Once a year, the Commonwealth releases information on Australia’s political donations system detailing who donates to political parties and how much. The latest instalment, published on 1 February 2019, shows how much money political parties received in the previous financial year. The data isn’t timely – some of the donations now finally declared date back as far as July 2017. But the information it contains does give clues as to who is funding Australian democracy, and who our political parties are most reliant on.
Senior Associate Kate Griffiths and Associate Carmela Chivers, co-authors of Grattan’s 2018 report on political donations and lobbying, talk through these new findings and why donation transparency matters.
Read the article in The Conversation on the 2019 data release
Read the 2018 report Who’s in the Room? Access and influence in Australian politics