The figures are out. The millions spent are available for all to see. They reveal that the six successful “Teal” independents garnered some large donations during their election campaigning.
Now, the revealed donations are getting a lot of people talking, particularly as the major news outlets share the figures across their front pages, and highlight some of the big billionaire spenders.
The Australian reports the revelations have triggered claims Australia is “for sale”, noting how the six teal independents raised “war chests” worth $10.2 million. News.com.au shared the “insane cost to take out Liberal MP”, referring to Allegra Spender (pictured above) who received more donations than any other independent to take out the Liberal Party’s Dave Sharma, at $1.9 million from 661 donations. The Financial Review declares that “The Teal Wave cost $10 million”, while the Sydney Morning Herald shared an interview with Rob Keldoulis on their Monday front page, with the “little-known share trading firm founder” explaining his $1.85 million on donations to Climate 200 (which funneled into Teal independent campaigns) and why he’ll do so again.
So how do we know the volume of donations to the Teals and some of the names behind them?
Because the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) released figures on Monday from its transparency register, revealing the financial disclosure returns for non-party backed candidates at the 2022 federal election.
It just seems so unfair, what about the major parties and their candidates? Especially those Liberal Party men who lost their jobs to these millionaire-backed Teals. Like the former Treasurer Josh Frydenberg who was ousted by Dr Monique Ryan, and Jason Falinski who lost his seat to Dr Sophie Scamps.
Don’t feel bad for them.
There were plenty of millions also flowing to the major political parties and then onto their candidates — although we won’t know exactly how many millions were received for some time, nor are we ever likely to see full transparency in terms of who spent what. This week’s AEC register drop only included candidates not backed by a political party, those who are backed by a political party can roll their reporting into an overall political party return, to be revealed during the next AEC public reporting period. The AEC publishes these once a year, in February.
But the focus is on the Teals because they’re fresh — we’re still not even six months from the election. The Teals also presented something very different that plenty of people are still adjusting to: a large number of women elected with careers and backgrounds that looked very different to the more established career politicians we’ve grown used to.
The real absurdity here is that we learn about the donations the individual independents received, without learning about the donations that major party-backed candidates received. And when we do learn more about the donations that went to major parties, we won’t see the individual breakdowns to learn how much was spent in each seat. Also, by February 2023 and/or February 2024, we can also predict that the volume of donations will raise far fewer eyebrows and less interest.
We know this, because we’ve seen it before.
This year’s February release revealed that parties received $177 million in the 2020/21 Financial Year, across state and federal politics. Of the $177 million reported, very little of it is actually identifiable. The Liberal Party of Australia recorded $73.8 million during this period, while the Australian Labor Party regarded 67.3 million. The Greens recorded $16 million and the National Party $9 million
Just 9 per cent of what the two major parties declared to the AEC during this period was declared donations. The bulk of the rest of their party income was either undeclared or considered “other receipts”, a murky term that covers everything from fundraising functions to other items. Meanwhile, many large donors are getting away with not disclosing the full extent of what they are giving, simply by making multiple payments that fall under the $14,300 threshold figure where the person responsible doesn’t need to be declared.
The February 2022 update revealed that Pratt Holdings donated more than $1.2 million to the Coalition, which received other significant donations from bodies known as the National Policy Forum, Cormack Foundation, as well as from Harry Triguboff’s Meriton Apartments. Labor received good support from unions, including the United Workers Union and Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association.
Meanwhile, GetUp!, the left-leaning grassroots movement, raised $553,000 from its campaigning over this period, which was gazumped by right-wing Advance Australia, raising $1.3 million. A major difference here is GetUp!’s donors came mostly from individuals, while Advance Australia’s was from large companies.
Transparency over political donations matters, given donors can often get unique access to decision-makers in government. It’s not only about who donates but why they donate, which is obviously impossible to guess at or determine if we can’t at least see the full names that sit behind these donations.
You can see the Australian Electoral Commission’s Transparency Register here.