The Australian Experience of Electoral Bribery: Dealing in Electoral Support

This article explores state and federal Australian cases from the past thirty years — legal judgments, inquiries and political scandals — which implicate the law and concept of electoral bribery. Specifically it examines deals involving preferences and arrangements made between politicians and “third parties” such as lobby groups and the media. It shows that, defying assumptions that it died out a century ago, electoral bribery remains a thorny ethical and legal concept, particularly given evolving norms and electioneering practices. If bribery is to be a workable ethical or legal concept for judging contemporary electoral conduct then it needs to deal with horizontal relations between political actors rather than, as it traditionally has, to focus upon vertical relations between politicians and electors characterised by the former's efforts to buy the latter's votes.