Speaker 1: From Schwartz Media. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven AM.
Speaker 1: Tens of millions of dollars in dark donations to political
Speaker 1: parties have renewed calls for election funding reform. The major
Speaker 1: parties received over one hundred and forty million dollars in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three to twenty four, with close to half
Speaker 1: of that undisclosed, and even the donations we do know
Speaker 1: about are only just now being reported, in some cases
Speaker 1: eighteen months after they were made. The Albanezi government has
Speaker 1: been proposing to reform the system, but as it negotiates
Speaker 1: the finer details, independents and minor parties are worried the
Speaker 1: proposal is a stitch up that would benefit the major
Speaker 1: parties at their expense. Today National correspondent at the Saturday
Speaker 1: Paper Mike Sekham on Australia's biggest political donors and the
Speaker 1: roadblocks to reform. It's Wednesday, February five. So, Mike, the
Speaker 1: Australian Electoral Commission has just released the list of who
Speaker 1: donated what in Australian politics. For the past year. You've
Speaker 1: been digging into it, having a look following the money.
Speaker 1: So tell me what you've learned.
Speaker 2: Well, I guess the first thing we always look for
Speaker 2: is where the big money donors line up, right, so
Speaker 2: some familiar faces. Of course I looked for Gina Reinhart
Speaker 2: for example. So Gina Reinhart's Hancock prospecting gave around five
Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars to various branches of the Liberal National Party.
Speaker 2: And this of course helps make some sense of you know,
Speaker 2: the extent to which we've seen and cozying up to her.
Speaker 3: And at the end of last week, Peter Dutton squeezed
Speaker 3: in a trip to Western Australia for Gina ryan Hart's birthday.
Speaker 2: Party, notably flying across the country from Canberra to West
Speaker 2: in Australia on the eve of a vital by election,
Speaker 2: I might add, so he could attend her birthday party
Speaker 2: for one hour before flying all the way back again.
Speaker 3: Maybe Dutton's just a mega fan of Guy Sebastian, who's
Speaker 3: sang the national anthem at Gena's party.
Speaker 2: More recently, of course, we've seen Reinhardt come back from
Speaker 2: meetings with Donald Trump and Elon Musk at Mary Lago
Speaker 2: advocating that the Australia set up a Department of Government
Speaker 2: Efficiency like the one that's being set up under Musk
Speaker 2: to slash government spending. Well, guess what.
Speaker 4: Peter Darton has appointed Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians just
Speaker 4: into sorry Nampagina price to a new government efficiency folio
Speaker 4: with cutting the fat and the fat cats.
Speaker 2: Interestingly, Anthony Pratt, another of our billionaires, showed up on
Speaker 2: the register. He's another one who spent New Year at
Speaker 2: Mara Lago with Donald Trump and with Scott Morrison and
Speaker 2: with Gina Reinhardt.
Speaker 1: Actually, at one point taps Pratt's shoulder in a warm way.
Speaker 5: Trump's son Don Jor was just behind them. You can
Speaker 5: see that at some point in the foot edge.
Speaker 2: Well, it turns out that Pratt has dropped a million
Speaker 2: dollars into the Labor Party.
Speaker 1: Right, okay, So what do we know Mike about the
Speaker 1: relationship between Anthony Pratt and Anthony ABENEZI.
Speaker 2: Look, to me, this suggests not particular personal loyalty, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm sure they get on and everything, But it suggests
Speaker 2: to me that Anthony Pratt sees value in backing winners,
Speaker 2: you know, which is what the Labor government looked to
Speaker 2: be when the Pratt donations were made. So some sharp
Speaker 2: observers have noted that just a few weeks after that pledge,
Speaker 2: Anthony Albanezi attended a private function organized by Pratt at
Speaker 2: his home in Melbourne, with Katie Perry providing the entertainment.
