Election donors
On Monday (12th) the AEC released the donations disclosure returns lodged following the 2007 federal election.
You can see them here.
The first point I’d like to make is that the AEC’s disclosure site continues to be a nightmare to navigate. But I’ve spent a bit of time there and I think I know my way around now.
However the second point is that it is just ridiculous how little has been disclosed.
For example, I started by doing a search on Donor to Candidate returns. What would you expect? A long list of people that have donated to political parties or candidates during the 2007 Federal Election campaign. What do you find? Three donors:
So then I do a “list of candidates”. I’d say 90% have no declaration at all. Presumably people are donating the political party, not individual candidates. The problem is, you can get a list of all the candidates that declared “nil” donations, but don’t you want a list of all the non-nil candidates?
So we do it the long way, we scroll through the lists of hundreds of candidates picking out the ones that don’t have an ‘*’ next to them indicating that they are candidates that did not have and donations to declare.
First on the list is John Adams from the Climate Change Coalition. He received a meagre $1,414 in donations. So how many does he declare? None, no donations over $10,500 here. But then again, $1,414 aint much and there’s no real concerns about his funding sources here.
So let’s look for someone else. Rudd? Nope, no donations. Howard? Nope, no donations. So, at a quick glance I find Steve Gibbons, ALP Member for Bendigo. $19,849 in donations. How many donors listed? None. Same goes for every other MP I find that declare donations.
Of course (it slowly dawns on me) there will only be two candidates that actually declare donations from anyone, Tony Windsor (who received donations from Hills Transport and the Manildra Group and Sam Miszkowski who received a donation from Mist Consulting.
So this is really just a convoluted way of saying two things:
- The AEC site is horrible. It’s obviously running off a database of some sort so why can’t we have access to the .csv file for our own examination. I have requested this by email and been told that this is not available.
- A donation disclosure limit of $10,500 is absurd and makes a mockery of disclosure itself.
