Experts are baffled at the ACT government's motives for scrapping the $10,000 limit on donations to political parties, a move that will face a challenge on the floor of Parliament in the next fortnight.
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The Greens' Shane Rattenbury, who says the bigger the donation the more open politicians are to corrupting influence, will move to keep a limit on donations and scale it back from $10,000 a year to $5000 annually.
Mr Rattenbury will also try to block a planned fourfold increase in public funding from $2 a vote to $8.
The changes to donations and election funding were tabled by the Labor government in November. They are backed by both major parties, leaving Mr Rattenbury a lone opposing voice in the assembly. However, he has support among experts, who have called on the government to rethink its plans.
Constitutional lawyer Professor George Williams said he didn't understand the surprise move to abolish the $10,000 cap, which would mean there was no limit on how much people or groups could donate each year.
"It's accepted that donation caps are important to ensure that no one individual has an undue influence upon the political process," Professor Williams said. "Frankly, I was very surprised to hear of it given in NSW the movement, if anything, is to reduce these caps."
Labor argues there is no need for a donations cap if there is a cap on spending. Candidates will be limited to spending no more than $40,000 on an election campaign at the next election (down from $60,000).
However, Professor Williams said a spending cap was not enough.
"It retains the possibility that an individual or a corporation might give an enormous sum of money in the hope of favours or benefits," he said.
Mr Rattenbury will fight the changes.
"Bigger donations leave politicians more open to corruptive influences, that's well understood," he said. "We've seen in NSW the political fallout from the seeming abuse of donations and I think in the ACT we should be seeking to limit that, not making a situation where there is a free-for-all on political donations."
As well as pushing to keep a cap on donations and reduce it to $5000 a year from any one person or group, Mr Rattenbury will argue for a fairer limit on spending on election campaigns.
The major parties want to reduce the amount each candidate can spend from $60,000 to $40,000, given the extra eight politicians at the next election. For the major parties fielding 25 candidates, that will still allow them to spend $1 million on election campaigns.
However, Mr Rattenbury said that unfairly disadvantaged independent candidates, who would be limited to $40,000.
He will propose a limit on party spending of $500,000 and if that fails, an increase in the amount for independents to $60,000.
He will fight an increase in "administrative funding" that parties are paid each year from the public purse.
They get about $21,000 a year (indexed for inflation) for each assembly member.
Mr Rattenbury said when numbers increased from 17 to 25 members, the administrative funding would mean another windfall for the major parties at the expense of the taxpayer, giving them more than $200,000 a year.
He would move to cap administrative funding at the amount for five members, or about $100,000 a year for each party.
He will move against the plan to boost public funding from $2 a vote to $8 a vote, which would mean the amount given to parties would increase from $409,000 after the last election to about $2 million in 2016.
Mr Rattenbury has described the amount as wildly out of step with elsewhere.
He will push for a new rule that donations made in the last week of an election campaign be made public within 24 hours, so voters are aware of last-minute donations.
The Public Health Association has also weighed into the debate, writing to Chief Minister Andrew Barr, Liberal leader Jeremy Hanson and Attorney-General Simon Corbell, urging them to withdraw the legislation.
Board member Dr Peter Tait said donations were a way to buy favour with politicians, and scrapping the cap would open up the ACT political system to undue influence from big business, favouring the wealthy and powerful at the expense of the wider public.
Dr Tait supported an increase in public funding to reduce reliance on donations but said the change from $2 to $8 a vote made little sense alongside scrapping the cap on donations.
"It suggests that ACT parliamentarians are seeking to both have and eat their cake," he said.
Dr Tait, who writes in Thursday's opinion pages, said people's health was damaged when they felt a lack of control over their lives, including a lack of control over the political process.
He said corporate interests did not have society's health at the top of their priority list.
"Unhealthy food, tobacco and alcohol, asbestos, chemical pollution and greenhouse gas emissions are all examples of how some corporations behave in ways that undermine health," he said, urging people to make their views known urgently to the politicians.
Mr Barr would not comment when asked this week whether Labor would rethink the plan.