Speaker 5: The invitation in part reading Anthony Pratt looks forward to
Speaker 5: welcoming you on Saturday night for dinner to celebrate Australia's
Speaker 5: food and beverage manufacturing industries, featuring a life performance by
Speaker 5: Katie Perry.
Speaker 2: But it's not just Pratt either. There were other big
Speaker 2: donors to the ALP whose motivations one might suspect. For example,
Speaker 2: listeners might remember that Labor was at one stage contemplating
Speaker 2: a blanket ban on gambling advertising last year, and just
Speaker 2: by coincidence it so happens Sports Bet donated eighty eight
Speaker 2: thousand dollars to Labor, Tap Corp donated sixty five hundred dollars,
Speaker 2: and Responsible Wagering so called gave sixty six thousand. It's
Speaker 2: just an interesting juxtaposition I think of very large donations
Speaker 2: around the time that the government is considering what it
Speaker 2: will do about gambling advertising. Overall, it's worth noting that
Speaker 2: the ALP and the Liberal National Party's total donations looked
Speaker 2: very similar, you know, around sixty four million dollars each.
Speaker 2: But there is one big difference, so my dad, which
Speaker 2: is that the Conservatives don't declare donations below the compulsory
Speaker 2: threshold of sixteen thousand, three hundred, which must say who
Speaker 2: gave you the money, So roughly a third of their
Speaker 2: donors go undeclared. Labor declares had a one thousand dollars threshold,
Speaker 2: so ninety percent of their donors are declared.
Speaker 1: Okay, well that's the two major parties then, but what
Speaker 1: about the rest of the political class. What about the independence?
Speaker 2: Well, Climate two hundred, which funds the campaigns of a
Speaker 2: lot of the independence received five point nine million dollars
Speaker 2: in donations. Founder of Climate two hundred, Simon Homes are
Speaker 2: called kicked in three hundred thousand dollars in the twenty
Speaker 2: three to twenty four financial years, So that's what about
Speaker 2: two percent of the total funds. Climate two hundred in
Speaker 2: turn donated to various of the community independents. Zoe Daniels
Speaker 2: and Monique Ryan got over just one hundred grand each.
Speaker 2: Daniels and Ryan, of course, of the two that are
Speaker 2: expected to have the toughest fights to hold the seats,
Speaker 2: that they were at the last election. Climate two hundred
Speaker 2: is also expected to donate to kick money into the
Speaker 2: campaigns of about thirty community independence this year. So yeah,
Speaker 2: they got a lot of money and they declared it
Speaker 2: all which is interesting. If you put in fifty bucks
Speaker 2: to Climate two hundred, they say where it came from.
Speaker 2: Similar thing with the Greens, they did quite well. There's
Speaker 2: a longtime Greens donor, a professional poker player called Duncan Turpey.
Speaker 2: He gave nine hundred thousand to the Greens and he
Speaker 2: gave another three hundred thousand to Climate two hundred. There
Speaker 2: was one big absence from the register this year though,
Speaker 2: and that was Clive Palmer. I mean, this is the
Speaker 2: bloke who spent one hundred and twenty odd million dollars
Speaker 2: at the last election and only got one seat and
Speaker 2: got a candidate elected in one seat. Interestingly, he has
Speaker 2: since deregistered his United Australian Party. He did that in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two. But I do see that Clive is
Speaker 2: now starting to run ads on TV and elsewhere again
Speaker 2: with a political message. Palmer has always admitted that his
Speaker 2: political parties, and they've been a string of them now
Speaker 2: are less concerned about winning seats than they are with
Speaker 2: defeating the Labor Party, And Mike, the.
Speaker 1: Thing I think is really important here is that you
Speaker 1: have these big policy decisions being made and we don't
Speaker 1: find out until much later that interested parties have been
Speaker 1: donating around the same time. And what's more, there's undeclared
Speaker 1: donations that we still don't even know about. This was
Speaker 1: talked about last year as part of the government's proposed
Speaker 1: electoral reforms.
