Under the Commonwealth Electoral Act, registered political parties receive a dollar amount for every legal first-preference vote they receive once they pass the 4% minimum. The per-vote rate is indexed to inflation and, at the 2022 election, was $2.914.

Currently, the rate sits at $3.35 per eligible vote. Under the government’s proposed changes, the rate would rise to $5. On top of that, registered parties would receive another $30,000 per MP and $15,000 per senator in “administrative” funding.

I can see how $5 per first-preference vote is a lot. Perhaps a scale for $5 for the first 20% of the votes and then $3 per vote after that?

I don’t see how this change punishes anyone, however. It’s a raise for everyone. If your complaint is basically ‘those guys get more money because they get more votes’, my response becomes ‘then, do something to make people want to vote for you and not those guys’.

Before anyone says that’s not easy to do, I agree. How do we solve that? The Green party has been going for 40 years. They have never held government and show no sign of holding government in the next 20 years. The Teal candidates came out of nowhere in the last 10 years and and did very well in the last election - but they had financial assistance beyond AEC funding.