State political donations reform needed

STATE POLITICAL DONATIONS REFORM NEEDED
Call for Ban on Gaming, Alcohol & Smoking Donations
Nick McKim MP
Greens Leader

The Tasmanian Greens today reiterated their call for state-based political donation reform, including the real time disclosure of received donations, to ensure that Tasmanians know who has donated what amount to whom at the time voters go to the polls.

Greens Leader Nick McKim MP said that Tasmania should investigate introducing state laws similar to those recently introduced into NSW which has banned political donations by alcohol, gambling and tobacco companies, following the revelations contained in yesterday’s annual 2009-2010 AEC figures that in the lead up to the March 2010 state election Labor received a $11, 220 donation from Betfair, and the Liberal Party received $7600 from tobacco company British American Tobacco, and a further $6, 625 from Philip Morris Ltd.

Mr McKim also pointed out that the Federal Hotels Ltd, current beneficiary of the state’s pokies monopoly, made political donation contributions of $30,000 to both the Labor and Liberal parties.

“A fundamental flaw in the current political donation system has yet again been highlighted by the figures released by the Australian Electoral Commission, where 10 months after last years state election, Tasmanians finally get to see which corporates donated to which political party seeking government,” Mr McKim said.

“The voter deserves immediate donation disclosure. It is unacceptable for Tasmanians to only now discover prior the March election and just days before the then State Labor government agreed to reduce Betfair’s tax rate, the corporation made a political donation of over $11,000.”

“Similarly, the discovery that the Liberal Party remain the only major political party prepared to accept donations from cigarette and tobacco corporations puts a new slant on how genuine they are when it comes to good public health policies.”

“Last year the state’s three party leaders signed up to the Agreement for Parliamentary Reform, to restore the number of Tasmanians MPs back to 35, which also includes the issue of Tasmanian political donations.”

“Most Tasmanians would welcome reforms that would ensure the government of the day is more freely able to consider and act upon public health measures to address impacts of gaming addiction, smoking and excessive alcohol consumption.”

“The Greens have long advocated that the disclosure threshold, increased by both federal Labor and Liberal parties, needs to be reduced immediately, while further work is done to progress proper disclosure of political donations,” Mr McKim said.

ABC report:

Betfair among political donors

Updated 2 hours 2 minutes ago
The Government struck a deal promising tax breaks for Betfair before last year’s election.

The Government struck a deal promising tax breaks for Betfair before last year’s election. (Betfair)

The Labor Party has denied there is any link between a donation from the online betting agency Betfair and a State Government decision to lower the company’s tax rate.

Information published on the Australian Electoral Commission’s website revealed Betfair donated just under $11,000 to the Tasmanian Labor Party last financial year.

A bank charge added to the donation raised the total amount above the donation declaration threshold by $20 and the party then decided to publish the donation.

ALP State Secretary John Dowling says the payment was not part of a sweetheart deal.

“The discussions between the Government and Betfair, as I understood, took place for several months leading up to the March state election,” he said.

“Those negotiations were concluded prior to the election and announced and some months later the ALP received a small donation from Betfair.”

Betfair says a similar amount was also donated to the Liberal Party but the Opposition Leader Will Hodgman says he is unaware of it.

“Not to my knowledge and I’m confident all disclosures are made in accordance with the law,” he said.

“The Liberal Party takes very seriously not only the right to receive political donations but also the expectation you will disclose lawfully what you receive and I’m confident the Liberal Party has done that.”

The information has been posted on the Australian Electoral Commission’s website which discloses all major donations received by the state’s three major political parties.

Among the ALP’s other donors was philanthropist and Kathmandu founder, Jan Cameron, who donated $45,000.

The Liberal Party’s biggest donor was billionaire Clive Palmer’s exploration company, Mineralogy, which gave $100,000.

The Liberals also received $30,000 from the Federal Group and the property developer Emmanuel Kalis donated $25,000.

The ALP received similar amounts from both donors.

Donations to the Tasmanian Greens were passed on from the party’s national arm, the Australian Greens.

Story HERE

Sue Neales:

Political donations laid bare

SUE NEALES
Chief reporter

THE Tasmanian Labor Party accepted a political donation of $11,220 from gambling company Betfair ahead of the March state election, just days before agreeing to halve its tax rate on the eve of the 2010 state election campaign.

