With electoral reforms legislation passing the lower house on Wednesday night, it’s probably a good time for a reminder of the original impetus for caps on political donations.
In this chart we’re showing all political donations declared by parties or individual politicians (see the note below about the data for more information), grouped by financial year, and then classified as either coming from Clive Palmer or a Clive Palmer-owned company (Clive, in red), and donations that don’t involve Clive Palmer (Not Clive, in blue):
It’s as clear as a giant yellow billboard that one person has had an outsized spend in politics since the 2013 election. It is questionable how much actual political influence this gave Palmer, but he was most successful in 2013 with three Senate spots for the Palmer United Party, and one lower house seat won by Palmer himself.
Following that, he spent big on an anti-Labor advertising campaign in the 2019 election, although his party didn’t win any seats or Senate spots.
Then he spent big again in 2022, with the United Australia Party spending $123m in total in the 2021-22 financial year. Despite this, it secured just one Senate spot.
Guardian Australia’s modelling shows Palmer’s United Australia Party would likely be the biggest loser under the originally proposed donation changes. Climate 200 (operating on a vastly smaller scale than Palmer) would also have its fundraising curbed under the changes because the funding comes from a mix of a small number of large donations (which would potentially be capped) and a larger number of small donations, which wouldn’t be affected.
Incumbent candidates also do well under the changes, with increased public funding per vote and new administrative funds available.
Reduced disclosure thresholds will also reduce the amount of “dark money” in politics, that is, the amount of money parties receive for which no detailed source is required to be given.
The changes have been criticised by the Greens and independents, who have accused the major political parties of a “stitch-up”.
Notes on the data: The Australian Electoral Commission publishes political donation data in a few different data sets. Here, we’ve combined donation declarations by political parties, which are done annually by financial year, with donation declarations by political candidates, which are done for election and byelection campaign periods. This is because most party-aligned donations are declared in the annual donations, while independents declare their donations in the election declarations. This is also not showing the total money in politics in this time period – the major parties receive quite a bit more from investments, membership fees and other sources, in addition to donations.
