Call for laws on election spending
BY ALISON ANDREWS
05 Feb, 2010 01:00 AM

TASMANIA needs full and effective disclosure laws on election spending to discourage candidates seeking big, individual donations to keep them in the campaign race.

That’s the opinion of a number of political analysts in a week where campaign spending of between $100,000 and $150,000 has been reported with several individual campaign budgets believed to be twice that much.

Long-time political commentator Richard Herr said yesterday that campaign costs had become uncapped in Tasmania at the end of the 1970s after over- spending by one candidate brought on a by- election, in Denison.

“Candidates complained enough for it to be deemed a problem and it’s also a problem monitoring and measuring individual campaign costs,”
Professor Herr said.

“It’s also unfair to new candidates.

“Under Hare Clark, 70 to 80 per cent of losers lose to members of their own party if you are a non-incumbent challenging an incumbent.”

Northern Tasmanian political analyst Tony McCall would also like to see a transparent system of political donation.

But he doesn’t believe going back to a capped costs system would make campaigns more equitable.

Read more HERE