South Australia’s New Election Laws – Not Fair

On July 1 2025, new South Australian election laws came into effect that severely restrict political donations while providing political parties with public funding based on the number of received votes in an election. Although the South Australian government argues that such legislation enhances democracy and ensures fair and transparent elections, I would argue otherwise.

The first and most obvious issue is that when funding is based on the total number of votes received in an election, those who win more votes get more funding. This results in more funding for major parties and less funding for minor parties.

When combined with the severe restrictions on political donations, the potential for minor parties to grow, promote themselves and gain votes becomes severely restricted. Smaller parties that have less brand awareness need to spend more money to attract votes and grow their supporter base while major parties that already have significant brand awareness can spend significantly less to attract the same votes and support.

Restricting the ability of people and businesses to donate to political parties directly restricts public political participation. Political donations allow voters with limited ability to volunteer, and those with concerns about outing themselves politically to participate in politics, especially those who hold unpopular political stances. They also financially incentivise political parties to care more about the desires and needs of voters.

Although concerns about money in politics are not unfounded, restricting the ability of voters to financially assist parties they support while forcing them to fund political parties they don’t support is unfair and unreasonable. Surely requiring the public disclosure of political donations that are over a significant financial threshold would be a more fair and proportionate response. This would achieve the desired transparency without hampering political participation and the anonymity of the average voter.

The restrictions on political donations are not the only problem caused by the new legislation. One of the reforms requires political parties to register eight months prior to an election to be able to run in state elections. With the next South Australian election on the 21^st of March 2026, just over nine and a half months after the legislation came into effect, this meant that new and reregistering political parties had just over one and a half months from when the legislation came into effect to register and be able to run in the state.

I find this to be both underhanded and undemocratic, especially given that at least three parties have been caught out by this requirement including the SA Libertarian Party and For Unley. This of course does not include other currently unregistered parties that stumbled across this new rule, realised they couldn’t run and decided not to register. The three affected parties are not just unable to run but are also unable to attract funding as there will be no votes on which to base funding and hence no funds for future elections and party promotion.

Despite the significant drawbacks of these new laws, this new party funding model creates an interesting opportunity: to defund the Big 4 (SA Labor, SA Liberals, SA Nationals and of course SA Greens). This is because under the new system, every first preference vote in the upcoming South Australian election becomes a donation to the political party that is preferenced first.

When you choose one of the Big 4 as your first preference, you don’t just contribute to their success in the election; you also grant them a small profit. When you choose a minor party that isn’t one of the Big 4, although the success of that party isn’t guaranteed electorally and Big 4 may still prevail, you at least deprive the Big Four of the profit they would gain from your vote and allow that funding to flow to a party you actually prefer.

All parties will be relying on their success in this election for survival, since most of their funding will depend on the votes they get. If enough people choose to put minor parties as their first preference, we can deprive the major parties of a portion of the financial windfall that will make up most of their income and resist the system that seeks to crush minor parties.