Question of ethics: back-door banquet is food for thought

Anthony Albanese and Rupinder Brar.

Even if you live in a Toorak mansion, how do you get a Labor Prime Minister and a former Labor premier over for an intimate dinner?

Multiple Labor figures familiar with how the ALP makes politics in Victoria say the most likely answer is by hosting a political fundraiser and knowing enough people willing to shell out thousands of dollars to attend.

We still don’t know for certain that’s how Anthony Albanese and Dan Andrews ended up enjoying, as one guest put it, “four hours of exquisite cuisine and hospitality” on November 12 last year because no one who knows was willing to say on Wednesday.

The Prime Minister’s Office simply refused to address the direct question as to whether the event was a fundraiser, confirming only that Albanese attended a function at a private residence with a staffer and Andrews.

We do know this; when election season breaks, Labor in Victoria has form in rattling the tin with the industrious and successful Indian-Australian community.

Just over two years ago, in the run-up to the 2022 Victorian state election, Albanese’s then immigration minister, Andrew Giles, was the drawcard at a series of Indian community fundraisers to collect donations for state Labor minister Lily D'Ambrosio.

Even in the transactional world of the Victorian ALP, there were plenty of party people raising eyebrows in private about the ethics of an immigration minister doing this with a community often dealing with the heartache of trying to get relatives into Australia.

But his boss, the Prime Minister, never appeared to have a problem with it. At least in public, anyway. And now, in the lead-up to his own election, Albanese’s office won’t say whether the Indian feast was also about filling ALP pockets ahead of this year’s poll.

Thanks to social media posts from some of the guests, we can see what a terrific night was had by all in Toorak. But these events aren’t without political risk; we now know that the guest sitting next to the PM was the owner of an international student college deregistered by the federal regulator for “significant noncompliance”.

Was the foreign student industry discussed over dinner? We don’t know for certain because the PMO won’t say. If it wasn’t, why not say so.

Political donations are part of our democracy. And all sides of politics rattle the tin come election time. But that doesn’t make it right.