A Different Country: Follow the Money (Series Part )
Who Actually Runs This Country?
Here is a question worth asking plainly: who has the most reliable, consistent access to the people who make decisions in this country? The answer is not voters. It is not trade unions, who are routinely cited as having too much political influence. It is not advocacy organisations representing people with disability, housing stress, or chronic illness. It is not community groups of any kind.
It Is Money
Political donations in Australia have historically been legal, systemically practised, and for much of our democratic history, largely invisible to the public until long after the decisions they were positioned to influence had already been made. The Australian Electoral Commission published annual returns on donations above a threshold that sat at $16,900 as recently as the 2023–24 financial year. Below that threshold, donations were not reported at all.
That system has changed, and the change deserves honest assessment. The Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Reform) Act 2024, which takes effect from 1 July 2026, lowers the disclosure threshold to $5,000 and introduces near-real-time disclosure requirements. These are genuine improvements. But Transparency International Australia — the country’s leading independent anti-corruption monitoring body — has warned that the reforms risk being, in their words, “a gift to the major parties.”
The annual donation cap has been set at $50,000 per donor per recipient. A structural loophole means a single donor can give just under that amount to each of a party’s state and federal branches, potentially channelling up to $450,000 per year to a single party. Industries including gambling, fossil fuels, and property retain substantial access under the new framework.
The pattern between donor industries and policy outcomes is difficult to prove case by case. It is impossible to dismiss in aggregate. The Grattan Institute — one of Australia’s most rigorous independent policy research bodies — has published repeated analysis showing that negative gearing and the fifty percent capital gains tax discount significantly inflate investor demand for residential property, directly limiting housing affordability for first home buyers. These settings have remained substantially unchanged across governments of both major parties for decades. The property and construction industries are among the most consistent political donors in the country. That is not proof of causation. It is a pattern that deserves more scrutiny than it typically receives.
Queensland: A Case Study in What Happens Next
If you want to understand what is at stake when money is allowed to flow freely into politics, Queensland offers a direct and timely example.
In 2018, the Palaszczuk Labor government introduced a ban on property developer donations at both state and local government levels, acting on a recommendation from the Crime and Corruption Commission. The CCC had found that developer donations caused recurring integrity issues in Queensland politics. The ban was regarded as among the strongest of its kind in Australia.
In late 2025, the newly elected LNP government introduced the Electoral Laws (Restoring Electoral Fairness) Amendment Bill 2025 — legislation that would lift the ban entirely and allow political donors to give four times the amounts permitted under existing rules.
CCC Chairperson Bruce Barbour publicly opposed the changes, stating they represent “a significant departure from Queensland’s robust political donations framework and are out-of-step with reforms introduced to manage risks associated with political influence, and perceptions of it.” The CCC raised specific concern about timing, noting that Queensland is entering a significant period in the lead-up to the 2032 Brisbane Olympic Games, and that reintroducing developer donations “could exacerbate real and/or perceived risks of undue or improper influence, particularly as developer interests align closely with major projects.”
The Australia Institute’s Director of Democracy and Accountability, Bill Browne, warned that lifting the ban would risk what he described as “clientelism — where decision-makers put the interests of their patrons above the public interest.”
The CCC is not a minor voice. It is Queensland’s independent corruption watchdog. When it identifies a proposed law as increasing corruption risk, that is not political commentary. It is the formal assessment of the body whose entire function is to identify exactly that kind of risk.
The Revolving Door
Alongside donations, lobbying operates as a parallel mechanism of access that is substantially less visible. Australia has a register of third-party lobbyists: people paid to represent clients in their interactions with government. But registration is not required for in-house lobbyists — the corporate affairs and government relations teams employed directly by major companies to liaise with ministers and their offices. These individuals fall entirely outside the formal transparency system.
The revolving door — the movement of senior political staffers, departmental secretaries, and former ministers into industry lobbying roles — is a well-documented feature of the Australian political landscape. The value these individuals carry into the private sector is not their policy expertise alone. It is their relationships, their institutional knowledge, and their access to the rooms where decisions are made. Cooling-off periods intended to limit this movement have been consistently criticised by transparency advocates as inadequate.
What Reform Could Actually Look Like
Queensland’s 2018 developer donation ban is itself the evidence that structural reform is achievable. A state government identified a corruption risk, acted on an independent recommendation, and changed the rules. That happened. The fact that a subsequent government is now seeking to reverse it does not diminish the proof that reform was possible. It demonstrates something equally important: that reform, once achieved, requires sustained public attention to protect.
At the federal level, the Electoral Reform Act 2024 represents genuine progress — a lower disclosure threshold and near-real-time reporting are meaningful gains. But Transparency International Australia’s assessment that the major parties negotiated a deal that served their own interests is also accurate. Both things can be true simultaneously. Reform happened and it did not go far enough. That is the honest picture.
