Grattan Institute

Democracy: How to decouple money from power

Grattan Institute

Show Notes

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 risk giving major donors more influence over policy. From next year, new rules will finally put a ceiling on money in Australian politics — but that ceiling is set far too high.

In our latest podcast, Grattan researcher Thomas Shortridge talks to our democracy expert Kate Griffiths about her policy brief, 'Decoupling money from power: Getting electoral expenditure caps right', and what a better cap on election spending would look like.

Read the policy brief: https://grattan.edu.au/news/decoupling-money-from-power/

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