A $200,000 donation from the businessman and philanthropist Graeme Wood to Tony Windsor has helped the former independent MP top the list of individual recipients of donations for the 2016 election.
The election disclosures, released by the Australian Electoral Commission on Monday, show that Windsor received a total of $488,000 in donations.
Because the vast majority of political donations are made to political parties that file separate annual returns disclosed in the new year, Monday’s disclosure relates mostly to the finances of independents.
Windsor spent a total of $604,000 in his unsuccessful bid to recapture his seat of New England in a high-profile contest against the deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce. As Guardian Australia reported in August, Windsor also collected about $73,000 in public funds.
The independent MP Cathy McGowan, who was re-elected in Indi, received $203,750 in donations from 1,490 donors. The independent MP Andrew Wilkie, who was re-elected in Dennison, collected $98,460.
The parliamentarians from the major parties with the highest individual donation totals were the South Australian Liberal senators Cory Bernardi ($92,226) and David Fawcett ($78,940).
Bernardi’s total came from 731 individual donors, third behind only Windsor and McGowan. The conservative senator has developed a political infrastructure separate to the Liberal party including the Conservative Leadership Foundation and its organising initiative, the Australian Conservatives, which he launched this year, and which he chairs.
The donations to individual candidates and Senate groups are dwarfed by donations to parties.
In the 2014-15 annual returns, released in February, the Liberal party declared a total of $75.9m in donations and other receipts. The Labor party declared $65.8m, the National party $11m and the Greens $9m.
In December, the Greens calculated that, between 1998 and 2015, declared donations and payments to Australian political parties topped $1bn.
Wood, the Wotif founder and internet entrepreneur, is responsible for the largest political donation in Australian history in 2010, when he gave $1.6m to the Greens. He also provided a loan for the launch of Guardian Australia.
