New CIS research: Let Money Speak - the case for deregulating donations - The Centre for Independent Studies
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New CIS research: Let Money Speak — the case for deregulating donations

The government’s attempt to ban foreign donations — and impose substantial and onerous transparency regulations on civil society — is misguided, according to the latest research from the Centre for Independent Studies.

In the CIS policy paper Let Money Speak, economist Simon Cowan argues that restricting donations and regulations that will limit contributions to public debate by charities are unreasonable infringements on free speech.

“Imposing a substantial compliance on charities in the name of transparency will have a chilling effect on their participation in public debate, especially for charities that do not primarily rely on government for their funding,” Mr Cowan said.

“Restricting the supply of private funding for charities and political parties will just put a greater burden on the taxpayer. Public funding is not superior to private funding,” he added.

Mr Cowan said robust competition over ideas is the best way of determining which ideas are worth following.

“The government’s bill takes the opposite approach, already too prevalent in public debate, that some ideas are irrevocably tainted by their source.

“With this bill, the government effectively assumes the mere act of participating in public debate has a political purpose.

“There are a narrow range of exceptions, but no consideration is given to why someone might have an interest in policy but not politics.”

Mr Cowan argues that a better approach is to open up the public space to as many competing ideas as possible and confront bad ideas as ideas, not to seek to restrict contributions in fear that people will find them persuasive.

“There is no good reason to assume that the electorate as a whole is no longer capable of making informed decisions on public policy,” he said.

“We should trust the voters to determine between bad ideas and good ones.”

Simon Cowan is Research Manager at the Centre for Independent Studies, and authored the CIS submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters inquiry into the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Funding and Disclosure Reform) Bill 2017