December 2003 - Review of Electoral Acts

Assignments by candidates to political parties

An issue which caused some confusion and concern during the general election was the matter of candidates assigning part of their individual spending limits to their political party. Unlike other provisions which are time specific, the legislation does not prescribe when this should happen. Nor does it prescribe the format of an assignment except that it should be in writing and made by the candidate. It would be reasonable to expect that the assignment would be made before any expenditure is incurred so that the candidate's election agent and the national agent of the political party are clear, in advance, of where they stand in relation to spending at the election. In many cases, however, the assignments were made, or amended, during the course of the campaign or even at a later date. There is no great difficulty with this once an overspend in respect of a particular party or candidate does not result. If such an overspend did occur, the assignment would be an important document in determining which of the national agent or the candidate's election agent was responsible.

In the interests of clarity and to remove the potential for error which does exist with the present system, it might be worth considering whether an amendment to the legislation would be beneficial. This might involve specifying a point in time at which the assignment must be made and providing that subsequent alteration to the assignment is not permitted. It might also be required that a copy of the written assignment would be furnished to the Standards Commission with the election spending statement. It may, of course, be the case that the legislature intended that the making of an assignment would not be time specific to allow flexibility in spending during the course of an election campaign so that particular exigencies could be dealt with between parties and their candidates as the campaign progressed.

As an alternative to the present statutory arrangement whereby spending at an election by the national agent of a political party is dependent on assignment of part of their individual limits to the party by its candidates, the Standards Commission is aware of a view that a separate spending limit should be set for the national agent of a political party based, perhaps, on the number of candidates standing for the party at an election.

If this latter approach was to be adopted, and if it is accepted that overall spending at an election should be maintained at its present level, it would follow that there would be a corresponding decrease in individual candidate limits across the board. There would be nothing fundamentally different about this when compared to the current position unless, of course, a separate spending limit was to be introduced for political parties without there being a corresponding reduction in candidate limits. It might, however, be unacceptable to candidates that each of them would, in effect, be required to assign to the party the same proportion of what would have been their spending limit whereas, at present, the candidate has, legally, absolute discretion in terms of the portion, if any, to be assigned. The reality is, of course, that candidates of political parties, although they are legally entitled to refuse to make an assignment, in practical terms are required to do so. The experience has also been that political parties, for strategic reasons, have sought greater assignments from some candidates than from others.

If the arrangement above was to be introduced, an issue which would require to be addressed is the position of non-party candidates who, as a consequence, would have lower spending limits than at present and would, in equity, be entitled to a higher limit than party candidates to compensate for the fact that they would not benefit from a party campaign.

The legal and/or Constitutional implications of different candidates having different spending limits might require to be explored.

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