$1.2B flowed into Australian political parties in the four years to 2023. With a federal disclosure threshold of $15,200 — among the highest in any democracy — an estimated $100M per election cycle moves as dark money: untraceable, undisclosed, and effective.
The documented return on political investment is estimated at 100:1 to 1,000:1. One study of Queensland property rezonings found connected lobbyists achieved a 100% rezoning success rate, capturing $410M in windfall profits in a single study period (Murray & Frijters, Clean Money in a Dirty System, 2015).
Fossil fuel donations doubled between 2015–16 ($894K) and 2018–19 ($1.9M). The Pharmacy Guild donated ~$2.5M over five years while spending $16.3M on public campaigns — against PBS cost-reduction reforms that would have saved taxpayers money on a $19.5B annual budget.
News Corp controls 59% of all daily newspaper sales in Australia, circulating 17.3M papers weekly.
Complete prohibition on all for-profit corporate donations to political parties or candidates.
Constitutionally valid: in McCloy v New South Wales [2015] HCA, the High Court upheld NSW's property developer donation ban using a proportionality framework that explicitly enables a federal equivalent. Canada implemented a full corporate and union donation ban at the federal level via the Federal Accountability Act 2006 — it has survived every constitutional challenge.
Note: the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Reform) Act 2025 has already enacted $5/first-preference vote public funding and a $50K/year individual donor cap. This policy proposes completing what the 2025 Act began — closing the corporate donation loophole the Act did not fully seal.
Replacement: publicly funded elections via per-vote dollar allocation from consolidated revenue.
Modelled on South Australia's Section 113 of the Electoral Act 1985 — the only Australian jurisdiction that prohibits "inaccurate and misleading" statements of fact in authorised electoral advertisements. Upheld as constitutional in Cameron v Becker (1995). Crucially, it distinguishes statements of fact (verifiable, actionable) from statements of opinion (protected political communication) — the same line that defamation law already draws.