“Organisations, including activist organisations seeking to influence election outcomes, will no longer be able to shroud their electoral income in secrecy,” Scott Morrison’s right-hand man Ben Morton wrote to parliamentarians yesterday, urging them to dob in to the Australian Electoral Commission any such organisations under the government’s tightened rules around political advocacy.
The organisations he’s talking about? That would be the “Voices of” candidates emerging in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and, now, South Australia. The email is the latest salvo from a government panicked at the emergence of a series of grassroots independent candidates in safe seats occupied by do-nothing or low-profile Liberal moderates who have been complicit in the Nationals’ successful push to derail climate policy.
What’s amusing about Morton’s demand that such groups and those supporting them should “no longer be able to shroud their electoral income in secrecy” is that the Liberal Party is the biggest offender when it comes to just that.
Unlike most other parties, the Liberals refuse to report any contributions below the statutory threshold. Labor, the Greens, Clive Palmer and One Nation all report either all amounts above $1000, or every dollar. But not the Liberals or the Nationals. You can give $14,500 to every single Liberal branch and neither you nor they have to report it, and the Liberals do not.
That’s why millions of dollars in contributions to the federal Liberal Party are from hidden sources: according to Australian Electoral Commission data, around 22% of the federal party’s revenue in 2019-20, or $2.3 million, is shrouded in secrecy. Also hidden is 9% of its revenue in the election year of 2018-19, or over $4 million. Between 2015-20, the federal Liberals received over $12 million in revenue of which we have no idea of the origins.
But the federal party is a haven of transparency compared to other branches: between 2015-20, the Liberal National Party failed to explain where around $36 million in revenue came from, routinely reporting the source of less than half of its revenue.
Still, with Ben Morton assigning himself the role of smiter of the secret, we’re sure his home division, the Western Australian Liberals — which Morton ran for several years — are a beacon of transparency and report the source of every dollar they receive, right? Alas, that shroud stretches all the way across the Nullarbor: in 2019-20, the WA Libs didn’t disclose the source of over three-quarters of their revenue. They didn’t disclose the source of 65% in 2018-19; in 2017-18 it was 78%; 51% in 2016-17 and 75% in 2015-16. That’s over $20 million in secret money.
We need not remind Crikey readers that the Coalition has steadfastly opposed every single attempt to increase transparency in political donations after John Howard lifted reporting thresholds from $1000 to $10,000, indexed.
It seems transparency is for the little people. But those who buy influence with the Liberals should be left undisturbed.
I keep thinking that this LNP government cannot get any worse. And they keep proving me wrong.
It is very dispiriting to be even more wrong than both the Libs and Nats at both federal and state levels.
At times we compare large criminal organisations involved in graft and corruption to businesses. With all the general skulduggery of the neoconservative Liberal National Party and including it’s “large investment” in retaining power, perhaps we should consider it a business. I’ll leave the remainder of the reverse allegory to you …
Can political donations be added to the list of issues that independents are prepared to campaign about?
That is, can the thresholds be reduced to something like a $100 so that all donations are properly shown.
The people who can do that (amend the Electoral Act) are the very people who benefit most by declining to change.
So no, that will not be done until we have a Fed Parliament not controlled by major parties.
It is the same reason we have no Federal ICAC. The same reason whistleblowing laws have gone unreformed four years later.
The only power still in our hands is to place them last in ballot preferences.
I’m thinking about the money put in the church bowls and donations to help the poor. Poor old liberals!
The National redress really helped the churches save a packet. The majority of churches did not take up the invitation to join.
The inner workings of churches are very political and the church mice work a treat for free and donate massive donations to the Liberals.
The Capital Hill Song sung together by NFP organisations. Simple mathematics?
And reported in real time, not 12 months after the fact.
Every unreported donation is, by definition, a bribe.
It’s all very smelly, of a similar reek to the attack on charities for political activity which it seems to me ignores the charity status and legendary donor secrecy of the IPA.
The Libs have turned a skerrick of an issue into an ideological beat-up yet again. My personal favourite was the introduction of superannuation choice because the industry super funds supported the unions that the Libs hated so much. Turns out the move actually helped the industry funds, because they were run more efficiently and for better member returns than the for-profit funds the Libs tried to promote, since industry funds are not subject to portions being creamed off for the benefit of execs and shareholders.
Morrison is in a Glass House throwing stones. This blunder is bigger than :It’s Not A Race” and the retaliation will end his prospects. His Party is funded by secret donations, the biggest of which were bought with the gift of helium, a national public resource, to foreign corporations who are now huge donors. Morrison’s Party is funded by the proceeds of crime.
It is not the bugging of Timor that needs investigation. It is the disposition of the proceeds by Howard Ministers.
The Age had a nice article about people from the Nandringha rubbing shoulders with politicians.
A long ling time ago, when I was at a Uni in Oulu, there was this American lady who mentioned that the mob was everywhere in politics. I laughed then, but not anymore.
By the Howard Ministers, and to themselves, in the form of well-paid sinecures with Santos. For a job well done.
Step 1. Criminalise ALL political donations.
Step 2. Spend a puny few hundred million dollars a year of taxpayer money from our 400billion dollar economy fulling funding political parties.
Step 3. Sit back and watch as suddenly/magically the major parties stop pre-selecting candidates solely based on their ability to extracting money from corporate, religious and/or union party donors… and magically start pre-selecting candidates which actually represent and appeal to their local constituents.
You know- what democracy and representative government is SUPPOSED to look like.
It is a complete misnomer to suggest we actually live in a democracy when the reality is that our votes don’t give us a say in what the decision makers do.
Our decision makers (save for a tiny minority of independants) are 100% captured and beholden to their donors who pay their advertising bills, which buy the votes they want.
Every decision they make starts with the question:
“what is the best way of dealing with this for my donors? (and by extension myself and my own election/re-election chances)”
We can’t do anything about usurping self interest/preservation from that thought process- that would be akin to denying gravity.
But we CAN dislodge corporate/union/religious donors from being the only voice that matters to decision makers.
We the people can literally buy back our democracy from those who currently own it (big corporations, churches and unions) at an annual cost of less than $10 per Australian adult.
The only thing stopping us is the muppets currently ‘representing’ us.
We the voters are the culprits, aided and abetted. by the Murdoch media.
Damien, I assume you meant to include the Greens in the small minority who are not beholden to their donors – given that the Greens accept no corporate donations.
Correct.
The Greens would do very well in a electoral system that was taxpayer funded as it would require all parties (if they want to get or stay elected) to field candidates that look like, sound like and have the values of the electorate.
Which is something the Greens already do.
Imagine a Labor and Liberal party that wasn’t utterlty awash with 5th generation upper middle class white people?
You may say I’m a dreamer… but I’m not the only one.