Review of the 2023 NSW election Submission - NSW political donations laws are opaque; truth in

The Australia Institute welcomes the inquiry into the election, and our submission to the inquiry builds on existing research to examine several of these issues in detail: • The enormous advantages enjoyed by incumbent MPs and established political parties; • The way in which donation and spending caps favour major parties; • The lack of transparency and effective regulation around political finan. [...] Review of the 2023 NSW election: Submission 5 Introduction The Australia Institute welcomes the opportunity to make a submission to the inquiry into the administration of the 2023 NSW election and other matters. [...] How does aggregation work in practice? To give a sense of the magnitude of the extent of the exceptions to donation caps, donations in the six months leading up to the NSW state election are called “pre-election donations” and are disclosed separately in a more usable form than other disclosures. [...] For the 2022–23 financial year, the NSW Electoral Commission identifies 374 disclosures associated with the NSW branch of the Labor Party and 281 disclosures identified with the NSW branch of the Liberal Party. [...] Optional preferential voting apparently contributed to the decision in Queensland for the Liberal and National parties to merge,45 and the decline in the number of three-cornered contests in NSW and Queensland.46 Leading to voter confusion and wasted votes The inconsistency between federal elections using full preferential voting (in the lower house) and the state using optional preferential votin.