Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull reveals he donated $1.75 million to the Liberal Party
PRIME Minister Malcolm Turnbull has aggressively defended his $1.75 million donation to the Liberal Party, after being accused of buying his election win.
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PRIME Minister Malcolm Turnbull has aggressively defended his $1.75 million donation to the Liberal Party, saying he stood up for what he believed in.
“I can’t be bought by anyone,” Mr Turnbull told reporters at a press conference in Victoria today.
“Let’s be quite clear about this, I have put my money where my mouth is,” he said.
“I have contributed my money, my after-tax money, to the Liberal Party standing up for the values that I believe are critically important for Australia’s future.
“I’m not a wholly-owned subsidiary of the CFMEU like Bill Shorten.
“I’m my own man and Bill Shorten hates that.”
It comes after Treasurer Scott Morrison and Julie Bishop defended him after he was accused of buying the election by personally donating $1.75m to the Liberals.
Treasurer Scott Morrison both hit back at the Australian Labor Party for its donations from unions.
“Let’s remember $20 million or thereabouts it was reported were donated by the union movement to Bill Shorten, so who do you think is pulling his chain,” the Treasurer told ABC radio this morning.
“The only person who clearly is influencing Malcolm Turnbull when it comes to donations is himself,” Mr Morrison said.
“Now, that is the most transparent of any donation you can possibly imagine.
“Malcolm Turnbull believes in what he is doing and he’s backed that up.
“Bill Shorten put his hand in the pocket of every union member in the country.”
He also described it as “a grubby smear from a grubby political hack”.
Mr Turnbull’s Deputy Leader, Julie Bishop, told Sky News that he was “forthright” and “upfront” about it.
“I’d welcome the fact our prime minister is prepared to invest his money in causes he believes in,” she said.
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LABOR: PM ‘BOUGHT THE ELECTION’
Their comments come after Shadow Finance Minister Jim Chalmers said it appeared Mr Turnbull had tried to “buy his way out of trouble” at the end of the election campaign.
“No wonder Malcolm Turnbull was so desperate to keep this a secret — he basically bought himself an election,” Mr Chalmers said.
“He couldn’t rely on the power of his arguments or his policies to win the election, he had to buy it.
“I think the Australian people will be shocked by this admission, it stinks.”
Mr Chalmers said he doubted Mr Turnbull would be the leader of the Liberal Party of Prime Minister if he didn’t contributed a significant amount of money.
But Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg has defended the Prime Minister, claiming it was the “purest donation of all”.
“There is no inference of influence when a person makes a donation to their own campaign,” Mr Frydenberg said.
PLIBERSEK DEFENDS UNION DONATIONS
Opposition deputy leader Tanya Plibersek has defended union donations to the ALP while attacking the Prime Minister’s donation.
“Unions are made up of individual people who put their hard-earned dues into the movement, they have a democratic say about the leadership of their union movement,” Ms Plibersek told the ABC.
“Their own interests are represented by the union movement that fights for better pay and conditions for working Australians and fights for services too, like decent healthcare, better education, more money for schools, universities and hospitals.”
Ms Plibersek said the Prime Minister’s donation was legal but the Australian public would make up their own mind about whether it was appropriate.
“What Labor says is we should have much better political donation exposure,” she said. “We set the bar at $1,000 for disclosures and the Liberals have insisted on putting it back up to $13,000. “We have said that donations should be disclosed in something much closer to real-time and not this lag of months and months between the donation being made and it being publicly revealed.
“We say there shouldn’t be foreign donations, overseas companies shouldn’t be seeking to have an influence on the outcome of Australian elections.”
“We were within about 12,000 votes across the different marginal seats of forming government. People can make up their own mines of what difference a $1.75 million donation from a single person makes in a close contest.”
TURNBULL’S CANDID TV INTERVIEW
Mr Turnbull broke with long-held convention to publicly state his political donation in a candid interview with Stan Grant on the ABC’s 7.30.