And Tasmania’s Liberal Party mirrored its federal parent in receiving significant political donations from global tobacco corporations last year.

The revelations are contained in the figures released yesterday by the Australian Electoral Commission for the 2009-10 financial year.

The figures show the Tasmanian branch of the Australian Labor Party received $2,133,6490 in political gifts, donations and income during the 2009-10 election year.

The Tasmanian Liberal Party reaped $1,889,2610.

The Tasmanian Greens, and the Australian Greens Tasmanian branch, received $737,739. The funds and gifts are typically used to fund election advertising and publications, including Labor’s notorious automated “robocalls” to Tasmanian homes claiming the Greens planned to legalise heroin.

The new political disclosure data show the biggest individual donor to the Tasmanian Labor Party last year was philanthropist, animal lover, environmentalist and Chickenfeed store owner Jan Cameron, who was recorded as giving $45,000.

Other large individual donations to the Labor Party were $26,368 from unseated Labor minister David Llewellyn and $12,000 from resurrected deputy premier Bryan Green.

Hefty corporate donations to the Tasmanian branch of the Labor Party included $30,000 from gaming and tourism company the Federal Group, $5000 from NBN Tas-mania installer Macquarie Telecom, $10,000 from construction company Leighton’s and $5000 from NBN and Brighton bypass builder John Holland.

The Liberal Party political disclosure figures reveal the biggest benefactor for its Tasmanian division was conservative Queensland mining magnate Clive Palmer, who donated $100,000 to the Tasmanian Liberals through his company Mineralogy Pty Ltd.

Devonport businessman Adam Brooks, elected to Parliament last March, donated $97,000.
Other donors to the Liberal Party included $20,000 from prospective crayfish farmer King Island Marine Research, $11,000 from construction company Leigh-ton’s, $30,000 from the Federal Group and $7600 from tobacco and cigarette firm Philip Morris.

Hopeful Liberal candidates Elise Archer, Richard Lowrie, Tony Mulder and Mark Shelton donated $21,670, $15,000, $30,246 and $15,663 respectively to their own party’s coffers.

(scan, not online)

What the Liberals say …

Nick McKim and the Greens are now in Government. Rather than his predictable bleating, why doesn’t he just introduce legislation to change the disclosure laws?

Mr McKim has been highly critical of the way political donations are disclosed but it seems just not to worry him enough to do anything about it.

Isn’t the point of actually being in Government the fact that you can make changes to the system? Or is it all about the perks and the cars for Mr McKim?

He has made the same predictable calls now in the media on no less than six occasions:

December 9, 2010
August 26 2010
March 12 2010
1 February 2010
18 November 2009
15 August 2009

including demanding for state political disclosure laws to be introduced “…Now!” over a year ago.

If Mr McKim really thought change was needed, why hasn’t he introduced a Bill to Parliament in the last nine months?

Is Mr McKim just using this issue as a stunt to get in the media?

My challenge to Mr McKim is this: put up, or shut up. Stop whingeing and actually do something about it.

And while he’s at it, perhaps Mr McKim could tell Tasmanians exactly who donated to his campaign rather than hiding behind his Federal counterparts.

The Crikey take …

Political donations: SA and Tassie rolling in election dough by Andrew Crook Wednesday, 2 February 2011

Political donations data released by the Australian Electoral Commission yesterday shows a multi-million dollar cash increase for parties in the two states that held elections over the audit period.

The South Australian and Tasmanian polls were both held on March 20 2010, just thirteen weeks before the end of the financial year covered by yesterday’s disclosures.

Tasmanian Labor sucked in $2,133,649 in total receipts in 2009-10, compared to just $719,642 in 2008-09 (during the last election year encompassing the 2006 election, the amount was $1,305,986). By contrast, the Tasmanian Liberal Party tapped contributors for
$1,889,261 — a massive jump of $1.2 million on 2008-09’s total of
$673,924 (during the last election cycle the party snagged a more modest $962,272).

In South Australia, Labor declared total receipts of $4,294,412, compared with $2,273,648 in 2008-09. The SA Liberals, who have apparently sworn off political donations in future years, raked in $3,816,477, compared to $2,270,554 for the 12 months previous.

