Public Funding and Expenditure Regulation of Australian Political Parties: Some Reflections

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Not so long ago, Australian electoral law was described as being in a Cinderella state, a neglected but promising field of inquiry. Some years down the track, it is clear that Australian electoral law is beginning to shed its Cinderella-status with scholars paying increasing attention to the legal regulation of elections. In this burgeoning field, political finance laws assume critical importance. Indeed, it has been said that such laws probably pose ‘perhaps the central issue facing electoral law’. Arguably for this reason, this aspect of Australian electoral law, more so than any other, has been the subject of sustained scholarship. It is even showing signs of maturing into a distinct area of electoral law.