THE president of the Paterson Liberal Party says his party’s fundraising ability is “seriously hampered” by donation bans placed on property developers, and says Labor’s victories in Saturday’s local government elections in the Hunter was “not surprising” given the state of party funds.
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Bob Geoghegan, who is also the Maitland City Council Deputy Mayor, said Labor’s victories in Cessnock and Lake Macquarie was partly a symptom of what he called its “unfair advantage in elections” thanks to donation laws that allow unions to contribute to political campaigns while banning property developers.
“We have a situation at the moment where one group, Unions, are perfectly able to contribute to campaigns, invariably Labor Party campaigns, while another, property developers, are banned,” he said.
“There is no other group giving equivalent funding to any other party [and] the reasons given for banning property developers, that they have too much influence over decisions, can equally be applied to Unions.”
In 2009 the Rees Labor government passed state-wide laws banning property developers from making political donations.
In 2015 the High Court up-held the law after an unsuccessful challenge from former Newcastle Lord Mayor Jeff McCloy.
Cr Geoghegan said the spotlight of the Independent Commission Against Corruption’s Operation Spicer – which revealed property developers in the Hunter including Mr McCloy had given thousands of dollars in banned donations to Liberal Party candidates – had made them “extremely gun shy” about even donating to federal campaigns, which they are allowed to do.
“There is a huge reluctance on their part to donate than there was in the past,” he said.
Cr Geoghegan said the party was bringing in “far less” in donations as a result.
He said even “noted fundraisers” like former Paterson MP Bob Baldwin was “finding it very difficult” to bring in money before his retirement.
Last week Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said he believed political donations to be limited to individual Australian voters, a move that would ban Unions from donating.
“I have argued that, ideally, donations to political parties should be limited to people who are on the electoral roll — voters,” he said at a summit in Laos.
“So you would exclude not simply foreigners but … corporations and trade unions.”
Cr Geoghegan backed those sentiments, saying he was not looking to advocate for the developer bans to be repealed.
“I don’t think it’s necessarily a case of reinstating developer contributions, but something has to change, maybe it’s a case of introducing individual only donations,” he said.
“Now people will argue that Unions represent the interests of a membership base, and that’s true I don’t shy away from that, but the fact is that governments should not be dictating who is and who isn’t able to participate in our democracy.”
His comments come amid increased scrutiny on donation laws after a string of scandals.
Most recently Labor Senator Sam Dastyari resigned from the front bench after it was revealed he had accepted $1670 from a Chinese company to pay a travel bill.
On Thursday the government launched a broad-brush inquiry into Australia’s donations and disclosure system that includes examining regulation of money “from foreign sources, persons, entities and foreign-owned subsidiaries to political parties, associated entities and other third parties and entities undertaking campaign activities”.
In NSW Labor has called for property developers to be excluded from standing for local council entirely.
