The new politIcal [sic] donation laws will have a dramatic affect on how federal elections are funded in Australia. Could they entrench the major parties and compromise our democracy?

Bad processes tend to make bad laws. The government’s actions have cast a pall of illegitimacy over its political finance regime. The new framework is unfair and ineffectual in significant ways and yet democracy enhancing in others.

We are all trustees of democracy, with an obligation to protect and deepen democratic practices. An urgent task in that continuing struggle is to protect the strengths of these laws while jettisoning the elements that are egregiously bad.