ANALYSIS: One-Quarter of Political Donations Untraceable

An abundance of Liberal Party signage at the Strathfield North Public School polling booth on Federal Election day, in the seat of Reid, in Sydney, Australia, on May 21, 2022. AAP Image/Dean Lewins

Analysis

Between 22 and 27 percent of donations received by major Australian political parties cannot be traced to specific donors, the Australian Electoral Commission has revealed.

Untraceable donations, to the Labor, Liberal, Nationals, and Greens, amounted to $57 million. During election year, the so-called “dark money” amounted to $90 million.

Under election laws, donations are only declarable over the value of $15,200.

According to an Epoch Times analysis, the four largest political parties received the following donations:

A table of donations to major Australian political parties including the Liberal Party, the Nationals, the Labor Party, and the Greens, compiled from data provided by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC). Compiled from data from the AEC

The totals cover the year following the federal election in 2022, and include donations, fees paid by members to attend the parties’ business forums, public funding from the AEC, and other payments.

The biggest single donation was $7.1 million from Clive Palmer’s mining company, Mineralogy, made to his United Australia Party in the year after the federal election. The party now—which has one elected member in the Senate— spent $2.5 million during the 2022/23 financial year.

Unions and Businesses Among the Donors

The Labor Party disclosed receiving $947,148 from the United Workers Union, $554,601 from the Shop, Distributive, and Allied Employees’ Association, and $256,168 from the NSW branch of the Australian Workers’ Union.

But employers contributed too.

Pratt Holdings, owned by billionaire Anthony Pratt, which in turn owns Visy Industries, the world’s largest privately owned packaging and paper company, donated $1 million.

Pratt Holdings tends to have a bet each way, having donated $10.1 million to the Coalition and $5.5 million to Labor since 1998.

The Liberal Party received $3.5 million from the Cormack Foundation, a Liberal-aligned funding body.

Vapold Pty Limited, a company owned by former Senator Richard Alston—which trades as the Victorian Business Forum—donated $2.7 million. Another $1.3 million came from 281 Sandgate Road Properties Pty Ltd, which is registered at the same address as the Liberal National Party of Queensland.

Gina Rinehart—whose net worth is estimated to be $30.9 billion—gave the party $150,000 through her company Hancock Prospecting.

The Greens received only two large donations, both from the David Walsh Estate totalling $437,000.

Government Contractors Gave Big

PricewaterhouseCoopers—which received $423.7 million from 1,205 government contracts in the 2021/22 financial year—increased its donations by 50 percent to $369,973 over the year, with $224,006 of the total going to Labor.

Rival consultancy Ernst and Young also increased its donations by 75 percent to $227,853, with Labor receiving $186,732 of the total. That firm received $320.2 million in government contracts in the same year.

Meanwhile, Deloitte and KPMG’s donations decreased year-on-year to $177,126 and $163,200 respectively.

A combination of file pictures shows logos of Price Waterhouse Coopers, Deloitte, KPMG and Ernst & Young. Reuters/File Photos

A study by The Centre for Public Integrity, which assessed 10 years of donation disclosures and procurement data, found the average value of government contracts won by political donors was $3.3 million—significantly higher than the average awarded to non-donors, which was $762,449.

It also found that donors were 2.49 times more likely to win procurement contracts than non-donors.

Greens Senator Larissa Waters—who introduced a private member’s bill that would ban firms from winning government contracts within a year of their last political donation—described political donations as an “obscene merry-go-round of public money [and] an ongoing blight on our political system, the idea that it is all a big coincidence doesn’t fly. It needs to be called out for what it is; legalised bribery.”

Small Parties Also Benefitted

Parties outside of Parliament were also beneficiaries of substantial donations, with Advance Australia doubling its receipts to $5.2 million.

The party went on to play a key role in the “No” campaign during The Voice referendum. Its largest donor, of over $1 million, was a Perth-based company Hadley Holdings, owned by 94-year-old retired Perth car salesman and dealership owner Brian Hadley Anderson.

Heston Russell, the former SAS solider who was defamed by the ABC, donated $650,000 to his own Australian Values Party, which went on to be de-registered in August 2023.

Heston Russell speaks to media outside the NSW Federal Court in Sydney, Australia, on Oct. 16, 2023. AAP Image/Bianca De Marchi

But the fact that around a quarter of all the money flowing into Australia’s political parties, and the delay in reporting it, has concerned democracy watchdogs.

The Australia Institute’s democracy and accountability program director, Bill Browne, noted some of the data was 18 months old, and that the situation illustrated the lack of transparency and integrity in politics.

“These lags and other loopholes make it difficult to see how politicians and political parties are being funded, and by whom,” he said.

“With Parliament resuming next week, this is a wake-up call that 2024 is the last chance for meaningful democratic reform ahead of the 2025 election.”

Calls for Tougher Rules

Tougher disclosure laws are also backed by former NSW Liberal minister, Michael Yabsley, who was a key party fundraiser.

He adds that they should be backed by tough enforcement and harsh penalties. He supports a disclosure threshold of $200, and wants to see prison sentences for anyone attempting to hide donations.

“There are penalties in the form of custodial services that pertain to a lot of forms of white-collar crime,” he pointed out. “And I can’t think of anything more important than preserving the integrity of the democratic system. If someone is stupid enough to say, ‘OK, we’ve worked out a way to get $500,000 to the Liberal Party or the Labor Party,’ but then they see that the downside of doing that is seven years in the slammer, they might think twice about doing that.”

The government has promised wide-ranging electoral reforms covering a lowering of the declarable disclosure threshold to $1,000, as well as real-time disclosure, plus caps on both donations and spending.

The first two measures were recommended by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, and are backed by Labor, the Greens, and independents Kate Chaney and David Pocock.

But the opposition characterised the proposals as an attempt to “financially gerrymander” an advantage for Labor and its union donors, with Liberal MP James Stevens vowing his party, would resist it “tooth and nail.”

The committee found the issue of capping donations more difficult to determine, as there were questions about whether they should “[apply] to all parties, candidates, and associated entities …  [be] aggregated across candidates and parties, and [exclude] party membership fees, subscriptions, levies, and affiliation fees.”

Special Minister of State Don Farrell said lowering the disclosure threshold and real-time reporting were the “key to transparency” and “perfectly capable of being dealt with in our first term.”

The Committee also proposed introducing a law covering truth in political advertising, to be overseen by a new division within the Australian Electoral Commission. Currently, the law only bans material that misleads voters about the process of voting, with nothing stopping any person or organisation from making other false statements.