The Allan government’s new electoral laws, which were rushed through parliament Friday morning, are a shameless attempt to tip the scales of public debate in its favour less than six months out from the next state election.
On Wednesday, the state parliament introduced the Electoral Further Amendment Bill 2026, a 120-page revision of state election laws that will have dramatic consequences on Victorian democracy. MPs and the public were given barely more than a day to consider before it was rammed through with the support of the Greens in the upper house. The government even passed a motion to treat the bill as urgent, which is a sure sign it was keen to avoid scrutiny and debate.
The new laws, which impose a range of donation and expenditure caps on participants in elections, have been introduced following an April decision in the High Court striking down a part of the Act for being incompatible with the Australian Constitution’s implied freedom of political communication. A nominated entity is an organisation that is permitted to make gifts to a political party that are not considered “political donations”. Importantly, trade unions are not considered nominated entities.
The Victorian government has now introduced laws to reimpose donation caps, but rather than just exclude the nominated entity provisions, has gone a step further. The bill was amended to retrospectively deem donations as unlawful back to November 2018. If that date seems arbitrary, it might help to know that the last time Labor received a donation from its own nominated entity was in April 2023.
The whole debate about nominated entities is a smokescreen. The new laws entrench a Labor bias by preserving the material support it receives from the unions, including from affiliation fees and in-kind support from union activists, while removing other parties’ rights to raise funds from nominated entities.
The legislation imposes a 10-year prison sentence for entering into a “scheme” to circumvent the electoral restrictions. That is more than what some people get for manslaughter and is especially pernicious given the fundamental ambiguity of what amounts to political expenditure.
Far more unfair than any donation cap is to create hurdles for voters and candidates by locking in favourable privileges for one party at the expense of others.