Speaker 2: Right absolutely, that seems like a worthy reform and it
Speaker 2: would not be a hard problem to fix.
Speaker 1: So why hasn't that happened? That's after the break, So, Mike,
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of discussion around Albaneze's attempt to
Speaker 1: limit the influence of big money in the next election.
Speaker 1: Last year he tried to pass these big electoral reforms,
Speaker 1: but then things went quiet.
Speaker 2: So what happened, Well, in a nutshell, the proposal that
Speaker 2: was put together by Don Farrell, the Special Minister of State,
Speaker 2: is very complex, you know, and some of its provisions
Speaker 2: things like real time reporting. He also proposed reducing the
Speaker 2: disclosure threshold from almost seventeen thousand dollars down to one thousand.
Speaker 2: These things were seen as good things, But there were
Speaker 2: a slew of other changes. I mean, this was a huge,
Speaker 2: huge package, and a number of them appeared to be
Speaker 2: designed at preserving the two party duopoly. For example, there
Speaker 2: was to be a cap on spending of ninety million
Speaker 2: dollars by political parties right, which is fairly healthy, but
Speaker 2: only eight hundred thousand non individual campaigns. So if you're
Speaker 2: an independent running your individual campaign, you've got a limit
Speaker 2: of eight hundred thousand. Meanwhile, the major parties can spend
Speaker 2: ninety million, which would seem to put you at a
Speaker 2: significant disadvantage.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: There's all sorts of other complexities, like donation caps which
Speaker 2: would be said at twenty thousand dollars per donor per
Speaker 2: party per year. Well fair enough, you might say, but
Speaker 2: the Labor Party is actually nine separate entities, so potentially
Speaker 2: more than seven hundred thousand dollars could be kicked into
Speaker 2: the pockets of the Labor Party. And in fact, Dohn
Speaker 2: Farrell has been pretty open about the intention of this package.
Speaker 2: There was one instance last year where Farrell told the
Speaker 2: story about being approached by Simon Holmes, a court who
Speaker 2: complained to him that the changes would lock out independent
Speaker 2: challenges and Farrell reportedly replied, well, that's the fucking point.
Speaker 2: So this brings us back to the last setting days
Speaker 2: of November, you know, where the government was feverishly trying
Speaker 2: to get a whole bunch of bills through before the
Speaker 2: end of the year, and they were hoping that they
Speaker 2: could get the electoral reform bill up on the votes
Speaker 2: of the Liberal National Party opposition. And then the coalition
Speaker 2: came to the conclusion that the changes would disproportionately benefit
Speaker 2: Labor over them, so then they wouldn't vote for it.
Speaker 2: So the whole thing pete it out in the Senate
Speaker 2: and now it's coming back.
Speaker 1: Right okay, So tell me what is Don Farrell proposing.
Speaker 1: What can he do well?
Speaker 2: In those final frenzied days of the last sitting, Labor
Speaker 2: got support from the cross Bench to push through a
Speaker 2: whole lot of bills and they did it by cutting
Speaker 2: various deals and getting various promises. And one of those
Speaker 2: promises at the time was that they would engage over
Speaker 2: the Christmas New Year break with the cross Bench on
Speaker 2: the topic of electoral reform and see if they could
Speaker 2: get something together that would be broadly acceptable. This was
Speaker 2: a condition imposed by Senator David Pocock, who along with
Speaker 2: West Australian Independent Kate Cheney, have been sort of the
Speaker 2: point people for the Independence on the subject of electoral reform.
Speaker 2: But then last week they wrote a letter complaining that
Speaker 2: there had in fact been no consultation with them. In
Speaker 2: the letter, addressed to Albanesi and Farrell, they called for
Speaker 2: the Government to split the reform bill and send the
Speaker 2: less controversial parts of it, that is, you know, real
Speaker 2: time disclosure, lower donation thresholds, that sort of thing. They
Speaker 2: said they could get that through the Senate like that,
Speaker 2: and in the meantime they said the more controversial elements
Speaker 2: should go off to a Senate inquiry and then be
Speaker 2: considered separately at a later date. So consultation was promised.
