Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch
I think its irrelevant that parties are in debt.
I was reading last night that the Greens spent $54 million on this election campaign while garnering about $1.6 million from vote dollers, and they hope to pay a million back this year. We've been hearing that the Liberal's are massively in debt, yet they ran what looks like a far more expensive campaign then the Greens, but they still spent that money, and they'll run a lavish leadership campaign as well.
Debt doesn't stop the parties from spending.
Does anyone think that bad debt writeoffs will become the campaign contribution of the future?
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The maximum a federal party can spend on the election is $18M. The maximum each individual candidate can spend is somewhere in the neighborhood of $80K. Even if you assume each candidate spent the maximum (and I can guarantee you that is not the case), the absolute most the Greens, in their entirety, could spend would be around $43M.
I'd expect most green candidates spent considerably less than the $80K allowed, and I'd be shocked if the national campaign spent anywhere near $18M. I didn't see a single advertisement for them, or hear one on the radio. They didn't rent a plane (a major expense). It didn't appear that they had an advertising firm, nor a PR firm working with them.
Are you sure you didn't miss a decimal point? $5.4M maybe?
In any event, yes... parties have shown that they are comfortable racking up the debt. However, they are just businesses. They do get their money from banks, that do charge interest on those loans. At some point, the banks are going to either jack up the rates to a significant level, or just say no because the risk is too great.