Sanitised or sterilised? A ban on donations to fully publicly funded political parties

Political finance regulation commonly aims to prevent private money from unfairly affecting electoral outcomes and unduly influencing elected officials. A totalising option is to ban all private funding of parties and candidates – to replace it fully with public funding. South Australia, a sub-national jurisdiction in Australia, has done just that, by legislating to ban donations to parties and candidates and to replace party finances with public funding based on legislated metrics and drawn from consolidated State revenues. This article analyses the South Australian model of a ban on donations and full public funding. It offers a critique of the idea of full public funding, a quantum leap into cutting parties off from any private funding (aside from limited membership fees). It argues that in the process of sanitisation of parties from the risk of undue influence, it poses another risk, of sterilising parties by further cutting them off from broader social relations.