Kate Chaney MP calls for donation transparency reform (1 February 2023)
Kate Chaney MP is calling for transparency reform in response to the release of the 2021/2022 political parties’ annual financial disclosures.
“Voters should know who is funding political candidates before they vote, not eight months later. Today we have seen that last year, the major parties failed to disclose nearly $100m.” Ms Chaney said.
Federally, political parties are not obliged to disclose donations under the threshold of $15,200. This permits donors to split payments across numerous state and territory branches, third parties and associated entities and conceal the real extent of their financial influence over the political system.
Ms Chaney says, “Last year, the ALP and Coalition spent $245 million. The Federal Liberal party failed to disclose the source of 55% of the money they raised and the ALP failed to disclose 27%.”
Ms Chaney says, “Under the current reporting system, a member of the public would need to spend weeks delving into hundreds of financial reports and unraveling a complex entanglement of branch and third party links to reveal just a portion of political funding sources. Even then, millions of ‘dark money’ dollars are completely opaque. It is theoretically possible to donate $1 million to the Coalition without disclosure, through 75 associated entities.”
Ms Chaney is in support of transparency reform to decrease the donation threshold to $1,000, require real-time disclosures and to close loopholes, such as allowing parties to declare income as ‘other receipts’ without further details.
“Real-time disclosure of cash donations is not that hard using simple technology. I declared all cash donations in real-time during my campaign, no matter how big or small they were. About 90% of all my donors chose to disclose their names on my website when donating.”
“There is no incentive for political parties to reveal their financial sources and they will say it’s too complicated, but it is up to the electorate to demand more transparent elections.” says Ms Chaney.
