The Warringah Club has organised a gala fund-raising dinner for Tony Abbott’s campaign on July 31 at Doltone House on Sydney Harbour in Pyrmont. For a modest $220 a person, you can meet Abbott, hear radio personality Alan Jones entertain the crowd and participate in the usual fund-raising raffle and auction at the event.
The Warringah Club is one of the two major fund-raising arms for Abbott. Acting as a front organisation for the NSW Liberal Party, it has been embroiled in controversy in the past few years over lack of transparency of the sources of its income.
The club must submit yearly returns to the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) and six-monthly returns to the NSW Election Funding Authority (NSW EFA) when it receives donations or incurs electoral expenditure.
After the NSW 2007 state election, the NSW EFA sent numerous letters to the club telling it of its disclosure requirements, which the club ignored. Only after the EFA referred the club to the Crown Solicitor in August 2007 did it comply with the electoral law and submit a return to the EFA.
Former NSW Greens MP Lee Rhiannon’s Democracy4Sale research team discovered this year that The Warringah Club may have made multiple breaches of the NSW Election Funding Act 1981. The team submitted a complaint about these possible breaches to the NSW EFA in May 2010. The EFA has advised us they are actively investigating these matters and will notify us of their findings.
It appears the club has moved to avoid disclosure of the money its “gala” dinner will pour into the coffers of Abbott’s campaign by using the common NSW Liberal Party tactic of funnelling all the money it receives through the party’s head office.
The club will not have to disclose the thousands of dollars its dinner raises at the end of this month. Instead the money will be consolidated in the NSW Liberal returns to the AEC and EFA and the public will never know the identities of Abbott’s strong supporters.
The federal Liberal Party has a record of opposing transparency of sources of political donations, especially Abbott’s loyal allies, Senators Eric Abetz and Nick Minchin.
The question for potential Prime Minister Abbott is will he continue such tactics or move to the greater transparency we see in other Western democracies such as Canada, the UK and New Zealand?
I’m rather partial to the USA in this regard. Foreign individuals and cofrporations are not permitted to donate to political parties, nor these parties permitted to accept such donations. Or so I have been told.