When there’s this much money involved, you can guarantee it will end up in court

Next Friday night in Moonee Ponds, Pauline Hanson, Barnaby Joyce and supporters of One Nation will gather for a fundraiser at a newly opened Sicilian-themed restaurant.

Tickets start from $200. For $2000, you can buy a private audience with Senator Hanson. Exactly what this entails is not clear. If only Dame Edna Everage were still alive to muse about the goings on in her old neighbourhood.

Across Melbourne and Victoria, ’tis the season for tin-rattling, wine quaffing, cheese tasting and swanky corporate dinners, as political parties and aspiring independent MPs try to raise the money they’ll need for their campaigns.

And across the Victorian parliament, the limits of our political system to look past self-interest and fairly regulate the flow of money into state elections have never been more evident.

In the six weeks since the High Court, in its wisdom, ripped 80 pages out of the state’s Electoral Act and left Victoria without any campaign finance laws ahead of the November election, the Labor Party, Liberal Party and the Greens have been negotiating a legislative fix.

The only certainty now that the government has introduced a bill to parliament is that we will be back in the High Court before the election. This is not a bold prediction. As one Labor figure familiar with negotiations noted: “It is 100 per cent going to end up in court.”

This is not a criticism of the Allan government. It is an observation about human nature. If the women and men running our political parties were judges, they would be forced to recuse themselves from this case. They are all hopelessly conflicted.

The proposed replacement law, at a glance, appears an attempt at compromise. The previous cap on private donations of just under $5000 will be increased to $7500 and first-time candidates for non-major parties allowed to accept donations of up to $15,000. This change recognises that the old system, with its tight cap and generous provision of public funding, was unfairly skewed towards incumbents.

Public funding has also been increased, with Labor the beneficiary of an additional $3 million to cover the administrative expenses of its MPs and the Coalition reaping an extra $2 million. Climate 200 calculates that on current polling numbers, One Nation would receive about $17 million in taxpayer funding over the next four years. That makes Hanson’s glad-handing down Puckle Street look like small beer.

The biggest change is that, for the first time in decades, the Labor Party, Liberal Party and National Party will not have access to large donations from their legacy inve