Vast censorship of political “donations” data

EXCLUSIVE

ANTHONY KLAN

The Australian Electoral Commission has quietly executed the biggest act of political “donations” censorship in the nation’s history, making it effectively impossible to determine the true identity of many “donors”, despite payments being above disclosure thresholds.

The AEC has pulled the tens of thousands of “donor returns” from its “transparency portal”, despite it legally being required to provide the documents to the public under law that has been in place for over a century.

The AEC itself states: “The AEC is required by legislation to publish returns on the Register”.

It can be revealed the AEC is instead only providing the public — and only weeks after requests are made — with highly redacted versions of the once public documents, from which it has blacked out key information.

The government has been required to provide the public with full “donor returns” documents since 1918, under the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918.

It is the biggest censorship of political “donations” information in the nation’s history and means key information will be held from the public by the AEC in its annual donations “disclosure dump” Monday.

Now hidden is donor information that has proven vital for informing the public, including identifying multi-millionaire backers of the “No” campaign against the Voice to parliament.

The revelations come as the ALP Federal Government is seeking to push through the Senate — as soon as Tuesday — major electoral reforms under the claim of “transparency” and reducing the donations disclosure threshold to $1,000.

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Part of the now heavily redacted donor return for anti-Voice group “Advance”. Source: AEC

The ALP rushed the 227-page “Electoral Reform Bill” — which would reshape the face of Australian politics for decades to come — through the lower house withing just 48-hours of it releasing the document late last year.

That’s despite there being no rush to implement the laws, which would not take effect until at least “mid-2026”.

Further, the ALP and Coalition combined to prevent the Bill being put to a parliamentary committee for review, as is standard practice.

Experts say the laws — which the ALP Government itself has described as the “biggest reform in 40 years” — would hogtie independent candidates and entrench the two-party duopoly at the federal level.

Support for the major parties is in long-term decline and at its lowest level on record.

As reported Friday, the ALP has separately rigged Victoria’s electoral “donations” laws deeply in favour of it and the Coalition. Changes by the then Daniel Andrews Victorian Government in 2018 allow the ALP, Liberal and National parties — but no one else — to receive limitless “donations” through three obscure shell companies.

The Klaxon’s report Friday. Source: The Klaxon.(Main image page top, Giulio Saggin/ABC News).

Investigations reveal that while the Federal ALP and Coalition were acting to rush through donations “transparency laws”, the AEC has been quietly erasing decades of donor data from the public record, citing “privacy”.

“The AEC has quietly erased decades of donor data from the public record”

The AEC has hidden the tens of thousands of donor disclosure forms under the excuse of an unrelated, five-year-old AEC error that saw it disclose the postal addresses of a handful of electoral candidates who were “silent” from the electoral role.

Under the AEC error, which spanned back to 2019, personal details of 17 electoral candidates were publicly viewed.

Instead of only fixing that issue, or dealing with candidate electoral forms in a different way, it has pulled all disclosure forms from the register, including the vital donor disclosure forms.

The AEC made the changes without any public consultation.

“There are a number of privacy factors around the use of PDFs with unredacted personal information on the register,” AEC senior media advisor Alex Morris told The Klaxon.

The AEC and Morris repeatedly refused to comment when asked what the “privacy factors” around the donor disclosure forms were.

The AEC pulled the Transparency Register entirely on May 15 last year.

It made the register accessible again two months later, on July 23, but all disclosure forms had been removed.

Only skeleton information from the forms appears on the register, with all “address” information provided by donors removed. The AEC is providing the public with donor returns on request — in a process often taking it weeks — but only after it has blacked out all “address” information provided by donors.

The removal of the register on May 15 came after several months of revelations unmasking the true donors behind the “No” campaign against the Voice.

Australia’s political “donations’” disclosure regime is regularly gamed, with entities masking their true identities using numerous methods, including breaking up payments into smaller amounts, and making payments via shell-companies.

The changes by the AEC make this activity vastly easier, heavily reducing transparency.

