ABSTRACT
Fourthly, there was the civic engagement or public participation question: was the existing system of party political funding conducive to encouraging large numbers of people to participate as campaigners, activists, fund raisers and spokesmen for political parties or did it simply turn them off, to the detriment of the democratic process? Fifthly, there was the political effectiveness question: did the current system enhance or reduce the ability of the Opposition parties to perform their principal functions, such as monitoring the Government of the day and developing new policies for the future? Finally, there was the question of freedom: to what extent was the state entitled to intervene (via the law) to curtail freedoms and rights of privacy in relation to party political donations? In many ways this was the fundamental question in the inquiry and the Neill Committee stated very clearly that its presumption was in favour of such a freedom, ‘save where we identify an overriding public interest calling for some limitation’.30
