(Image: Gorkie/Private Media)

Memo to media and social media warriors: at 9am on Tuesday, February 1, the Australian Electoral Commission will simultaneously do its annual dump of political donations data for the federal government, and the eight states and territories.

There will be hundreds of interesting morsels in the data so take the time and devote some resources to give it the attention that it deserves.

Editors and political reporters should be particularly aware of governments or oppositions which attempt to create news diversions on the day. This campaign finance story should be leading radio bulletins from 10am, the television bulletins in the evening, and the front pages of the newspapers the following day.

It’s a shame that the AEC has never bothered to organise a lock-up that gave reporters the time to work up considered stories without feeling overwhelmed by a deluge of difficult to analyse data and up against the clock.

One thread worth following will be the clues about the two large but little known share portfolios controlled by both major parties.

For instance, did you realise that the Queensland division of the ALP owns more than $10 million in shares in pharmaceutical giant CSL? I’ve had a recent look at the CSL share register and “Labor Holdings Pty Ltd” pops up in the top 150 with 37,700 shares registered with stockbroker “Morgans WealthPlus” in Brisbane.  

As was detailed in this 2008 piece in The Sunday Age, the ALP’s Queensland division pocketed $16.5 million in 1986 when it sold radio station 4KQ. The proceeds were put into the sharemarket and the portfolio is now worth more than $60 million, although the “associated entity” Labor Holdings stopped disclosing individual dividend payments to the AEC in 2015, as you can see from this pathetic effort in 2019-20.

By way of comparison, the Victorian Liberals have arguable control over an estimated $90 million share portfolio housed in the Cormack Foundation, which was seeded in a similar way when the party sold Melbourne radio station 3XY for about $16 million in the late 1980s. Cormack’s largest investment is about 266,000 Commonwealth Bank shares which are currently worth $25 million. No conflict there when it comes to failing to take action after the Hayne royal commission or the Reserve Bank lending CBA $51.1 billion for three years at just 0.1%.

We know about this whopping Liberal Party equity play with CBA because the Cormack Foundation does disclose its individual dividend payments to the AEC, as you can see here, rather than hiding everything behind stockbroker Morgans, as Queensland Labor does.

With a federal election around the corner and the sharemarket near record highs in recent weeks, it will be interesting to see if either fund has been partially liquidated to increase the campaign firepower that is available. History suggests not.

John Howard joined the board of the Cormack Foundation as part of the settlement of a Supreme Court action initiated by then Victorian Liberal Party president Michael Kroger in 2017. If you read this Wikipedia explanation of the Cormack Foundation, it sounds as if Kroger wrote it himself.

Sadly for the Liberals, Cormack has never owned CSL shares. Interestingly, there are now more than 5000 individual Australian retail investors who own more than $1 million worth of CSL shares. This is because anyone who paid $4800 to buy 2000 shares at $2.40 in the 1994 float is now the proud owner of 6000 shares (there was a three-for-one split in 2007) worth $1.5 million based on yesterday’s close of $249.43.

The Queensland Labor Party first bought into CSL back in March 2008 when the stock was trading at about $40, so it has made about 600% on its money and showed good discipline in not selling out as the stock kept soaring.

As for the rest of the data, there will no doubt be big fossil fuel donations for the Liberals and the gambling industry will do its usual $1-$2 million in big party contributions.

The Queensland and Western Australia state elections were both held in the 2020-21 financial year, so the major party divisions in those two states will have larger than usual revenue declarations — although it would have been a brave corporate who punted against Mark McGowan winning.