The now hidden electoral donations data was vital in establishing the true donors behind the Voice “No” campaign. Source: The Klaxon

The changes are of particular concern because also hidden are the disclosure returns from “associated entities”, entities who seek to influence politics but are not “political parties”.

Uncensored donor forms were vital to media investigations unmasking the true identities of the  bankrollers of “Advance”, which ran the campaign against the Voice.

Advance told the Australian public it was a “grassroots” movement of “ordinary Aussies”.

Investigations by The Klaxon, based on Advance’s (then still public) donor returns revealed its 21 disclosed donors for the 2022 financial year boiled down to just ten entities, all of them mega-millionaires.

Many donors were obscured, with payments made via holding companies, often with post office boxes listed for addresses.

Investigations showed five of the “donations” to Advance in the year — totalling $130,000 — came from four shell companies, all registered to the same Double Bay post office box: “PO Box 84, Double Bay, NSW, 1360”.

This information revealed all were connected, leading to revelations that three of the shell companies — SixMileBridge Pty Limited, Nedigi Pty Limited and Willimbury Pty Ltd, which contributed $75,000 – were all owned by members of Sydney’s little-known, mega-wealthy O’Neil family.

The family, which made its money in mining and quarries, has an estimated wealth of over $240 million.

Investigations showed the fourth shell company giving the same PO Box address, “Telowar Pty Limited”, was owned by the O’Neil family’s Rodney O’Neil and members of the vastly wealthy Taylor family, owners of wine giant Taylors Wines.

The AEC’s changes mean the PO Box address given for the four shell companies is now not only hidden from the Transparency Register — but completely hidden from the public, with the AEC “redacting” the information from any donor disclosure forms it releases.

The now hidden donor information was vital to reveal the O’Neil family were major funders of the “No” campaign. Source: Various. Graphic: The Klaxon

Similarly, the now hidden information was essential in revealing that six payments to Advance totalling $117,500 were connected to multi-millionaire financier Chris Garnaut — including $37,500 from Garnaut’s personal assistant.

Five of the “donations” all gave the same address: “PO Box 6314, Melbourne Victoria, 3004”.

Four payments totalling $75,000 (three payments of $20,000 and one of $15,000), were made by a “Louis Denton”; and two payments totalling $37,500 were made by a “Rayleen Giusti”.

The now hidden donations data was vital in revealing the “donations” were all connected to multi-millionaire financier Chris Garnaut. Source: AEC (2023)

Investigations by Crikey, using this (then public) information, revealed the address provided was located in the St Kilda, Melbourne building of Garnaut’s firm, Garnaut Private Wealth.

This then allowed the public to learn that “Louis Denton” was a then 30-year-old accountant who was an “alternate director of one of Garnaut’s companies — and that “Rayleen Giusti” was Garnaut’s personal assistant. (The address for Giusti’s “donations” was given as “PO Box 6314, Melbourne, Victoria, 6314”.

Garnaut and Giusti have repeatedly refused to comment when contacted by The Klaxon.

Multi-millionaire financier Chris Garnaut.

On learning the AEC had pulled all disclosure returns from public access, we asked for the 2022 donor disclosure return for Advance, which we had earlier obtained from the Transparency Register.

After more than two weeks, the AEC provided us with the return, although it had been heavily redacted, will all vital “address” information blacked out.

The changes mean it is now not possible to verify many donors for multiple reasons, including because many different people share the same name.

Donors regularly refuse to comment when approached by media, making verification effectively impossible.

Part of the now heavily redacted donor return for  anti-Voice group “Advance”. Source: AEC

This also exposes media outlets to defamation risks, in the case of identifying the wrong person as a donor, resulting in the muzzling of media reporting.

Successive governments have taken no action to improve Australia’s draconian defamation laws.

The New York Times has described Australia as potentially “the world’s most secretive democracy”.

Between 2012 and 2022 no other OECD country fell faster towards corruption than Australia, according to Transparency International.

The Centre for Public Integrity, Transparency International, and many others have called for the ALP’s electoral reforms to be scrapped in their current form.

The Senate sits over two weeks from Tuesday.

Do you know more? anthonyklan@protonmail.com

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Anthony Klan

Editor, The Klaxon