Cartel Parties?

September 28, 2026

Whenever money enters the equation, the outcome is invariably corruption. You don’t have to look far for proof. The horror stories emanating from the NSW ICAC inquiry into the Liberal Party, or the Americans having elected a cartoon felon to run the show, should be warning enough.

While Kate Griffiths suggests a more sensible way to ameliorate the effect than the current legislation, its removal altogether would be a better outcome.

It does seem to me that there would be superior grounds for a challenge than using the (somewhat nebulous) ‘implied freedom of political communication’.

Consider ‘politics’ as being a ‘product’ or ‘service’ – which would then be covered by the Competition and Consumer Act 2010. By virtue of using their combined voting control of the ‘market’ for ‘politics’ to enact the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Reform) Act 2025, the Coalition and Labor have breached all four of the tests for cartel behaviour in competition law.

If this were a commercial case, it would be a walk-up start.

The ‘cartel parties’ would, at the very least, be facing massive fines, and the cartel behaviour would be reversed.