Individual highlights in Tasmania included Kathmandu millionaire Jan Cameron — rumoured until now to be a staunch Greens supporter — tipping in $45,000 to help Labor beat off their eco-tinged opponents.
And local property developer Emmanuel Kalis, who owns the site of the former Hobart Myer store (which burnt down) and wants to build a new shopping complex donated $20,000 (and $25,00 to the Liberals).

Betfair gave $11,220 to the ALP as a preemptive thanks for halving its tax rate. The bruvvas also snagged $5000 from Macquarie Telecom, which is helping to roll out the NBN.

Federal Hotels, which has a monopoly on Tassie’s poker machines for about the next millennium had two bob each way with $30,000 shunted to the two parties.

A mysterious group known as Integral Communications donated $33,000 to Labor, however no-one in the Apple Isle seems to know who they are.
The Greens, who snared the balance of power at the March poll, also saw a jump in receipts  — up from up from $458,151 in 2008-09 to $737,739.

Liberal donations were dominated by Queensland mining baron Clive Palmer, who spread $100,000 of his coordinated $1.028 million national conservative donation to the Tasmanian branch of the Libs.

In South Australia, property developers featured prominently, with DayCorp forwarding $20,000 to Labor and Land SA giving $80,000 to the Liberals. However, the most interesting donation was Coopers Brewery’s donation of $16,500 to help the Tories, despite marketing itself heavily as the beer of choice for Greens flag wavers in inner Melbourne and Sydney.

The black hole that is the SA branch of Labor’s fund-raising arm Progressive Business run by aggressive bag man Nick Bolkus (who was famously caught out failing to declare donations from Filipino businessman Dante Tan in 2003) reported a $889,705 donation with no way of knowing who chipped in.

Elsewhere among the states, there was tranche of donors in New South Wales and Queensland that reported smaller donations to their state electoral bodies under stricter rules, but not to the AEC.

While the Queensland ALP took the high road and volunteered donor and dinner transactions under $11,200, the state’s Liberal National Party declined to do the same, only listing receipts over the threshold.
Analysis of the more recent Queensland state data not only reveals that Clive Palmer recently made an additional $500,000 donation to the LNP through Queensland Nickel, but that the party received hundreds of thousands of dollars from individual donors and dinner guests that didn’t make the federal database.

One such donation that appeared in the state but not the federal disclosure documents was a $100,000 received by the LNP from Tritton Resources on June 7, 2010. The firm owns a massive copper mine in Nyngan which was acquired by Straits Resources in 2006. As Crikey reported yesterday, Straits stumped up $400,000 to the WA branch of the Liberal Party and $100,000 to the federal Liberals, taking its total largesse to a massive Palmer-esque $600,000.

Political donations: SA and Tassie rolling in election dough

And,

Tuesday, 1 February 2011 / 2 comments
Political donations give and take
by Bernard Keane

The Australian Electoral Commission released political donations data today for 2009-10, giving us an insight into what political parties received from donors between seven and 19 months ago.

The returns released today take us up to June 2010. If you want to know what donors gave the parties between July 1 and the election — or, for example, what effect Julia Gillard’s replacement of Kevin Rudd had on donations to Labor — you’ll have to wait until this time next to find out.

Yep, 2012, to find out what happened in 2010.

Crikey says this every year, but this is a complete bloody disgrace.
Online filing should mean donations are revealed to the public within days, not years.

The people responsible for it are not the Australian Electoral Commission, but the federal Coalition and Senator Steve Fielding, who together blocked John Faulkner’s attempt to reform political donation reporting, including by expediting reporting.

As happened last year, federal Labor (and Queensland and ACT Labor) have elected to report all donations above $1000, in accordance with the requirements of the Faulkner bill, which restored the threshold for political reporting back to where it was before the Howard government dramatically increased it. But this year the NSW Liberals also, to their credit, reported below the threshold, right down to a $300 donation.

Our pro forma lament about the state of political transparency over, let’s have a look at the data.

Some broad lessons from the returns:

1. Federal Liberal fundraising surged dramatically in 2009-10. In 2008-09, Liberal fundraising was dire — it pulled in only $2.9 million, and the party barely made headway in reducing its $4.45 million debt left over from the 2007 election. In 2009-10, the Liberals raked in $6.3 million. Donations would have picked up as the election approached, but huge donations from mining companies and Tony Abbott’s aggression and competitiveness massively strengthened the Liberal war chest. Even so, it was still well short of the comparable pre-election year when the Liberals were in power. In 2006-07, the Howard government raked in over $9 million.

