Sutherland District Trade Union Club: Calls for probe into alleged ‘illegal donations’
Special Minister of State Don Harwin has called for an investigation into potentially illegal donations made by a Sydney tradies club which allegedly gifted more than $25,000 to Labor candidates in south Sydney electorates.
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Special Minister of State Don Harwin has called for an investigation into a Sydney tradies club which allegedly made $25,000 in illegal donations to Labor candidates in south Sydney electorates.
Official records show Sutherland District Trade Union Club, also known as Tradies, made a series of donations in 2011 exceeding the $2000 cap for individuals at the time.
Among the recipients was former ALP minister and member for Heathcote Paul McLeay, who quit the front bench over a porn scandal in 2010 and did not stand for re-election in 2011 when Kristina Keneally’s government suffered a wipe out.
He received $5133.62 from Tradies, former Menai state Labor candidate and current Sutherland Shire councillor Peter Scraysbrook got $2398, former Cronulla state Labor candidate Stephanie Jones $9256.30 and former Miranda state Labor candidate Therese Cook $4104.76. None of the four candidates disclosed the club’s donations.
Five years later in 2016, Tradies allegedly erred again when the NSW Electoral Commission’s aggregated donations cap for groups of candidates had increased to $5900.
The club, which has three locations at Gymea, Helensburgh and Caringbah, made a $5900 donation to the ALP’s Sutherland local government election campaign and then another $5900 donation to the 2016 ALP local government campaign.
Both donations were declared to the Electoral Commission but it did not identify the overpayment.
Mr Harwin hit out at the ALP, saying an independent investigation was needed.
“Once again, there appear to be substantial concerns about the propriety of donations to the Labor Party,” he said. “Allegations about illegal electoral donations should be forwarded to the Electoral Commission for them to investigate independently from the government.”
A commission spokesman would not comment on whether it was investigating.
Tradies disclosed its donations as being legal “political expenditure from a third party campaigner” and declared the money was used to fund advertisements, as well as ALP how-to-vote cards.
But further paperwork submitted to the commission revealed Tradies actually directed money to individual candidate campaigns.
ALP governance director Glenn Bacic insisted Tradies money was “ not donations” to candidates. “All of the state campaign donations referred to have been made in compliance with relevant electoral donation caps,” he said.