As usual, we don’t know where much of the money in politics is coming from. The newly released 2023-24 donor returns form a wildly incomplete picture, with “dark money” making up 45% of what parties received.
According to the Centre for Public Integrity, $74.5 million was declared by parties without a source, $35.2 million of it by the Coalition (little wonder the opposition opposes reforms to lower the disclosure threshold to $1,000). And don’t get me started on right-wing Advance Australia, which declared sources for just 7% of the $15 million it received — including $500,000 from the Cormack Foundation, a Liberal Party fundraising group. Nothing suss!
However, one group of donors has received outsized media attention. As the Murdoch media has eagerly reported, two of the three top donors gave to fundraising outfit Climate 200, with investors Rob Keldoulis and Marcus Catsaras* each tipping in $1 million to its $6 million total — small in the scheme of things, but conveniently aligned with Coalition claims that Climate 200 constitutes “big money”.
I’m about to add to that attention, with a caveat that we should be more concerned by the money we can’t see. But it’s worth considering Climate 200’s backers, thousands of whom opt to be named on its site. Who are they? What do they want? And with debate once again swirling over Labor’s electoral reforms, how much is too much for one individual to give?
Climate 200 certainly has a reputation for attracting wealth. Keldoulis, a trading firm founder from Sydney’s east, has donated more than $1 million for three years running (as he told Nine in November 2022: “I’m hooked”). Catsaras, a young energy-market trader who gave similarly for the past two years, hasn’t spoken to the media about his donations, but this week posted a video explaining the urgency of supporting climate-driven candidates.
Previous major backers of Climate 200 include Atlassian’s Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar (among other tech founders), the Milgroms and the Fairfaxes, with convenor Simon Holmes à Court contributing relatively smaller amounts.
Climate 200 has been at pains to clarify its donors aren’t just the mega-rich. Analysis given to Nine in 2022 suggested 85% of Climate 200’s 11,200 donors gave $500 or less; similar figures were circulated in November 2024, suggesting an average donation size of $95. The AFR last week pointed to Sydney Film Festival founding director David Donaldson, who marked his 94th birthday with a donor drive, matching smaller donations to the tune of $94,000.
Several other donation-matchers are listed on Climate 200’s website, including health start-up founder Jenna Tregarthen and her husband Stuart, whose previous startup was acquired by Walmart. The Australian entrepreneurs are partaking in their second fundraising drive, while moving home from the US with their two small children — prompted in large part by Donald Trump’s reelection.
Tregarthen tells me she didn’t use to be politically active beyond trying to vote for values-aligned candidates. But the 39-year-old Bright Therapeutics founder was “inspired” by the community independents: “Predominantly accomplished, professional women making a sacrifice at the peak of their careers in the interest of public service.” Donating is the “easy” part, she adds, seven different times, often gushing about her pride at being involved.
Tregarthen and her husband gave $28,000 to Climate 200 in 2022, matching donations up to $40,000 in a campaign run with a friend. This election they are pledging $60,000, with a (reportedly quite successful) focus on the need to ward off Trumpism, which she felt powerless to stop in America.
“Now I know how quickly things can change,” she laments, adding she no longer takes basic human rights for granted. “I have much more of a sense of urgency and of wanting to protect the Australia that I know and I love, because it could all go away so quickly.”
Tregarthen sees donating to independents as “an investment in democracy”, saying it’s crucial that communities select their challengers. She doesn’t have contact with candidates, saying her only expectation of those who receive her funds is that they uphold Climate 200’s values of “climate, integrity, and gender equity”, while being free to set their policies. (She won’t stop donating over individual differences on other issues, she says, something Sussan group owner Naomi Milgrom has reportedly threatened).
Tregarthen doesn’t rule out chipping into individual campaigns. But she views “Climate” — as she casually refers to the funding aggregator — as a useful vehicle to “strategically and efficiently deploy the funds”, focusing on the “bigger picture”.
“I don’t necessarily have time to think about how and when to donate to who in the most effective way,” she explains. “I’m a full-time mum running a company and I just don’t have time to stay as on top of things … I value the fact that Climate 200 is working full-time to be informed and to be responsive in a way the candidates need it to be.”
I put to Tregarthen that Labor’s electoral reforms have seen little public pushback (though plenty from experts) because “getting money out of politics” sounds vaguely positive. She agrees there needs to be some limit on contributions (her donations fall well under Labor’s proposed cap), but she takes issue with how the reforms undermine Climate 200’s aggregation model, preventing “syndicates of individuals coming together” to support a common goal, meanwhile ensuring the majors remain flush.
“I see Climate 200 [as] democracy working,” she says. “It’s giving the everyday person a vehicle to contribute, as opposed to, you know, large institutions that have political interests being the ones that are donating.” That said, Tregarthen understands the qualms about money in politics — she used to share them, as her 2022 drive expressly noted.
“My instinctive reaction to donating was like, ‘Oh no, not money in politics’,” she recalls. “But when I looked more closely, it made so much sense to deploy money in this way. When you think about climate, you can contribute and donate to any number of individual not-for-profits, organisations advancing different things. We need system-level change, which starts with policy.” She references doing an impact analysis, finding that her dollars could have the greatest reach by getting climate-friendly candidates into office.
Tregarthen obviously can’t speak for all Climate 200 donors — after all, there are more than 10,000 of them. But she insists she doesn’t seek any personal benefit “other than helping my children to have a brighter future, and even just retaining the freedoms that they have in this incredible country — that’s my vested interest”.
We will have to Tregarthen’s word for that. But at least we know where her money is coming from, unlike the cheeky $74.5 million in dark money that went to the majors, whose source and interests cannot be traced.
*Greek media also picked this up in 2024, though for slightly different reasons.
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