Political donation secrecy: why it takes over a year to see who funded elections

The problem in plain English

Imagine hiring a new employee but not being allowed to find out who their previous employer was until 18 months after they started work. You'd consider that absurd. Yet that's essentially how Australia's political donation disclosure system works.

When Australians vote at a federal election, the public has no right to know - in real time, or even close to it - who is funding the campaigns of the people asking for their vote. Under the current federal framework, political parties and donors are required to lodge donation disclosures with the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) once per year, and those disclosures aren't published until February of the following financial year.

In practice, this means donations made during a May election campaign may not become public until up to 19 months later. By then, the elected government has already made hundreds of decisions. The public is voting blind, and that's not an accident.

How the system actually works

Under the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918, donations above the disclosure threshold must be reported to the AEC. But the system has two critical weaknesses that make a mockery of transparency:

1. The disclosure threshold is far too high The federal disclosure threshold for the 2023–24 financial year was $16,300. That means a donor can give $16,299 to a political party and the public never finds out. A donor can also split contributions across multiple state branches of the same party to stay under the threshold entirely - a practice so common it has its own name: donation splitting.

2. The timing makes disclosure meaningless Even donations that do meet the threshold aren't published until long after the election. The AEC releases the annual disclosure returns in February each year, covering donations from the previous financial year (July to June). An election held in May 2025 draws on fundraising that may have begun in 2023 - and some of that money won't be public until February 2026.

Who benefits - and who designed this?

Let's be direct: this system was designed by the parties that benefit from it. Both the Liberal-National Coalition and Labor have had ample opportunity to reform donation laws over decades and have repeatedly chosen not to.

The Albanese Labor government, elected in 2022 partly on a promise of integrity reform, did eventually pass changes through the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Donation and Disclosure) Act 2024. The reforms lowered the federal disclosure threshold to $1,000 and introduced real-time disclosure requirements - a genuine improvement. But the real-time provisions don't fully take effect until after the next election cycle, and donation splitting across party entities remains a significant loophole.

The beneficiaries of the old system - and the residual weaknesses in the new one - are not hard to identify:

• Property developers who give to planning-friendly politicians
• Mining and resources companies funding parties that oppose climate regulation
• Pharmaceutical and gambling industries with direct regulatory interests
• Unions funding Labor candidates on the other side of the ledger

A 2020 analysis by the Australia Institute found that the Liberal Party received over $1.6 billion in disclosed donations between 1998 and 2019, with the Labor Party receiving over $1.1 billion. These figures only cover what was above the threshold and therefore disclosed - the real total is unknown by design.

The states aren't much better

Some states have moved faster than the federal government, but the picture is patchy:

• New South Wales banned property developer donations in 2009 after a string of corruption scandals - then the ban was partially wound back after lobbying
• Queensland introduced real-time disclosure but still has threshold weaknesses
• Victoria lowered its threshold to $1,000 in 2018, ahead of the federal government by six years
• Western Australia only lowered its threshold to $2,500 in 2023

The inconsistency across jurisdictions creates opportunities for donors to route money through whichever channel offers the most secrecy.

Why this matters beyond the optics

This isn't just about transparency for its own sake. Research consistently shows that money follows policy outcomes. A 2021 study by the Grattan Institute found that industries with the highest levels of political donations - fossil fuels, gambling, property development - also received the most favourable regulatory treatment relative to public opinion on those industries.

Voters consistently say they want stricter donation laws. An Australian Electoral Study survey found over 75% of Australians support real-time donation disclosure. Yet for decades, the policy went nowhere. That gap between what the public wants and what Parliament delivers is not a coincidence - it's a structural feature of a system where the people making the rules are the people who benefit from keeping them weak.

What voters would choose

This is exactly the kind of issue where direct democracy produces a different outcome to representative democracy. When the question is put plainly - should the public know who is funding political campaigns before they vote? - the answer is overwhelmingly yes. Polling, submissions to parliamentary inquiries, and public consultations all point in the same direction.

But in a system where the major parties control the rules governing their own funding, reform happens slowly, partially, and only when the political cost of inaction finally outweighs the financial benefit of opacity. The 2024 federal reforms are real progress, but they took 26 years of advocacy, multiple corruption scandals, and a change of government to achieve - and they still leave gaps.

At Direct Democracy, we believe Australians shouldn't have to wait for a politician to decide democracy deserves protecting. Members vote directly on policy positions, and elected representatives are bound to follow. On an issue like donation transparency, we already know what Australians want. The question is whether the system is built to deliver it.

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