Ban Corporate Fundraisers

Corporate fundraising events at which political donations are solicited in exchange for access to ministers and senior MPs create an undisclosed conflict of interest in policy formation. The connection between a donation made at a fundraiser and a subsequent policy decision is rarely provable, but the structural incentive, that policy decisions affecting donors are made by people who have financial relationships with those donors, is the conflict that matters regardless of whether any individual decision is corrupt. Victoria already bans property developer donations under amendments to the Electoral Act passed in 2023, establishing that the principle of category-specific donation bans is already accepted in Victorian electoral law.

The Electoral Act 2002 (Vic) and the Electoral Regulations 2024 govern political donations, disclosure thresholds, and prohibited donors. The 2023 amendments prohibit donations from property developers and their associates. Extending the prohibition to corporate fundraising events requires an amendment to either the definition of "political donation" (to include the value of event attendance and table purchases) or a specific provision banning events at which the primary or incidental purpose is soliciting donations in exchange for political access. The Australian Electoral Commission's real-time donation disclosure system, introduced federally in 2025, provides a template for immediate online disclosure that is more transparent than Victoria's current 7-day and annual disclosure cycles.

The Electoral Integrity Act's stated purpose is to ensure political donations do not create a perception or reality of undue influence over elected representatives. The quid pro quo at a corporate fundraiser is explicit in a way that a blind donation is not: the donor pays for a table, and the politician sits at the table and discusses policy. The financial value exchanged at corporate fundraisers is not publicly disclosed in a form that lets voters identify which donor purchased which access at which event, even under Victoria's existing disclosure regime, because individual event attendance is not separately categorised in donation returns.

A ban on corporate fundraisers would reduce the income available to political parties, which will argue this disadvantages smaller parties less than larger ones, since smaller parties have fewer alternative fundraising mechanisms. This is partially true: Fusion itself raises money at events, and a blanket ban would affect all parties. The policy's answer is that the specific conflict of interest at a corporate fundraiser, cash for ministerial access, is structurally different from a community membership event or a small-dollar online fundraiser. The line-drawing problem, defining what constitutes a prohibited "corporate fundraiser" versus a permitted community event, is a genuine legislative drafting challenge that the amendment to the Electoral Act will need to resolve with precision.

The Irish Electoral Reform Act 2022 introduced stricter donation disclosure requirements and caps on third-party spending, building on an existing culture of relatively low disclosure thresholds. Switzerland's federal ban on anonymous donations above CHF 100 (approximately AUD 170) and mandatory public disclosure of all party funding sources above CHF 10,000 per donor per year has produced a more transparent public record of which corporate interests fund which parties. Victoria's own 2023 property developer donation ban establishes the precedent that category-specific bans are constitutional and administratively workable under state electoral law.

This is a crossbench-leverage policy. A Fusion MP introduces a Private Member's Bill amending the Electoral Act 2002 to: (1) define a "corporate fundraising event" as any event at which the purchaser of attendance is a corporation or entity associated with a corporation and at which an elected representative or candidate is present as an attraction; and (2) require the full face value of each corporate table or ticket purchase to be disclosed as a political donation within 7 days under the existing real-time disclosure framework. The disclosure stage is the one-seat deliverable, designed to pass with cross-party support from any party that benefits from making corporate access visible. A hard cap on per-attendee event value, turning the disclosure requirement into a prohibition above a threshold, requires broader parliamentary support but is included in the Bill as a second stage. The one-seat goal is complete transparency on the record; the ban follows from whichever parliament is willing to take the next step.