After years of campaigning, various workshops, emails, phonecalls, office visits and lawyers letters, the President has finally gazetted the implementation date for the Political Party Funding Act. The Act will come into effect on 1 April 2021.
This law will fundamentally improve and deepen our ability to exercise our political rights from an informed position. For the first time in our country’s history, political parties will need to disclose the sources and amounts of private funding they receive and this will be available to the public. The regulatory framework the law creates will also serve to clamp down on corruption and the undue influence of private interests in our politics. The PPFA will also repeal our current public funding legislation (Public Funding of Represented Political Parties Act) and create a Represented Political Party fund. This will be to the benefit of smaller parties and will strengthen our multi-party democracy.