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Anthony Albanese and his Treasurer Jim Chalmers raked in about $150,000 for their re-election campaign at a top-end hotel dinner with captains of industry on Tuesday night.
The closed-door event at Brisbane’s riverside Emporium Hotel was attended by business leaders across the energy, finance and retail sectors who paid $10,000 per head to meet with the government’s two most senior members, according to sources familiar with the fundraiser unable to speak publicly.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese were the star attractions at a $10,000-a-head fundraiser on Monday night.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Along with party boss Paul Erickson, Albanese and Chalmers drew strong interest from the top end of the town for the event held days before the party’s national conference in Brisbane, in a state in which Labor is keen to pick up seats at the next election.
Wealthy donors are being tapped across the country by politicians who are building up the campaign funds that are crucial to winning elections. The next federal election must be held by the middle of 2025.
Both the Prime Minister’s Office and the federal secretariat of the Australian Labor Party were approached for comment. Both declined to comment.
Four Liberal MPs and a Labor MP said they were asking for donations earlier in the political cycle this term than in previous terms because of the potential for the Albanese government to cap the amount a donor can give a candidate.
Special Minister of State Don Farrell told this masthead in June he intended to legislate a cap this year and have the new rules in place by the election. The amount at which donations would be capped is unclear.
“We started much earlier because we were shit-scared these things could come in early in the term,” one Liberal MP said.
Former prime minister John Howard attended a private dinner in the inner-east Melbourne seat of Higgins earlier this month, at which attendees tipped in to win back the seat lost by Liberal Katie Allen to Labor’s Michelle Ananda-Rajah.
In June, Finance Minister Katy Gallagher was the special guest at a $2200-per-head Melbourne dinner to support the campaign of Labor’s member for Bruce, Julian Hill.
Corporates and donors put a premium on cosy dinners with senior frontbenchers such as Gallagher, Chalmers, Penny Wong, Richard Marles and Tanya Plibersek. But on the other side, the Coalition is struggling without the star power once embodied by figures such as Julie Bishop, Christopher Pyne, Joe Hockey and Tony Abbott.
The Liberal Party is not meeting fundraising targets in some states, and two senior sources said it was difficult to attract cash.
“It’s pretty dire in Victoria. We’ve got senior MPs like Sussan Ley and Angus Taylor, but these aren’t people who are well-known in corporate Australia,” one federal Liberal said.
Corporate donors increased their support for Labor ahead of last year’s election, taking the party’s total receipts to $124.2 million – a figure that includes other payments as well as donations – according to annual disclosures from the Australian Electoral Commission.
The Liberal Party collected total receipts of $105.7 million, compared to $165 million in the financial year of the 2019 election.
Labor’s national platform, being debated at the Brisbane conference beginning on Thursday, says the party will work towards reducing reliance on donations and support an expanded public funding system for elections.
This means taxpayers would foot more of the cost of running elections in exchange for figures such as mining magnate Clive Palmer being prevented from spending huge sums.
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