Teal ‘independents’ have exploded about new electoral laws agreed to by the major parties on what might be the final sitting day of parliament before the federal elections.
Zali Steggall interrupted electoral affairs minister Don Farrell’s media conference on the issue, acting like a spoilt brat who didn’t get its way.
Of course the cameras lapped it up and the teal MP who has made parliamentary standards of civility one of her catch cries (do as I say, not as I do) got away with the hypocrisy.
In a rare show of bipartisanship in modern politics, Labor and the Coalition came together to pass reforms to donations laws that will bring in changes that put spending caps on parties, individual candidates and third party donors advocating for particular political parties they support.
The changes increase public funding but also increase transparency and speed up disclosure time frames. We’ll no longer have to wait six months to find out who donated to whom.
So why are the teals so outraged by the new laws?
Because these reforms disadvantage them. Why? Because they look and act like a formalised political party, but technically aren’t one. The new laws call that out.
Because teals aren’t formally a political party, they miss out on the funding rights actual political parties will now receive.
If you were an independent MP or candidate who only worries about yourself, as is supposed to be the case, that wouldn’t matter. But teals act as a collective, similarly to how political parties function. Only they pretend they are all ‘independent’, for the virtue signally purpose of winning votes from those of us who are disaffected with party politics.
These changes expose the lack of true independence amongst the teals.
The reforms limit the amount that can be spent in individual electorates by candidates ($800,000), but also allow any political party to collectively spend up to a threshold of $90million across the board nationally.
Because the teals aren’t technically a political party, they can’t each spend more than $800,000 anymore, which is a lot less than most of them have spent and plan to spend into the future. They also can’t send money back and forth between one another, when one teal is raising more funds than another but the others need the money more.
Quite obviously such circulations of funds isn’t something a true independent MP would ever do.
The reforms don’t take effect in time for the looming election this year, but they will apply at the election three years from now, due in 2028.
And the teals are livid, vowing to use their power as crossbenchers to change the laws as one of their points of negotiation if they securing the balance of power in the House of Representatives after the next election.
The changes the major parties agreed to on Thursday also limit third party fundraising for entities such as trade unions, business organisations and the Climate 200 group’s Simon Holmes a Court set up.
Teals don’t like this reform either, because they take huge amounts of donations from Climate 200 all the while claiming they aren’t influenced by the money streaming in or the man who decides where it goes.
Because they are ‘independent’, remember.
The rule change will put that flow of ‘money for nothing’ donations given in some jeopardy. But the limits on it will be the same limits to be imposed on Labor’s trade unions and the Liberal Party’s supportive business organisations.
So fair is fair, surely? Not in the minds of the teals.
It’s not that there aren’t legitimate criticisms about these negotiated reforms by the way. They massively increase public funding on a vote by vote basis, which favours the major parties (because they are bigger) and entrenches incumbents.
I suspect more taxpayers dollars funding political parties in this way probably isn’t a popular change.
The new laws also include a disclosure threshold set at $5,000, which many would say is too high. To be fair to Labor they wanted it to be set at $1,000 but couldn’t get the Coalition to agree to that during the negotiations.
Whatever the criticisms that can be made about these negotiated changes, listening to teals on their soap boxes criticising what’s been agreed, as though they are doing so on anything other than purely self interested grounds, is laughable to say the least. Deliberately misleading if you are more cynical.
Listening to them criticise the limits now placed on their beloved Climate 200 controlling slush fund, ignoring that the very same limits are also being applied to unions and business groups, flies in the face of teal claims of acting with integrity and transparency.
They are no better than the major parties they claim to hold to account.
If $800,000 isn’t enough for teals to use to fund their individual local contests against major party candidate who are limited by the same spending caps, it is reasonable to ask why they need so much more cash to campaign, and how on earth do they claim to be independent from those dolling them out the dollars when doing so?
Remember that power list the AFR put out last year that included Holmes a Court in it, which he didn’t like and tried to get changed? Using his power amongst the teals to get them to ask for it to be changed? Oh the irony.
Complaints were made by the teals, including efforts to have Holmes a Court’s name removed from the power list altogether. The irony of him having the power to get others to do his bidding like that, and for elected teals to jump to his defence so readily, highlights just how right it was to include him in the power grouping in the first place.
Teals don’t like the new laws because they can’t spend funds collectively once they take effect because they aren’t a political party. That’s only because they refuse to be frank about their close links and become one. They could if they wanted to. Why don’t they? Because doing so creates other obligations under n electoral laws that they don’t want to comply with, as political parties who are formally constituted have to.
So the teals operate as a political party in all but name, deriving the advantages that go with that. However, now that political parties properly formed get allocated funding rights the teals don’t, they are up in arms.
Well guess what? If teals want those same fundraising rights, they are open to them. Be honest to the electorate and form a political party, then they can raise funds collectively just like other parties can.
But they don’t want to do that. Teals want to have their cake and eat it: acting just like party collectives but with a holier than thou attitude pretending to be nothing like them.
It’s misleading and deceptive.