Judge rules Nationals will not lose out on $250,000

The Liberal Party can continue giving money to the National Party in Victoria despite corruption fears, a judge has ruled.

The Nationals will keep $250,000 after a successful court challenge to the Victorian Electoral Commission. Picture: Glenn Campbell

The Liberal Party can continue giving money to the National Party in Victoria despite corruption fears, after a judge ruled in the parties’ favour.

Supreme Court of Victoria judge Melinda Richards said the deal was not a “gift” or “political donation”.

Instead, she said the transfer of cash was “adequate consideration in money’s worth” to the Nationals for agreeing not to run candidates in competition with their Coalition partners.

The Nationals stood to lose about $250,000 in campaign funding after the Victorian Electoral Commission decided the deal was not legal following the 2018 election.

VEC lawyer Chris Horan QC, told a previous court it could “open the door” to corruption.

“A candidate could say, ‘I’ll join your group ticket if you pay me a million dollars’ – and that would be fine,” he said.

But Justice Richards disagreed.

The Coalition’s lawyer Peter Hanks QC successfully argued that it was legal to run a group ticket – and that the agreement facilitated that.

With Justice Richards’s decision released on Wednesday, the VEC will have to continue honouring the agreement between the two parties.

In Victoria, candidates for state elections are given a certain amount of taxpayer money to refund them for their campaigns, distributed after elections.

Lower house candidates get $6 for every first preference vote cast for them and upper house candidates get $3 per first preference vote.

But the Liberal and National parties have an arrangement in country Victoria for their upper house candidates that, rather than receiving the money per vote like everyone else, they split any money, with two-thirds going to the Liberals and one-third going to the Nationals.

In exchange, the Nationals agree that the Liberals can run first on the ticket.

Without the deal, the Liberal Party would have been allocated $757,000 for the relevant seats, with only $1400 going to the Nationals, after the 2018 election.

But after Justice Richards’s decision, they will take about $250,000.

Justice Richards said she was “satisfied” that without the agreement, the Nationals would have received about one-third of total Coalition votes, and it was therefore fair for them to receive the money they had voluntarily given up.