Wanted, one large mirror: do Liberals seriously want to whine about ‘secrecy’?

“Organisations, including activist organisations seeking to influence election outcomes, will no longer be able to shroud their electoral income in secrecy,” Scott Morrison’s right-hand man Ben Morton wrote to parliamentarians yesterday, urging them to dob in to the Australian Electoral Commission any such organisations under the government’s tightened rules around political advocacy.

The organisations he’s talking about? That would be the “Voices of” candidates emerging in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and, now, South Australia. The email is the latest salvo from a government panicked at the emergence of a series of grassroots independent candidates in safe seats occupied by do-nothing or low-profile Liberal moderates who have been complicit in the Nationals’ successful push to derail climate policy.

What’s amusing about Morton’s demand that such groups and those supporting them should “no longer be able to shroud their electoral income in secrecy” is that the Liberal Party is the biggest offender when it comes to just that.

Unlike most other parties, the Liberals refuse to report any contributions below the statutory threshold. Labor, the Greens, Clive Palmer and One Nation all report either all amounts above $1000, or every dollar. But not the Liberals or the Nationals. You can give $14,500 to every single Liberal branch and neither you nor they have to report it, and the Liberals do not.

That’s why millions of dollars in contributions to the federal Liberal Party are from hidden sources: according to Australian Electoral Commission data, around 22% of the federal party’s revenue in 2019-20, or $2.3 million, is shrouded in secrecy. Also hidden is 9% of its revenue in the election year of 2018-19, or over $4 million. Between 2015-20, the federal Liberals received over $12 million in revenue of which we have no idea of the origins.

But the federal party is a haven of transparency compared to other branches: between 2015-20, the Liberal National Party failed to explain where around $36 million in revenue came from, routinely reporting the source of less than half of its revenue.

Still, with Ben Morton assigning himself the role of smiter of the secret, we’re sure his home division, the Western Australian Liberals — which Morton ran for several years — are a beacon of transparency and report the source of every dollar they receive, right? Alas, that shroud stretches all the way across the Nullarbor: in 2019-20, the WA Libs didn’t disclose the source of over three-quarters of their revenue. They didn’t disclose the source of 65% in 2018-19; in 2017-18 it was 78%; 51% in 2016-17 and 75% in 2015-16. That’s over $20 million in secret money.

We need not remind Crikey readers that the Coalition has steadfastly opposed every single attempt to increase transparency in political donations after John Howard lifted reporting thresholds from $1000 to $10,000, indexed.

It seems transparency is for the little people. But those who buy influence with the Liberals should be left undisturbed.