Bulletin

Issue: October 2004

Research in Action

Political playing field uneven for small parties

Australia is one of the great Western democracies - but its political playing field is uneven for smaller parties. This is because their ability to raise funds for party political purposes is very much less than the larger parties.

This is the opinion of Mr Joo-Cheong Tham, an associate lecturer in law at La Trobe University and a specialist in the sourcing of funding for Australian political parties. He has specialised in the area for five years, working with La Trobe
Law undergraduate Mr David Grove in recent research.

With the recent federal election in the news, Mr Tham said that the two principal forms of party funding were unfair to the smaller parties, particularly those with no or few members in parliament.

He explained that there were a number of sources of funding for political parties. They included 'parliamentary entitlements' based on the number of members in parliament, membership subscriptions, corporate donations, individual donations, and party fundraising activities.

He said Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) figures, based on total party funding for the three financial years 1999/2000 to 2001/2002, reveal a dramatic funding inequality between the ALP, Liberal Party and National Party, on one hand, and the Democrats and the Greens, on the other.

The ALP and the two Coalition parties received more than $20 per 2001 election vote, Mr Tham said, while the Democrats and Greens received around $10 per 2001 election vote.

'For each dollar per vote the Democrats received, the ALP received nearly three dollars. And for each dollar per vote received by the Greens, the Liberal Party received nearly two dollars.'

In the 1999/2000 financial year the AEC's Audit Office figures reveal that parliamentary entitlements to all parties amounted to $354 million dollars. To get a sense of proportion, the parties' budgets from all other sources (for the three financial years 1999/2000-2001/2002) was less than this amount, and stood at approximately $248 million.

Mr Tham said minor parties were also disadvantaged when it came to corporate donations.

He said the ALP and coalition parties acknowledged that outside of money received from parliamentary entitlements, corporate donations were their main source of income. All three parties listed individual donations as their second source of income and the ALP listed trade unions as its third largest source.•

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