Barnaby Joyce says there is a “dangerous” downward trend in the Nationals’ political donations, warning his colleagues “you’re not going to be able to run a political party on lamington drives”.
The former Nationals leader made the comments in response to a Guardian Australia analysis of the 2019-20 financial returns, showing across its state and federal branches the junior Coalition partner banked just five large donations.
The analysis found that the number of donations to the Liberal and National parties has plummeted to the lowest point in 22 years.
The figures cover the first half of 2020, in which Australia’s economy shrank dramatically due to the coronavirus pandemic. However, for the Nationals at least, donations have been trending downwards for some time.
In the 2010-11 financial year, which included the 2010 election, the Nationals party group (that is, all the federal, state and territory branches excluding the Queensland Liberal-National party) reported 48 donations. For 2018-19, which included the 2019 election, they reported only 19.
The decline may, in part, reflect a trend for donors to pay to attend events run by associated entities, profits of which are then passed on to parties as “other receipts”.
In 2019-20 the Nationals received donations from Clive Palmer’s Mineralogy ($75,000), Pratt Holdings Pty Ltd ($250,000), the National Building Foundation ($18,042 to the NSW branch) Manildra ($30,000 to the NSW branch), and Rico Investments ($25,000 to the NSW branch). The total of $398,042 reported in 2019-20 was the second-lowest since 1998-99, which is the extent of the data on the AEC website.
These were the only donations above the $14,000 disclosure threshold.
Joyce told Guardian Australia that in his day as leader he was “one of the most successful fundraisers along with Malcolm Turnbull, who cheated a bit because it was mainly his own money”, a reference to the former prime minister’s lawful and properly disclosed $1.75m gift to his own party.
“Donors have to see that you have passion behind your philosophy and that you’re willing to stand behind it,” he said. “They don’t necessarily have to agree with you … But they have to see that you believe in something.
“The role of the National party is to make quite clear that we’re our own party.
“[Potential supporters] have to see a reason to give to you and not the Liberal party – otherwise they’ll just give to the Liberal party.”
Joyce said without people willing to donate to political parties “democracy will fail, because parties can’t run on fresh air”, describing the number of donations to the Nationals in the last financial year as “dangerous”.
“However, there is also the Nationals Policy Forum, which is a substantial fundraiser [for the Party].”
Joyce has started 2021 with strident comments targeting deputy prime minister Michael McCormack warning the Liberal-National Coalition has become a “marriage of convenience”, questioning the handling of grants programs and the inability to secure plum portfolios.
While the data shows a high point of donations in 2004-05, in 2006 the Howard government changed the donation reporting threshold from $1,500 to $10,000 (with the threshold increasing every year). That means fewer donations have needed to be declared from 2006-07 onwards so the two time periods are not directly comparable.
The data also shows a structural shift in how parties are being funded.
When a political party reports donations, they are required to classify them as “donations” or “other receipts” if the sums received are over the donation threshold. They also need to report the total amount of money they received in a financial year, as “total receipts”.
For this Guardian Australia analysis, “public funding”, where the funds came from a government department or agency such as the Australian Taxation Office, has been split off from “other receipts” into a separate category.
By looking at the classification of funds reported by the party as a proportion of the total funds received by the party, it is clear how much they rely on donations versus other sources of income, such as public funding and so-called “other receipts”. Everything from financial returns on investments the party has made to subscriptions and tickets to “business forums” run by the party, and inter-party transfers is covered under “other receipts”.
In 2019-20, the Nationals were almost entirely funded from public sources, with funds coming from the New South Wales, Victorian and federal electoral commissions. Donations only accounted for 3.2% of their funds, while public funding accounted for 70%. This is the lowest proportion of donation funding on record, with AEC publishing data back to 1998-99 on its website. In previous years, donations have accounted for as much as 15% of funding.
The large amount of public money is also the reason the Nationals total receipts have not gone down overall.
Jonathan Hawkes, the Nationals federal director, said the party “understands the challenges of fundraising and we appreciate all of our supporters that have chosen to make a financial contribution to the party”.
“The Nationals are a grassroots political party supported by members, individuals and small businesses, not cashed-up unions.”
For the Liberal party (including the Queensland Liberal-National party) 2019-20 had both the lowest number of reported donations at 48, and the lowest dollar value for reported donations since 1998-99. That has resulted in the proportion of their overall funding coming from donations to be the lowest on record at 5.8%. It has previously been as high as 22.4%.
However, there doesn’t seem to be a general downward trend in the number or dollars of donations coming in to the Liberal coffers over time. Public funding again made up a larger proportion of total receipts, as it has for Labor.
For Labor and the Greens, while donations were lower in 2019-20 than the previous financial year, it was not the lowest on record, and nor were there any similar downwards trends.
You can see more charts for each party group here, and the code used to generate the results is here.
