Clive Palmer recoups $640,000 in campaign expenses

The AEC has processed more than $9.5m in claims from political parties and candidates.

The Australian Electoral Commission has processed more than $9.5m in claims from political parties and candidates who contested the federal election, including significant paydays for Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party and independent MP Zali Steggall.

Transparency register documents reveal 37 election funding claims valued above $10,000 have been lodged with the AEC including final determinations handing more than $640,000 to Mr Palmer’s UAP, which failed to win a seat.

Ms Steggall, who raised more than $1.1m from 1378 donors in her successful challenge to former prime minister Tony Abbott in Warringah, is expected to receive $100,253.

Ahead of the election funding claims cut-off on November 17, the AEC has granted interim election funding payments for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, valued at $1.88m, and almost $42,000 for the Jacqui Lambie Network. AEC commissioner Tom Rogers determined that the interim claim lodged by One Nation be “accepted in part and refused in part”.

 

The Australian understands the overall total for election funding payments will be considerably higher once all claims are processed by the end of the year.

Almost $2.2m will be paid to the Australian Labor Party and Liberal Party of Australia through a calculation multiplying the total number of formal first-preferences votes received by the current election funding rate, which is $2.77 per vote.

The Nationals, Country Liberals and Greens will also receive significant returns on election expenditure.

Failed candidates Oliver Yates and Rob Oakeshott, who accepted donations from the Climate 200 funding vehicle bankrolled by prominent renewable energy activists, have had their funding claims confirmed at $14,420 and $61,154.

Mr Yates, the former Clean ­Energy Finance Corporation chief who claimed 8.98 per cent of the primary vote in his failed attempt to unseat Josh Frydenberg, raised $362,578 from 261 donors but listed a total electoral expenditure of $483,804. Mr Oakeshott received $105,000 from 350 donors, with a total electoral expenditure of $175,000.

Kerryn Phelps, who lost Wentworth to Dave Sharma, claimed 333 donations worth $218,690, with total electoral expenditure valued at $281,944. The AEC has approved a $70,144 payment to Dr Phelps.

In June, the AEC confirmed it had made initial election funding payments to parties and candidates totalling $584,640, for eligible ­recipients under its $10,080 automatic payment system.

These payments included candidates and parties who did not seek additional payment through claims demonstrating “electoral expenditure”. To be eligible for automatic payments, candidates and parties were required to have received 4 per cent of the formal first-preference vote.

An AEC spokesman said all ­determinations on candidate and party claims would be finalised by early December.

The AEC election funding guide states electoral expenditure is classified as that which was “incurred for the dominant purpose of creating or communicating electoral matter”.

“For a registered political party, a state branch of a registered political party, a candidate or a member of a Senate group, electoral expenditure is generally any expenditure incurred with its authority in relation to an election,” the guide says.

“There is no defined time in which the expenditure must be incurred so long as it can be demonstrated it was in relation to an election.’’