Memo to AEC: why not let the Courts decide Abbott slush fund secrets?
G’Day. Here is a legal opinion on the disclosure obligations of Tony Abbott’s ‘Honest Politics Trust’ from one of Webdiary’s electoral law experts. Thanks Graeme. A lawyer’s reflections on the Honest Politics Trust and disclosure laws by Graeme Orr Graeme Orr is a senior law lecturer at Griffith University in Brisbane. He is co-editor with Bryan Mercurio and George Williams of ‘Realising Democracy: Australian Electoral Law’ (Federation Press, forthcoming Nov 2003). The curiosity and insight of Webdiarists into the intricacies of electoral law is more than reassuring to those of us who spend our lives lost in its labyrinths. The ‘Australians for Honest Politics’ (AHP) fund raises pointy questions about our disclosure laws, in particular whether we have a narrow ‘electoral finance law’ or a broader ‘political finance’ law. Disclosure laws are meant to provide two, related types of transparency. One, to inform interested voters about ‘who supports who’ (on the assumption that this in itse
