The Australian Electoral Commission has just released its 2014-15 financial disclosure returns, which reveal that in the last two years Australia’s big four banks have donated $1.36 million to the major political political parties.
A closer analysis of the report reveals:
- There appears to be an inverse relationship between bank performance and the amount donated to political parties. The best-performing bank, the Commonwealth Bank, donated $232,000 over the past two years. Meanwhile ANZ and National Australia Bank, the two worst-performing banks, donated $405,000 and $355,000 respectively.
- Perhaps unsurprisingly the big banks favour the Coalition over the Australian Labor Party (64% to 36%). However, there is a substantial difference between CBA, which is more even-handed with a 55:45% split between donations to the parties, compared with NAB’s lopsided 73:27% split.
- The two Melbourne-based banks, ANZ and NAB, happen to be the biggest supporters of the Liberal National Party.
- Between 2013-14 and 2014-15 the banks increased their donations to the major political parties by 16%.
Full details of political donations can be found on the AEC website but the following table summarises the position of the big banks.
$M
|
2013/4
|
2014/5
|
TOTAL
|
% LNP
|
% ALP
|
| CBA |
$0.132
|
$0.100
|
$0.232
|
55
|
45
|
| WBC |
$0.192
|
$0.176
|
$0.368
|
63
|
27
|
| ANZ |
$0.225
|
$0.180
|
$0.405
|
61
|
39
|
| NAB |
$0.080
|
$0.275
|
$0.355
|
73
|
23
|
| TOTAL |
$0.629
|
$0.731
|
$1.360
|
64
|
36
|
These figures raise a number of questions which the banks, shareholders and regulators may consider including:
- Should banks, or any other company, union or individual be permitted to donate shareholders’ funds to political parties?
- Should there be a cap on political donations?
- Does it make a difference if the donor is a public rather than private company or individual?
- Should shareholders have a say in this like they do with executive remuneration?
- What returns do donors expect and actually receive from these investments?
- How and by whom are these returns measured and reported?
Neil Slonim is a business banking advisor and commentator and is thefounder of theBankDoctor.org, a not-for-profit online resource centre helping SMEs deal with the challenges of funding a small business.
