State elections reveal just how important major party investment arms are

Queensland Labor’s highly profitable investment companies helped power it to an election win in 2020, with its financial arms, Labor Legacies and Labor Holdings, tipping in more than $3.6 million of the branch’s $18 million in revenue for 2020-21.

The contributions overshadowed those from trade unions, with the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association chipping in just over a quarter of a million, the electrical union CEPU $233,000, and the Australian Workers’ Union $210,000. Private sector donors were thinner on the ground: there was $66,000 from Ernst & Young and $65,000 from KPMG.

The LNP relied more heavily on its investment arm, receiving about $5.2 million from LNP Nominees; unsurprisingly it harvested far more private sector donations: $78,000 from garbage kings JJ Richards, $20,000 from major Liberal donor Anthony Pratt, $130,000 from Volvo Group, and $22,000 from KPMG — but much of the party’s donations are hidden because it refuses to reveal donations below the $14,500 threshold.

That applies even more to the Western Australian Liberals, where funding details are about as scarce as the party’s MPs after Labor Premier Mark McGowan finished destroying them at the 2021 state election. The party’s biggest donor was Liberal candidate Scott Edwardes, who handily lost the seat of Kingsley to Labor.

WA Labor, which revealed only about half its contributions, scored a monster $3.3 million from WA taxpayers after the election courtesy of its huge win — three times what the WA Liberals picked up. The AMWU handed the party $112,000, the SDA $380,000 and the United Workers $200,000. Perth merchant bankers Capital Investment Partners also donated $100,000 to McGowan, and miners Minerals Resources chipped in $92,000. WA fossil fuel powerhouse Woodside also gave Labor $58,000 — although WA Labor neglected to record the contribution in its return.

As Stephen Mayne explained last week, the parties’ investment arms are important financial resources for them. When times are lean — as they have been during the pandemic — those resources become even more important as parties look for every dollar they can find. That locks the big parties into the sharemarket and whatever major investments their financial arms choose independently to make. But as the experience of the LNP shows, out-earning your political opponents doesn’t always count for much at the ballot box.