Opposition Leader Jess Wilson will face a cashed-up independent challenger in her marginal seat of Kew for the first time after the funder of the teal movement, Climate 200, exploited a temporary gap in Victoria’s donation laws.
Climate 200 co-convenor Simon Holmes à Court revealed to this masthead his organisation had tipped $40,000 into the campaign of independent candidate Sophie Torney, who is seeking to topple Wilson, and made a matching donation to Shima Ibuki, an independent running against former Liberal leader John Pesutto in Hawthorn.
The donations would have been illegal – and punishable by up to 10 years in jail – had they been made before April 15, when the High Court struck out Victoria’s campaign finance laws as unconstitutional. Under the previous regime, the maximum that any individual or organisation could donate to a candidate was $4970.
There are currently no limits on the size of private donations to political candidates in Victoria, or any requirement for those donations to be disclosed.
The size of the Climate 200 contribution, which Holmes à Court said would be used to get the independent campaigns “off the ground” ahead of the November 28 election, will renew the urgency within the government and opposition to restore campaign finance rules.
The Allan government had hoped to introduce legislation as early as Tuesday, when parliament next resumes, but is struggling to design a new framework that will satisfy its own caucus, win sufficient support within the parliament and withstand any further High Court challenge.
Holmes à Court, who supported the successful High Court case of former independent candidates Paul Hopper and Melissa Lowe, defended Climate 200’s decision to make use of the regulatory vacuum.
“Victorian taxpayers are funding almost the entire campaigns of their opponents, giving the majors a massive head start,” he said. “If we want remotely fair elections, we need to make sure challengers have adequate support to get off the ground.
“With just 202 days to the election, candidates can’t be expected to sit around and wonder how the state will clean up its mess.”
He said he did not personally contribute to the donations.
Centre for Public Integrity executive director Catherine Williams said Climate 200’s move underscored the need for the government to move quickly to restore transparency to the flow of campaign money.
The Centre for Public Integrity is pushing for a restoration of disclosure requirements and public funding arrangements as an immediate step and the establishment of a more considered process after the election to develop a replacement campaign finance regime.
“We anticipated that the period when Victoria lacked donations regulation was going to see an increase in the flow of money into campaigns,” Williams said. “That is the reason we want the government to at least restore transparency, urgently.
“What we ultimately want is for the parliament to put in place a comprehensive process to run post-election so this and other complex political finance regulation issues can be dealt with properly.”
Premier Jacinta Allan has promised to backdate any changes to the Electoral Act to the day of the High Court decision.
The influx of substantial donations into the teal campaigns in Kew and Hawthorn will reshape the contests in two of the Liberal Party’s vulnerable inner-city seats and invite further scrutiny of how Climate 200 funds community independents.
Although Climate 200 is backed by high-worth individuals such as Holmes à Court, it says its electoral war chest is crowdfunding built from modest donations by more than 30,000 supporters.
It published an advertisement in The Age on Saturday warning that this funding model, which it says involves average donations of just $33, would again be outlawed under the legislative fix being contemplated by the major parties.
Holmes à Court has separately built an online portal titled “wall of advantage” which illustrates publicly funded benefits not available to independent challengers which incumbent MPs representing the major parties received to pay for political activities under the previous laws.
He calculates that even in circumstances where a challenger is able to raise $250,000 in donations, they start more than $2 million behind a Labor or Coalition MP.
David Feeney, a former Labor senator who recommended changes to Victoria’s campaign finance laws in a 2024 report, last week described the current vacuum as a regulatory catastrophe.
“The implications, unless a new system is established very, very swiftly, is that our November election becomes a billionaires’ picnic,” he told the Socially Democratic podcast.
“What it means, in practical terms in November, is that teal independents, One Nation candidates – unless something changes – now have access to rivers of gold flowing into this state and into their political coffers.”
Liberal MP David Davis went further. “It is hypocritical of the teals and Climate 200 to complain about donations when they are the first to make them,” he said.
At the 2022 state election, independent candidates ran in Kew and Hawthorn but were kept campaign-poor by Victoria’s tight donation laws. Torney picked up 21 per cent of the vote in Kew, which Wilson holds by a margin of 4 per cent.
Torney said the Climate 200 donation would get her 2026 campaign off the starting blocks.
“In Victoria, the major parties start every campaign with five to 10 times the resources of an independent and most of that gap is built from public money the major parties have funnelled to themselves,” she said. “That isn’t a fair contest.”
The Victorian Trades Hall Council is also targeting the Liberal leader in her own seat, with a prominent billboard drawing attention to her party’s intention to preference One Nation candidates above Labor. Wilson says no decision has been made.
Ibuki said the donation would make a material difference to her campaign in Hawthorn.
“The High Court struck down the Victorian campaign finance laws for good reason, as the system rewarded the major parties and incumbents while putting huge barriers up against new independent candidate,” she said.
The High Court ruling centred on a carve-out under the old laws through which the major parties were able to receive unlimited campaign donations from legacy investment funds. The court found the arrangement, which was not available to smaller parties, new entrants or independents, was unfair and unconstitutional.
The government, Liberal Party and Greens have agreed in backroom negotiations to reintroduce a cap on donations. There is no consensus on where the cap should be set, how much public funding there should be for political campaigns, and how to treat the legacy investment funds.
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Chip Le Grand leads our state politics reporting team. He previously served as the paper’s chief reporter and is a journalist of 30 years’ experience.Connect via email.
