$177 million flowed to Australian political parties last year, but major donors can easily hide

The Australian Electoral Commission has updated its database^[1] of financial disclosure information for 2020-21.

This happens once a year and is keenly watched by political observers because it includes information about who is donating what to whom.

And yet, despite Australia’s political parties collectively reporting A$177 million in income, only a tiny fraction of this is identifiable. So the public is left with a woefully inadequate picture of what is actually going on with political funding in Australia.

What does the data tell us?

State elections attracted the big bucks

Queensland, Western Australia, Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and Northern Territory all went to the polls last year. So it is perhaps no surprise that most of the donations in Tuesday’s data release^[2] were made to political party branches in these states.

The Queensland election in particular attracted some very large donations, including almost $4 million from entities directly associated with the Labor Party. These associated entities are controlled by the party and their income is opaque^[3], but usually includes money from fundraising functions and investments. Typically, the party in power receives slightly more income than the opposition, but donations last year were particularly skewed towards the incumbents – at both state and federal levels. Who are the major donors? The biggest donor for the Coalition was Pratt Holdings^[4], with more than $1.2 million in donations to the Liberal Party. Other significant donations to the Coalition were received from fundraising vehicles and investment bodies (for example, the National Policy Forum^[5] and Cormack Foundation^[6]). Liberal candidate Scott Edwardes also made a large donation ($224,000), presumably to support his own (ultimately unsuccessful) campaign in the WA election. Labor’s biggest support came from its associated entities and several unions, including the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association, United Workers Union, and the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union.