By: Nomi Kaltmann as seen in Crikey

17 April 2026

“When I ran for parliament in 2022 as a teal independent in the seat of Caulfield, I received, early in the campaign, the kind of phone call every independent candidate dreams about. A businessman had read about my campaign in the newspaper, liked what I was trying to do, and wanted to contribute $50,000. For a moment, it felt like all my campaign dreams were about to come true, that kind of money could transform my campaign overnight.

But almost immediately, I felt a sinking disappointment, because I knew I wouldn’t be able to accept that donation. Not because I didn’t want to, but because Victoria’s 2018 electoral funding donation law didn’t allow me to. As an independent, I was bound by strict donation caps that all donations I received were capped at $4320. What should have been a turning point instead became a reminder of the limits I was operating within. There is a strong public interest in limiting the influence of money in politics. But the way the Victorian laws were designed was never intended to be fair.

While independent candidates like me were required to fundraise in small increments, tapping our network for donations that could not exceed the $4320 cap, and required to disclose our donations quickly carefully, the major parties had access to an entirely different funding stream. Through what are known as “nominated entities,” they were able to draw on large pools of money that sat outside the Victorian donation caps that I was so tightly bound by and could disclose their donations months after the election, when everybody had already stopped paying attention.

A nominated entity is, in effect, a pre-existing financial vehicle linked to a political party. These entities were established before the 2018 donation laws came into force and allowed substantial funds to flow into campaigns without being subject to the same donation constraints that applied to everyone else, and my goodness, the money flowed like crazy. In the lead up to the 2022 election Labor’s nominated entity, the Labor Services and Holdings, poured $3.1 million into the party’s successful campaign and the Liberal Party’s Cormack Foundation, their nominated entity, chipped in at least $2.5 million to boost the Victorian Liberals. This kind of structural support shaped the entire contest and left candidates like me, an insurgent independent whose entire campaign lasted 11 weeks, out in the cold and without the same advantage.

Against that backdrop, it is difficult to describe the system entrenched by these 2018 laws as anything other than dodgy as hell.

And now, finally, that imbalance has been recognised at the highest level. Yesterday, Australia’s High Court struck down the 2018 electoral funding laws, finding that Victoria’s political donation laws imposed an unconstitutional burden on the freedom of political communication. The problem was not simply that there were caps, but that the structure of the system advantaged some political actors over others.

Importantly, the court did not just remove the offending loophole. Because of the way the legislation was constructed, it struck down the entire scheme. That includes not only the donation caps themselves, but also disclosure requirements and restrictions on foreign donations.

That outcome is messy, and not, I suspect, what most people would have wanted, but it is also a direct consequence of very deliberate legislative choices. When a system is designed in a way that embeds inequality, it becomes vulnerable to exactly this kind of challenge.

In the lead-up to this successful High Court case, I was part of a group of 2022 independents that wrote to Premier Jacinta Allan urging reform of these laws. The premier declined to do so and what we are left with is a regulatory vacuum just seven months out from the State election.

I want to be clear about something, I am not arguing for a free-for-all, and I do not think unlimited donations are a good thing. I think political funding should be capped and disclosed, and I do not think political funding should be opaque. If anything, my experience running as an independent has reinforced how important transparency and limits are.

What I and the other independents are arguing for is consistency under the law. If there are donation caps, they should apply to everyone. If there are disclosure requirements, they should bind every participant equally in the system.

The Victorian government now has a choice. It can rebuild a system that is genuinely fair, or it can try again to entrench its own advantage. But after this ruling, the margin for manoeuvre is much smaller. Because if this case shows anything, it is that a system designed to favour those already in power does not just disadvantage independents, it ultimately does not hold up at all.”