Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party spent $92.1 million during the financial year that included the 2019 election.Credit:James Brickwood
The work,by the Centre for Public Integrity,will be put to the parliamentary committee that is examining the conduct of this year’s election when it holds public hearings in Canberra on Monday and Tuesday on issues including donations,voting rules and whether it is possible to pass laws to stop campaign lies.
“We urgently need campaign spending caps,donation caps and real-time disclosure to stop our elections becoming political auctions,” said Michael Barker KC,a former Federal Court judge and a member of the Centre for Public Integrity,a not-for-profit think tank.
“At a state level,campaign spending caps have cut spending by half and levelled the playing field. The Commonwealth currently has the weakest laws regulating money in politics.”
The increase in spending does not include this year’s election because political parties do not have to report their 2021-22 figures to the Australian Electoral Commission until October 20 and the disclosures are not revealed to the public until February 1,which means a donation made in August 2021 would not be disclosed until February 2023.
The disclosure regime at the AEC is based on paper-based forms,sometimes handwritten,in a system that makes definitive analysis challenging.
The new analysis estimates that spending on political campaigns reached its highest level at the 2019 election when the Coalition spent an estimated $116.5 million,Labor spent $74.5 million and other parties spent about $18.8 million.
Palmer’s United Australia Party spent $92.1 million during the financial year that included the 2019 election and wasestimated to spend a similar amount when fielding candidates in most seats at this year’s election,although his party’s only success was a Victorian seat in the Senate.