Taxpayers will not stand for - nor should they - the funding of poster sites, leaflets or advertising. What people will support is funding for political education, for training, for party organization.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
If candidates spend money on ads and other political speech and their opponents are rewarded with government handouts to attack them, that chills speech and is unconstitutional. Non-participating candidates certainly don't volunteer to allow their opponents to receive taxpayer subsidies to bash them.
The reality is that asking the public to fund political campaigns accomplishes nothing. Candidates continue to seek interest-group support through other channels, both financial and in-kind, and corruption problems abound.
We need to find a way of having a conversation across the parties on how you fund local government.
Political development should start at the grassroots.
Corporations are not people. They shouldn't be funding. They shouldn't be funding campaigns at all.
In our democracy, political parties have to raise funds to campaign and put their policies to the electorate, and as a proud supporter of the Labour Party, I am happy to be in a position where I can make a contribution to its ongoing work.
We design our own programmes; we take leadership. Of course the donors come in to support us, to complement our efforts. Our responsibility to the donors is about accountability: about how we use that money. If somebody gives you his money, definitely he will be interested in knowing how you spend the money.
Being willing to donate the taxpayers' money is not the same as being willing to put your own money where your mouth is.
We are always doing something for posterity, but I would fain see posterity do something for us.
If you put up posters around town for high-school kids, high-school kids will come. If you're casting politicians, you can't put up posters and have politicians come down.