Malcolm Turnbull’s reported $1 million donation to the Liberal Party’s election fund in the dying days of the campaign ranks among the most generous one-off personal gifts ever bestowed in Australian politics. It also raises many important and worrying issues about the condition of our political culture that need teasing out.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Mr Turnbull refused to confirm the donation after it was revealed by News Corp, with a spokesman saying only that donations were disclosed in the usual way, though as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald federal Liberal Party director Tony Nutt did not deny the PM had made the donation, rejecting only the suggestion that the party was broke or in debt.
But senior Liberal sources in the NSW division told Fairfax Media the party's financial woes were real and severe. "The party is broke. There's no money," one source said. "I'm not surprised in the slightest that Turnbull had to kick in a million bucks of his own."
Liberal sources told Fairfax Media the party had been battered on two fronts: corporate donations dried up under former PM Tony Abbott, while conservative individuals did not want to donate to Mr Turnbull's campaign.
To add to the party’s financial woes the NSW Electoral Commission is refusing to consider the NSW Liberal Party's claim for $4.4 million in withheld public funding until the party discloses all political donations it received prior to the 2011 state election.
The NSW Liberal Party has argued that withholding the money put pressure on its coffers ahead of the 2016 federal election.
The commission would not hand over the funding, which the Liberals claimed from the 2015 state election, after it concluded the party had used the secretive Free Enterprise Foundation to "channel and disguise" political donations, including those from prohibited donors.
Mr Turnbull has in fact done a Clive Palmer and bought political power, thereby once again raising the need for political donation reform. It is further proof that current electoral funding laws need a major overhaul to stop rich individuals buying their way into power.
In the 2013 election Clive Palmer donated millions of dollars to his own party and now the Prime Minister is using his personal wealth to win power. These examples are disturbing proof that the current electoral funding system is broken.
“In fact the clock has been turned back on democracy being about a fairer electoral system. Turnbull’s $1 million donation is one of the crudest examples of wealth buying electoral power Australia has seen” Greens Democracy spokesperson Senator Rhiannon said.
That this $1 million donation was kept under wraps with only the donor, Malcolm Turnbull, and a few top Liberals in the know shows they understood this was a bad news story for the Prime Minister.
In the light of Mr Turnbull’s purchase of power national uniform political donation laws including bans and caps on political donations, limits on election expenditure and greater transparency with real time disclosure should be a top priority in the next parliament, though with the fox having bought his way into the hen house we’ll probably see pigs fly before the Liberal/National Coalition introduces it.
And I can’t see them introducing the bigger picture issue of public funding of election campaigns, as that would prevent billionaires buying their way into power.
