Updated ,first published
Labor’s decision to delay political donation reforms has inadvertently handed One Nation an extra six months to court high-rolling donors as the minor party claims to have raised more than $2 million in less than two days through their campaign attacking the prime minister.
One Nation will have the rest of the year to capitalise on its newfound popularity and lobby for unlimited donations and gifts – such as the private plane donated last month by Australia’s richest person, mining billionaire Gina Rinehart – before a yearly cap of $50,000 per donor is introduced for federal cash donations and another $50,000 for gifts.
The public will not learn the details about Pauline Hanson’s millions in donations for this financial year, including the “Fire the Liar” campaign, until the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) publishes campaign donation data on February 1.
That process will also be overhauled so that from next year, donations are made public within three weeks, or daily in the week before an election. Parties will need to declare donations made in the last half of this year by early 2027.
The threshold for anonymous donations will be lowered from $17,300 to $5000.
The prime minister questioned the legitimacy of One Nation’s fundraising claim on Thursday, while saying it paled in comparison to other donations and gifts Hanson has received from Rinehart.
“Did she, though? What evidence is there?” he said at a press conference in Sydney when asked about the money Hanson had accrued.
“This is someone who got a plane worth more than [those fundraising donations] given to her by Australia’s richest person,” he said.
“That pales in insignificance with the size of a single donation which was given, showing, I think, the interests that One Nation represent. It’s not battlers – they vote against battlers each and every time.”
Hanson’s chief of staff James Ashby insisted all the donations were real and vowed to prove their legitimacy.
“We’ll get the website independently audited by a forensics team, and they can actually give a stat dec to state that the website is real, the money’s real,” he told 2GB radio on Thursday.
He said 28,000 people had donated to the campaign, which would average close to $60 each.
One Nation launched the fundraiser on Wednesday morning in response to Labor’s social media campaign appealing for donations of $27 to stop the rise of the minor party.
The Fire the Liar fundraising site suggests a donation of $60, but accepts any amount. Ashby pitched to listeners that anything under $1500 was tax-deductible ahead of the end of the financial year.
One Nation’s fundraising efforts have escalated since the party started soaring in polls.
Hanson has been crisscrossing the country to appear at campaign-style fundraisers vowing to take seats from Labor ministers and eyeing off Coalition strongholds. The next election must be held by May 20, 2028 – almost two years away.
Former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce has defected to the party from the Nationals and has been courting wealthy benefactors with the help of Rinehart.
In April, the mining magnate hosted Hanson and Joyce for a fundraiser on her private plane, where guests paid $15,000 a head to dine in the air with the One Nation figures, according to The Australian Financial Review.
Hanson and Joyce also billed taxpayers more than $3000 to attend several fundraisers hosted by Rinehart on board the luxury cruise ship The World, The Guardian reported last week.
Alongside the private plane, worth an estimated $1.5 million, another $2 million was donated to One Nation through Rinehart’s friends and businesses in April.
Under the new donation rules, an individual or organisation will not be allowed to donate more than $1.6 million to multiple recipients in a year.
Hanson has publicly embraced her relationships with Rinehart and mining billionaire Clive Palmer after previously seeking to distance the party from claims it was being backed by Rinehart. “I haven’t seen any money from her,” chief of staff Ashby said in December.
Before its recent polling success, Hanson became her own party’s biggest donor by giving $245,000 in 2024-25, according to the latest AEC data.
She refused to reveal the source of the funds for what the party called a “commercial loan”.
A government spokesperson said the six-month delay to the reforms was done only on the advice of the independent AEC to ensure the rules were enforceable from the moment they began.
“The sooner that Labor’s reforms commence, the better for our democracy,” they said.
“Under Labor’s reforms, everything will be transparent and visible. The reforms, which include reasonable caps and limits, will finally put downward pressure on the big money that trades hands in elections, and make sure Australians know who is donating to parties and candidates before they go to the ballot box.”
Nationals frontbencher Bridget McKenzie intervened in the debate on Thursday and said if the prime minister was going to suggest One Nation needed to provide evidence for its donations, Labor should also disclose which ministers received funds from the scandal-plagued CFMEU.
The federal government has been accused of trying to warp the system to benefit the major parties with its new donation laws and is facing a High Court challenge from former independent politicians Zoe Daniel and Rex Patrick.
The pair is arguing the reforms could breach the Constitution’s implied freedom of political communication by allowing the major parties to draw on more funding streams than independents because single donors can donate to multiple branches.
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Brittany Busch is a federal politics reporter for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.From our partners
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