Confirming the figure for the first time last night, the prime minister said he had always been financially generous with causes he and wife Lucy believed in.
“I’ve always been prepared to put my money where my mouth is,” he told the ABC’s 7.30 program.
“I think Australians are more interested if what I am doing with their money than what I am doing with my own. Now, I have always been a supporter of the causes I believe in. Lucy and I have always been generous.
“We have always been generous because we know that we have done well in life and we believe it is part of our duty to give back. So we’ve always been philanthropic. Well, to the Liberal Party. I contributed $1.75 million, that was the contribution I made. It has been talked about and speculated about but there it is. $1.75 million. That’s a substantial contribution, I can assure you we make big contributions to many important enterprises and causes. I’ve always been prepared to put my money where my mouth is.”
Grant began to question Mr Turnbull on Opposition leader Bill Shorten’s comments yesterday about integrity in the Parliament and queried why the Liberal leader would not publicly release his own donations to his Party.
“Stan, I think Australians are more interested if what I am doing with their money than what I am doing with my own,” Mr Turnbull said.
“Now, I have always been a supporter of the causes I believe in.”
On the program Mr Turnbull was also asked again whether US President Donald Trump had made a deal to take Australian asylum seekers.
“We have a confirmation of that assurance given by the Prime Minister’s spokesman in the White House briefing room. That’s what I am basing my remarks on, and I think that’s more reliable than some of the reports we’ve seen in the press,” he said.
Mr Turnbull originally declined to disclose his contribution to the Liberal Party when quizzed on the sum after his speech to the National Press Club. But he responded to questioning on 7.30.
Earlier, Greens electoral spokeswoman Lee Rhiannon said the donations laws were “utterly inadequate”.
“They encourage a cosy relationship between political parties and vested interests,” she told AAP.
“It seems Prime Minister Turnbull has used a loophole in the donations laws to avoid scrutiny for another 12 months.
“The Prime Minister won’t even tell the public how much he bankrolled his own party. His response is that he has complied with all the rules — and to that the Greens say the rules must change.”
PARTY DONORS REVEALED
Labor leader Bill Shorten on Tuesday said the opposition would support an overhaul of donation rules, including lowering the disclosure threshold to $1000.
The AEC figures showed the Liberals received $80.2 million over the year while Labor received $61 million.
But detailed disclosures on the donations are only available for a fraction of those amounts.
Mining magnate Paul Marks, a friend of former prime minister Tony Abbott, was the biggest single donor to the Liberal Party, contributing $1.4 million.
The private company of the Pratt family gave $790,000.
Former cabinet minister Ian Macfarlane donated nearly $70,000 to the Liberal- National Party in Queensland while Immigration Minister Peter Dutton gave $50,000.
Another cabinet minister, Simon Birmingham, donated $20,000 to the Liberal Party’s federal division.
Australian-Chinese property billionaire Chau Chak Wing gave $530,000 to Liberal coffers and $150,000 to Labor through his Hong Kong-based investment company. Village Roadshow was the single biggest donor to the Labor Party, contributing $257,000, although that is less than the $325,000 it gave to the Liberals.
Graeme Wood, founder of the travel website Wotif, donated $630,000 to the Greens and $6000 to the Queensland branch of the ALP.
Pauline Hanson loaned $155,000 to her One Nation party and donated a further $35,000.
Nick Xenophon contributed $250,000 to his party, while David Leyonhjelm chipped in $50,000 to his Liberal Democrats.
Senator Leyonhjelm’s party also received donations from Adelaide businessman Roostam Sadri ($200,000), the Alliance of Australia Retailers ($90,000), Sporting Shooters Association of Australia ($15,856), geologist and climate sceptic Ian Plimer ($45,000), businessman Sam Kennard ($22,900) and tobacco giant Philip Morris ($20,000).
Originally published as Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull reveals he donated $1.75 million to the Liberal Party
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