Sep 23, 2026 · 22 min · 9 segments
Political parties spent almost half a billion dollars in the year leading up to the 2025 federal election. Big-money campaigns mean politicians spend more time chasing donations, and give major donors…
Kate GriffithsGuest
Thomas ShortridgeHostThese are very wide-reaching reforms, and you say they touch on a lot of areas, including donation caps, which I think is what a lot of people think about when they think about money in politics.
Donations caps can work with expenditure caps quite well in limiting how much individual donors can give on the one side and limiting how much political parties can spend on the other.
But if you were to only do one, I would say you are much better off doing the spending caps because that is regulating the political party and the entities that engage in politics, and it is saying, "Here's the limit on how much you're allowed to spend," which takes away the incentive to raise more and more donations in the first place.
The political party doesn't need the money or doesn't need as much money, and that's what's really important for reducing the dynamic that could lead to undue influence over policymaking.
They might be able to raise money from just a handful of donors, and those donors could still be major donors in the system, but each of them is more replaceable.
Makes sense why we'll be looking at expenditure caps in such detail then, which is what Grattan's new policy brief that you wrote looks at, and it goes into detail on what a better system for these caps would look like, and specifically the level of where they should be set.
These are very wide-reaching reforms, and you say they touch on a lot of areas, including donation caps, which I think is what a lot of people think about when they think about money in politics.
Donations caps can work with expenditure caps quite well in limiting how much individual donors can give on the one side and limiting how much political parties can spend on the other.
But if you were to only do one, I would say you are much better off doing the spending caps because that is regulating the political party and the entities that engage in politics, and it is saying, "Here's the limit on how much you're allowed to spend," which takes away the incentive to raise more and more donations in the first place.
The political party doesn't need the money or doesn't need as much money, and that's what's really important for reducing the dynamic that could lead to undue influence over policymaking.
They might be able to raise money from just a handful of donors, and those donors could still be major donors in the system, but each of them is more replaceable.
Makes sense why we'll be looking at expenditure caps in such detail then, which is what Grattan's new policy brief that you wrote looks at, and it goes into detail on what a better system for these caps would look like, and specifically the level of where they should be set.
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