Crikey for PM gets a cash donation

After the corflute disaster, things are really starting to look up: we’ve gotten a political donation. From who? We’re not telling you. Let’s just call him the shareholder activist… no that’s too obvious… Crikey founder… uh… Spaceman Africa is already taken. Let’s go with: Starsailor Bermuda.

How much? Well, the earliest you’re going to know is next February. Or maybe never! We obviously don’t have to tell you what promises we made to get this dosh, but what the hell, we’re in a good mood: our donor would like some tax reform, gambling reform, improvements to corporate governance and (get this) donation transparency.

We had to make some pretty wild promises to secure their cash, as our donor is an avid observer of what donations can get you in this country. One of Starsailor’s favourites: ClubsNSW shelling out $20,000 for the late Kevin Andrews in the lead up to the 2013 election. Andrews was a conservative MP who, you may recall, didn’t even represent a New South Wales electorate. But what he did represent was the powerful gambling lobby’s interests: the money his fundraisers received was a mere forkful from the millions ClubsNSW spent to oppose the pokies reform being proposed by Julia Gillard’s government as part of its deal with Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie. Andrews took up the cause, and was duly rewarded.

Gambling interests have had a real talent for getting their way, which may have something to with being the most generous donors to political parties of any industry this century, with a particular surge in money in the last decade.

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The level of access and influence this kind of money buys you in Australia speaks for itself. Any time you wonder why our most poisonous industries — like gambling or fossil fuels — get such a relatively easy time of it from government, it’s worth looking at how much they spend. If you find it baffling that the big four consultancies, particularly PwC as it faced very serious questions about integrity, have been swimming in government cash, again, look to the money.

Consider the tireless work of Peta Murphy, who served as Labor’s MP for Dunkley from 2019 until her death in late 2023. Among her roles was to chair the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs, which held an inquiry into online gambling and its impacts in September 2022, and delivered a unanimous report titled “You win some, you lose more” in June 2023. The report made 31 recommendations including that federal, state and territory governments come together to “implement a comprehensive ban on all forms of advertising for online gambling, to be introduced in four phases, over three years, commencing immediately”.

Less than a week before Murphy died in December 2023, she provided a comment to The Sydney Morning Herald’s David Crowe on the importance of gambling reform: “The evidence is clear — families hate the amount of sports betting their kids are exposed to, we are all worried about its impacts on people and families, and the science justifies these concerns”.

Labor sat on the committee’s report for over a year, during which time it consulted widely with the gaming industry, in a process shrouded by the non-disclosure agreements participants were forced to sign. Eventually, the government settled on reforms that were a greatly watered-down version of the committees’ recommendations. Then, the reforms were shelved altogether. Australia, by government estimates, has the highest per capita gambling losses anywhere in the world — $25 billion every year.

Between the federal parties and their state and territory branches, entities representing gambling interests have contributed more than $22 million to the major parties as of 2022, split fairly evenly between the major parties — Labor got $9.5 million across all its branches, the Liberals $10.8 million and the Nationals $2 million. The following year, they chucked in another million.

In 2022-2023 alone, gambling industry groups handed over $1 million to state and federal branches of the major parties, In 2023-2024, Tabcorp gave the major parties a combined $193,000, Sportsbet $163,000 and The Lottery Corporation $115,000.

With the kind of influence this gets you, you can bet corporate donors are feeling particularly generous in the lead-up to this election. Handily, these vast sums are hidden from voters for up to 18 months after they’ve been made, by which time the political sting has usually gone out of the issue and any promises made are well on their way to being fulfilled. No matter how badly you want to know how much Woodside or box magnate Anthony Pratt gave to the people that will soon be charged with regulating them, you won’t be able to until well after the election.

Worse, writes electoral law expert Professor Graeme Orr:

The Liberal and Labor parties charge six-figure annual sums to join their business ‘network’ or ‘forum’. The Australian Electoral Commission then lets them decide if that is a ‘gift’ or a valuable purchase. This equates the undemocratic sale of access to politicians to, say, a genuine conference fee.

This is to say nothing of “dark” or hidden money; anything below a certain threshold (currently $16,900) doesn’t have to be disclosed at all. The Centre for Public Integrity identified $1.53 billion in hidden money flowing into politics between 1998-99 and 2021-22.

Thankfully, the major parties banded together in the last term to institute “donation reform”. It will lead to some worthwhile changes, like doing away with the highly dodge provision that allowed donors to “purchase” things like, say, a table at a party fundraiser, and not have that count towards their disclosable donation. The threshold for disclosing donations will also drop to $5,000.

But what was agreed is highly watered down from what Labor took to the last election. $5,000 may be lower than the current $16,900, but it’s higher than the $1,000 threshold they had promised to institute (hey, separately, remember the collective rage paroxysm the media had over Albanese’s broken promise on tax cuts?)

Under the new reforms, the maximum donation an individual can make has been increased to $50,000 (Labor had previously proposed a $20,000 cap). Peak industry bodies — such as the Minerals Council of Australia, or those gambling lobbyists we discussed earlier — will be able to donate $200,000. Third-party organisations like the ACTU or Advance will also be able to spend up to $11 million during election campaigns. Not to mention the fact that the taxpayer will be helping out more, whether they like or not: the new laws up the public funding parties receive per vote, which will likely net the majors somewhere in the region of $20 million extra per election.

But the major change this achieves is choking off the smaller players. At the next election, independent candidates will have a campaign cap of $800,000, while federal political parties will be capped at $90 million. At the time, the Greens accused the majors of “rigging the system to lock out their competitors”. Labor Senator Don Farrell’s reputed response could be cut and pasted as the reply to practically every problem we’ve registered our candidate to point out: “That’s the fucking point.”