State funding of parties backed

Press, 20 November 1987, Page 5

State funding of parties backed

Political reporter

State funding of political parties is supported by the Associate Minister of Justice, Mr Woollaston. He said it was axiomatic in a democracy that the voter’s choice must be free, fair and well-in-formed so it was perfectly legitimate and highly desirable that the political parties spent money on developing and communicating policies to voters. But that process had to be subject to controls. Wide differences in resources should not unfairly restrict or benefit particular parties or candidates.

“We have long repudiated the idea of buying votes to gain a seat in

Parliament,” Mr Woollaston said. There were controls on the spending and activities of individual candidates, but there were no limits on the amounts political parties might spend and no restrictions on their income. In practice, however, the budgets of political parties were very modest. So far, he said, the only involvement of the State in the funding of election campaigns had been to limit individual candidates expenditure. Funding from the public purse would not result in a bar on other sources of revenue.

But each year political parties could be required

to provide names of substantial donors plus audited statements of income for electorates, regions and national organisations, Mr W’oollaston said.

The Royal Commission on Electoral Reform had advised against upsetting the fundamental basis of political competition by providing too generous a level of public funding, in spite of the rapid increase in financial demands on parties. He said the Government and political parties had been somewhat coy about giving any appearance of wanting to dip into the taxpayer’s honeypot, but the idea was worth considering.