The federal party was $5 million in debt going into the election — including the small matter of $46,000 that it owed to Michael Yabsley, who has since chucked in the role of federal party treasurer in disgust.

2. Federal Labor similarly under-performed on 2006-07, when the building Ruddslide actually pulled in more money than the Liberals
($9.5 million). In 2009-10, it managed only $7.8 million, which was actually less than it took the previous year ($8.21 million but Labor’s national conference, a key fundraiser, was at the end of July 2009, meaning most donations and “Other receipts” for attendance would have been received in 2008-09). Labor went into the election with a $9 million debt.

3. These performances are reflected in the full party returns across all divisions — total Labor funding, federal and state, declined from
$46 million to $36 million, while Liberal funding increased slightly from $39 million to $41 million. Basically, the Liberals got a significantly bigger share of a shrinking pie — even with the mining industry aiming for regime change, total cash donations fell from $12 million to $9.8 million — remarkable given 2008-09 was considered a poor year for donations due to the GFC.

4. Labor continues to do well from Chinese-associated interests.
Shenlong Australia Investment Group made a $200,00 donation to Labor, and Shangjin and Yi Lin, also based in Chatswood in Sydney, donated $50,000 each. But the NSW Liberals have started to close what has long been a significant fundraising gap. Huang Bingwen of Well Glory Pty Ltd donated $50,000, and the Kingold Group —  previously strong supporters of Kevin Rudd, gave $23,000. None appear on the AEC database as having filed a donation disclosure return, as they are required to do, although this may not mean they have not provided one.

5. While ANZ and NAB might be happy with their donations to Labor, they might be rethinking their donations to the Liberals. Both banks gave $100,000 to both sides, and while Labor has, despite its occasionally heated rhetoric, tried to resist all pressure to take any serious steps against the banking cartel, Joe Hockey led the way in challenging the cartel and managed to goad Wayne Swan into some limited measures to strengthen competition.

6. The Coalition continues to enjoy a, um, healthy relationship with Big Tobacco. British American Tobacco gave the NSW Liberals $50,000, just under $45,000 to the Federal Liberals, $16,500 to the WA Liberals, nearly $10,000 to the Victorian Liberals, plus donations to the Nationals as well.

7. Likewise, Labor continues to enjoy a strong relationship with ethanol producer Manildra. Mark Latham sent Dick Honan’s cheques back, but ever since Labor has been very happy to take his money. NSW Labor, in particular, has been very kind to Manildra, slapping a 10% biofuel requirement on NSW motorists that is a bonanza for Manildra. Manildra gave more than $116,000 to NSW Labor, $58,000 to federal Labor and $35,000 to the Queensland party. The federal Liberals — Honan was close to John Howard — only scored $39,000 and the NSW party $15,000, while the Nats fared better with about $35,000 all up.

Political donations give and take

LABOR SUPPORTS SLUGGING TAXPAYERS $10 MILLION FOR ELECTION CAMPAIGNS –
WHILE TASMANIANS STRUGGLE TO PAY POWER BILLS

At a time where ordinary Tasmanians are facing huge increases in the cost of living under the Labor Green government, it now appears that Labor supports slugging Tasmanians around$10 million by having the taxpayer fork out for full public funding of election campaigns.

Yesterday, Labor State Secretary John Dowling said he supported the idea, and Premier also Lara Giddings said she was happy to look at it. We already know the Greens are all for it.

This is at a time where electricity prices are soaring locally, jobs are being placed at risk and where savage cuts to essential services are being contemplated.

While the Liberals are prepared to consider proposals which might improve transparency in our electoral system (such as requiring the Greens to actually disclose who they got their money from,) at a time of rising cost of living we don’t believe Tasmanians taxpayers should be slugged with a $10 million poll tax.

We believe that there are far more important issues like the cost of living, job losses and the parlous state of the local economy than forcing taxpayers to fund election campaigns.

That Labor supports this idea shows just how out of touch they are.

First published: 2011-02-02 12:52 PM