"Billionaire businessman, Clive Palmer, has warned Labor against legislating electoral spending and donation caps, accusing it of attempting to “silence the diversity of ideas in this country”.
The Albanese government is preparing legislation to cap political donations and electoral spending, citing the influence of Palmer’s hundreds of millions of electoral spending, backed by donations from his company Mineralogy to the United Australia Party.
Although the reforms are backed by an inquiry into the 2022 election by the joint standing committee on electoral matters (Jscem), Palmer’s intervention into the debate spells trouble for the government, which could face a high court challenge on the basis caps infringe the implied freedom of political communication."
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Billionaire businessman, Clive Palmer, has warned Labor against legislating electoral spending and donation caps, accusing it of attempting to “silence the diversity of ideas in this country”.
Although the reforms are backed by an inquiry into the 2022 election by the joint standing committee on electoral matters (Jscem), Palmer’s intervention into the debate spells trouble for the government, which could face a high court challenge on the basis caps infringe the implied freedom of political communication.
Guardian Australia first revealed in July 2022 that the special minister of state, Don Farrell, planned to legislate truth-in-political-advertising laws and spending caps, an intention confirmed in June 2023 when he said the government “can’t allow our electoral system to be held hostage by rich people”.
On Tuesday, Palmer responded to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald and Age suggesting the law would allow tens of thousands – but not millions – to be donated and spent.
In 2019 the high court struck down a NSW law which halved the amount third-party groups can spend on state campaigns from $1.05m to $500,000, ruling that it infringed the implied freedom of political communication.
A spokesperson for the shadow special minister of state, Jane Hume, said “we will wait for the government to put forward a response to the final report of [Jscem], and then consider our position through the normal party processes”.
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