Political donations and transparency

The Australian Electoral Commission last week published the list of donors to the major political parties. The Australian Financial Review commented in an editorial that the Commission’s data matching processes had yawning gaps through which anyone wanting to keep their identity private can walk with ease. It referred to the use of meaninglessly named trusts, organisations masquerading as individual donors; and donors taking advantage of the state structure of parties to spread goodwill unseen. There is no continuous reporting requirement so what is disclosed is only on an annual basis, long after the event.

While all this is a problem in itself, its about to get even easier to hide behind the law. A Commonwealth Government Bill currently half way through the Parliamentary process for example, will raise the threshold for identifying a party donation from $1,500 to $10,000.

The editorial noted that while the Government has been keen to move ahead with this type of change, it HAS NOT acted on most of the recommendations made by the Australian Electoral Commission since 1993 on better data matching, timeliness in reporting, and wider definition to include activities such as dinners, equipment loans and free advertising in the donations which need to be disclosed.

In another reminder about the opaque nature of this process, just go to the link on this page to the AEC and try to find the list of donors! We battled our way through – you need to use the side bars “summary” or “analysis” to get what you want.

However if this is too exhausting you can buy a CD containing imaged copies of the returns for $37 GST inclusive.