1 February 2012

Greens coming up on the Liberals for raking in the money

| johnboy
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cash

Elections ACT have released the 2010/11 annual returns. Which tell us where our political parties got their money from.

There’s lots of detail to be gone over but the most striking thing from the headline receipts spreadsheet is the Greens within cooee of the Liberals at around half a million dollars in.

Labor of course sits at roughly double with their rivers of gold coming out of their poker machine empires.

Intriguingly the Community Alliance Party appears to still be alive and kicking (albeit with just over a grand).

The ABC has more on the money trail:

A donation from the Canberra Labor Club group accounted for more than half of Labor’s receipts.

The Labor Club also donated close to $400,000 to the 1973 Foundation, an ALP fundraising trust.

The Canberra Liberals came a distant second, receiving just under $600,000.

Their largest payment was $109,000 for a tenancy agreement with security consultancy Stratsec.

The Greens received about $310,000, with their largest donation of $44,000 coming from their own federal party.

This in from a Greens spokesperson on their form:

There is some confusion about the apparently high rate of income this year of the ACT Greens compared to the Liberal and Labor parties.

This is because we’re not comparing apples to apples. The ACT Greens return includes money received from the Australian Electoral Commission that is paid to all parties on a per vote basis following the federal election.

The Election funding per vote is 231.191 cents – http://www.aec.gov.au/Parties_and_Representatives/public_funding/index.htm
The Greens got 95,488 votes in Fraser, Canberra & the ACT Senate elections, according to the ABC Election site. That would equal $220,759.66 (the extra $3000 was the AEC returning our deposit)
The ACT Liberal Party got 154,343 votes in Fraser, Canberra & the ACT Senate elections. That means $356,827.12 (plus their deposit back) in Public Funding for the ACT Liberal Party.
The ACT ALP Branch got 194,339 votes across the electorates – $449,294.28 (plus their deposit back)

The election return form from Elections ACT states that returns must include “all receipts”, “all transactions” and “all loans”. Conceivably the Labor and Liberal Party election funding is paid to their respective national bodies rather than the ACT branch or division. If this is not the case the money should have been declared in their returns.

The ACT Greens think, at the very least, it’s clearer and more transparent to put this income in our return.

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