Clive Palmer is the biggest single funding source for political donations over two decades, but unions, Liberal foundations also make the top 10.
A small club of elite donors has spent almost $1 billion in today’s dollars on donations over the past two decades, dominating funding for the major political parties and highlighting the influence of key insiders amid calls for reform to political finance laws.
“Big donations are distorting our political process,” said former NSW Supreme Court judge Anthony Whealy, KC, the chair of the Centre for Public Integrity. But the Centre for Public Integrity has questioned the disclosure regime because the major parties rely heavily on “associated entities” such as investment companies and foundations, which makes it difficult to know the ultimate source of cash flowing to election campaigns.The findings about the past two decades are part of a new paper on the concentration in donations from 1999 to 2021, when the main political parties received about $1.
Advocacy group Transparency International issued annual findings on Tuesday that praised Australia for legislating the National Anti-Corruption Commission but pointed to weaknesses on campaign finance and called for donations caps and real-time disclosure.The paper from the Centre for Public Integrity argues for policy changes including the disclosure of donations within a week at most times and within 24 hours of the payment during an election campaign.
An important change in Farrell’s plan is to reduce the threshold for disclosure from $14,800 to $1000 to ensure many more donations would have to be reported to the Australian Electoral Commission.
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