worried enough to punish incumbents and take big risks with their vote.

It is profoundly obvious that any move to clean up the integrity of the Australian political system would be hugely popular, and yet change comes slowly and often gets tangled in partisan imperatives.

This week we’ve seen a deep dive by the ABC and Fairfax Media into Chinese donations in the Australian political system, and China’s exercise of soft power in institutions in this country.

We were reminded through these reports that Australia’s security agencies had warned politicians two years ago about the risks associated with dealing with some Chinese donors – and yet the money train rumbles on.

Limiting foreign donation ban to political parties creates 'activist loophole' Read more

As well as the cultivation of influence, interference by foreign powers in democratic elections is a major issue. As James Comey, the FBI director that Donald Trump fired, told the Senate intelligence committee in the early hours of Friday morning: “There should be no fuzz on this whatsoever.”

“The Russians interfered in our election during the 2016 cycle. They did it with purpose. They did it with sophistication. They did it with overwhelming technical efforts.”

Australia only recently turned its mind to this troubling phenomenon, and what we might be able to do about it.

As serious as these issues are, it’s not just foreign donations and malevolent behaviour by state actors that pose risks to democratic countries like Australia.

The problems are more long-standing and broad-ranging.

Australia’s donations and disclosure system is more than feeble – it’s a joke, and it needs root-and-branch reform. Requiring continuous disclosure of political donations is a must and it should have happened years ago.

We need more public funding for elections to remove some of the pressure on political parties to relentlessly chase the corporate dollar. If we believe in democracy, we need to believe in it enough to invest in it.

We need a ministerial code of conduct with bite to close the revolving door between politics and the corporate and lobbying worlds.

We need the Australian Electoral Commission to be given the legal authority and the budget to police and regulate the electoral system, not just act as an inbox for political parties lodging disclosures eons after the fact, or investigating suspect-looking conduct in the event someone complains.

I also think it’s an entirely valid principle that all players in the electoral system, whether political actors or cashed-up interest groups, be required to disclose, in real time, the source of their funding if they are engaged in political campaigning.

It seems a strange aspiration in an era of widespread disillusionment with politicians to speak up for their place in our system, to seek to strengthen them and their endeavours, but I think in a democracy, protecting the system we all vote for has to be the underlying principle.

We elect parliamentarians to represent us and our interests, and we have the power to vote them out if they fail to deliver what the country needs. Cashed-up third-party interests are accountable to no one.

The special minister of state, Scott Ryan, says some reform on foreign donations is coming after the winter parliamentary break.

When asked why the change is taking so long, he makes the valid point that he’d prefer to hasten slowly and bring forward a proposal that works rather than a rushed proposal that ends up creating problems rather than solving them.

Both the major parties now say they’ll ban foreign donations, but they are split on the question of how you regulate the non-political actors. Ryan says if the government is going to ban foreign cash, then that ban needs to apply across the board.

“We don’t want to create a loophole where we look like we’re fixing a problem by saying political parties can’t accept foreign money but then create a loophole where foreign money can pour into third-party interest groups and others, who are just as politically active and have just as much influence over the political process,” Ryan said this week.

Labor says that’s a bridge too far and will have the effect of chilling progressive civil society campaigns that the Coalition finds politically inconvenient.

This isn’t just a line from Labor, it aligns with what the government has been saying. The Coalition is concerned about marginal seats activism by groups like GetUp and the environmental movement. It now feels comprehensively outgunned on the ground in contemporary political contests. The Coalition believes progressive parties have gained a structural advantage in modern campaigning that conservative parties can’t hope to replicate.

Cory Bernardi says he was told Liberals received money from donors with links to China Read more

Of course that defensive and defeatist line of thinking ignores the fact that Donald Trump was able to create a mass movement in the US built on disillusioned conservative voters and win the presidency.

It also ignores the fact the centrist Emmanuel Macron pulled off much the same party trick by having a message compelling enough to engage and activate a large bloc of French voters.

The Coalition’s contemporary problem may not be so much the lack of a functioning field army and slick social media communications, but the lack of a compelling political message and the lack of a strategy that engages young people.

But setting aside the Coalition’s obvious political self-interest and mild paranoia, Ryan’s broad point is entirely valid – if you regulate the political system, you do need to look with clear eyes at all of the participants.

You do need to look at them though with a degree of nuance and with an eye to the health of the whole system, rather than having a policy driven by short-term political calculations and feelings of vulnerability.

You need to separate out political activity and political campaigning from activism on other fronts. I’m not saying this is an easy line to draw, in fact in some cases it would be quite a tough distinction to land, but it’s an important one if you believe in freedom of expression and communication.

Apart from getting the balances right in specific reform measures, politicians in this policy space also have to do another tough thing.

If they are to do good, they have to think outside the prism of the self-interest of the “firm”.

They have to regulate for the interests of the people they represent, rather than regulating to boost the institutional power of the specific political party which selects them.

And that conundrum – people before tribe – explains why so little happens in this space.

