Joshua Black and Bill Browne

Earlier this year, the two major parties joined forces to “stitch-up” Australia’s federal electoral laws. These included donations caps, spending caps and a lower threshold for disclosing donations to the AEC. In practice, those caps will be much more restrictive for independents and minor parties than for the major parties. The supposedly large campaigns run by community independents have been used to justify the Albanese Government’s rushed changes to electoral laws.

But a story in the AFR this morning reminds us how hollow these claims were. WA political correspondent Tom Rabe says that independent MP and candidate for Curtin, Kate Chaney, and her opponents in the Liberal Party, have spent $1 million each in their fight for the seat.

There’s nothing shocking about this. We’ve seen million-dollar campaigns from both of the major parties in recent years. Former Senator Kim Carr claimed that Labor spent $1 million on the 2018 Batman by-election campaign in the hope of preventing a once-safe seat from falling to the Greens. In the same year, the Liberal Party reportedly spent $1 million on its Wentworth by-election campaign, which was won by independent Dr Kerryn Phelps.

AEC returns show that her campaign cost $145,265. During the most recent parliamentary term, the Labor Party spent $1 million on its campaign for the competitive Dunkley by-election in March 2024, and national secretary Paul Erikson predicted the Coalition had ‘easily matched this’. In fact, at the last election the Australia Institute estimates that Labor and the Coalition spent on average $112,000 and $189,000 respectively more per candidate than the community independents.

It is the major parties who most successfully bring big money to bear, and will be least restricted by the changes to election laws.