Donating to political campaigns

is under review here in Downunder. It is another suite of "reforms" the present government is trying to pass which sound good but may have unintended - or perhaps intended - consequences.

At the present time the proposals have conditional support from the Opposition. Even with that conditional support I am wondering how well the proposals will work and whether they will really be as "fair" as the government claims. 

Yes, the proposals may benefit the major parties in that donations will still flow to them but will they benefit smaller parties or independent candidates? At the last election the Greens did very well with donations. A lot of people saw them (and still see them) as the friendly tree hugging and environmentally concerned party. A closer look at their policies suggests their other ideas are so far left they would be impossible to implement.

There were also a group of "independents" who have been labelled "teal" independents - because of the colours they wore. They were largely supported by one particularly wealthy businessman. He put a lot of money into the last election and did it very effectively. All this was said to be a good thing at the time.

So now we could have the situation where the "independents" and the very small parties could no longer afford to run candidates or, at most, just one or two. Would that be democratic? 

The other issue is that the union movement may have a great deal more spending power. Unions do not have to be concerned about being partisan. They on Labor's side. They may have limits on their donations but they will still be able to advertise independently. They already do this and they will simply do more of it. Business on the other hand will be much more cautious about appearing partisan, especially if they have government contracts.

It is all something that needs to be reviewed a little more carefully - if we are going to retain something approaching democracy.