Speaker 2: There has been no consultation with the cross Bench that
Speaker 2: I can establish, and only the most limited consultation I
Speaker 2: think in the form of one phone call and possibly
Speaker 2: one discussion with the Greens.
Speaker 1: Right, So very little consultation or negotiation so far.
Speaker 2: Well, certainly not with them. In fact, I asked Farrell's
Speaker 2: office last week you know what was the go and
Speaker 2: his office insisted that there had been negotiations, but they
Speaker 2: wouldn't say, with whom they were negotiating. The suspicion, I
Speaker 2: think is pretty clear that the major parties are trying
Speaker 2: to stitch up a deal here, and the Greens and
Speaker 2: the miners are being left out in the coal Right.
Speaker 1: And I suppose the suspicion is that if the two
Speaker 1: major parties do manage to agree on this being one
Speaker 1: of the only things they agree on, then the laws
Speaker 1: that we ultimately end up with are going to be
Speaker 1: laws that suit them, which would likely mean that there's
Speaker 1: no real time disclosure of donors.
Speaker 2: Right well, I don't know if we'll end up with
Speaker 2: real time disclosure. It would be a great thing if
Speaker 2: we did. It would be a great thing if a
Speaker 2: lot of the dark money was taken out of politics.
Speaker 2: But I tell you what I do know. I do
Speaker 2: know that a couple of decades the share of the
Speaker 2: vote going to minor parties and independence was in the
Speaker 2: single digits. At the last election twenty twenty two, almost
Speaker 2: a third of voters looked at Labor and the Coalition
Speaker 2: and looked at what they were offering and then voted
Speaker 2: for someone else. And I do suspect also that the
Speaker 2: coming election we'll see a continuation of that trend away
Speaker 2: from the majors, possibly to the extent where neither of
Speaker 2: the big parties will be able to form a majority government.
Speaker 2: So bottom line here is, despite the fact that this
Speaker 2: proposed package contains some good measures, it's always worth asking
Speaker 2: the old question quey bono, you know who benefits? And
Speaker 2: if we end up with a bipartisan labor coalition deal,
Speaker 2: it will not be in the interests of greater diversity
Speaker 2: in the Parliament. Let's put it that.
Speaker 5: Way, Mike.
Speaker 1: Thank you for your time, Thank you for yours. Also
Speaker 1: in the news today, the new South Wales Transport Minister
Speaker 1: Joe Halen has resigned from her position following revelations about
Speaker 1: the use of a taxpayer funded ministeri or car for
Speaker 1: private purposes. The former minister had asked her driver to
Speaker 1: take her and friends to a winery lunch on a
Speaker 1: recent weekend. That trip involved a thirteen hour, four hundred
Speaker 1: and forty six kilometer drive from Sydney to a holiday
Speaker 1: house on the Central Coast and then a Hunter Valley
Speaker 1: winery and back. Joe Halen, who will remain an MP,
Speaker 1: said that while she did not break the rules, she
Speaker 1: had let the public down and her actions didn't pass
Speaker 1: the pub test, and US President Donald Trump has agreed
Speaker 1: to pause placing tariffs on Mexico and Canada for one
Speaker 1: month while the nations negotiate agreements on trade and security.
Speaker 1: The last minute move came hours before a midnight deadline
Speaker 1: was Judaicye hefty tariffs come into effect on goods from Mexico, Canada,
Speaker 1: and China. President Trump confirmed he agreed to the pause
Speaker 1: after Mexican President Claudia Schinbaum committed to sending ten thousand
Speaker 1: National Guard troops to the US Mexico border. I'm Ruby Jones.
Speaker 1: This is seven am. See you tomorrow.