[Theme Music Starts]

RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones. This is 7am.

While Peter Dutton’s electorate braced for cyclone Alfred, the opposition leader flew to Sydney to attend a 25,000 dollar a head dinner at Justin Hemmes’ Vaucluse mansion.

It was a choice that’s been criticised by some in the media and the government. With claims it shows where Dutton’s priorities and loyalties lie.

But as Labor sets about to raise money in similar ways, it raises questions about who has the ear of our leaders, and what Australia’s wealthiest people are getting in return for their donations.

Today, special correspondent for The Saturday Paper, Jason Koutsoukis, on Peter Dutton, Anthony Albanese and the billionaires they court.

It’s Friday, March 28.

[Theme Music Ends]

RUBY:

So, Jason, I was hoping we could go back to early March when then tropical cyclone Alfred was bearing down on Brisbane and the Gold Coast, which is obviously Peter Dutton's electorate. But tell me what Peter Dutton was doing while that was happening.

JASON:

So on Tuesday of that week, this is March 4th, when most of the country believed that this was going to be a catastrophic weather event for southern Queensland and northern New South Wales.

Audio excerpt — Peter Dutton:

“Here at Kedron, the Emergency Management Centre, there's already a very significant effort underway from emergency services.”

JASON:

So Peter Dutton started the day in Brisbane, getting a briefing on the cyclone.

Audio excerpt — Peter Dutton:

“This is a very serious event and people need to heed the words and the advice of the premier very carefully and act accordingly.”

JASON:

But then in the afternoon, he flew down to Sydney to attend a fundraiser at the harbourside mansion of Merivale owner, Justin Hemmes. The event was attended by around 20 guests who were each asked to stump up around $25,000 to the Liberal Party's campaign. And that event raised about half a million dollars.

Audio excerpt — Peter Dutton:

“It wasn't a party, it was a fundraising dinner, and the prime minister and I are doing them around the country at the moment.”

JASON:

At the time Peter Dutton defended attending that event.

Audio excerpt — Peter Dutton:

“I think people who are using that for political advantage in the time of a natural disaster, frankly, that's a poorer reflection on them than it is on me.”

JASON:

But given the fear and anxiety in Queensland at this impending natural disaster, the fundraiser became a flashpoint for criticism, with some people even comparing it to Scott Morrison's famous Black Summer blunder when he left Australia and went to Hawaii on a family holiday while the country burned.

And of course the Labor Party took full advantage of this with Queensland Labor Senator Murray Watt tweeting out that we now know how much Peter Dutton raised for the Liberals money bags while his community was packing sandbags.

RUBY:

Yeah, this was really pounced upon, wasn't it? Because you have someone with a natural disaster in their backyard, leaving town, going to Sydney and going to a fundraiser with one of Australia's wealthiest businessmen, someone who quite notoriously also underpaid his workers for years. So since that moment, since it was discovered that's what Dutton was doing, What else have you found out about these types of fundraisers?

JASON:

Well, I think what's so interesting about it is that one of the hallmarks of Peter Dutton's leadership of the Liberal Party since he became leader has been how he has put distance between the Liberal Party and its traditional backers at the big end of town. And he's carefully positioned himself, I think, as a defender of mainstream voters against out-of-touch boardrooms and has particularly railed against corporate Australia's support for some of these so-called woke issues like the Voice and not stocking Australia Day merchandise.

But at the same time, Peter Dutton has actually cultivated close corporate links. He's managed to work those links to secure financial backing and strategic advice for the Liberal Party. And I think the person who he's got closest to in his time as opposition leader has been Gina Rinehart.

Audio excerpt — Gina Rinehart:

“Now please enjoy your evening. I’m thrilled you’ve been having bonding for the last two days on our chartered jets. Delighted we’ll soon hear from another outstanding leader - the honorable Peter Dutton. Thankyou everyone.”

JASON:

She's Australia's richest woman. He went to her 70th birthday party in Perth. He flew all the way across the country so he could attend that event just for one hour, as it turned out, and at the time he said, I consider Gina Rinehart to be a dear friend, a great Australian, and Australia's most successful businesswoman.

And so I wanted to dig a bit more into these elite fundraisers, and I spoke to several people who actually attended some of these events this year.

RUBY:

Okay, so tell me about who you spoke to.

JASON:

One person I spoke to was Jeff Wilson, whose company is more than $5.9 billion under management. He's a very successful investor who's based in Sydney. And he was really open about a dinner that he went to on February 27 at the Towers Road Mansion of billionaire Melbourne investor, Alex Waislitz. The tickets were around $20,000 a head. and it was attended by a who's who of prominent Australian investors. These are chief executives from medical tech companies, banking, biotech firms.

The former CEO of Godfrey's, the vacuum cleaner retailer and the Executive Chairman of Australian Community Media, Anthony Catalano, who employs more than 400 journalists around the country at over 60 media titles.

JASON:

So all of these rich men gathered together to have dinner with Peter Dutton. And by all accounts, it was a very successful dinner, which stretched over more than three hours.

RUBY:

OK, so you have these banking, tech, media leaders spending three hours at dinner with Dutton. So what did they talk about, Jason?

JASON:

Well, according to Jeff Wilson, he told me that he saw the dinner as an important opportunity to present his view that the Albanese government has unfairly cracked down on franking credits, so a tax credit given to shareholders by the tax office for income tax paid by a company on its profits.

He also said that Dutton took the opportunity to open the dinner with a fairly informal speech, laying out his plans for the upcoming election campaign. Geoff Wilson told me that he was surprised actually by how open and engaged Peter Dutton was. And he didn't even mind Dutton's stance on some of these other issues that are seen as quite antagonistic to big business. These are things such as Dutton's plan to break up supermarket duopolies or insurance companies that are charging too much for insurance premiums. And the whole thing, I think, goes to show that political parties, regardless of ideology do depend on wealthy backers to fund their campaigns, a lot more than people realise.

The uglier side of politics is that everyone in parliament or who aspires to be elected to federal parliament has to raise money so that they can campaign and have their various campaign messages heard. Just in the same way, the Australian Greens or the Teals or other independent candidates, they have to do the same thing. And when it comes to the government, well, I think Anthony Albanese is, he's attending his fair share of fancy fundraisers too. It's not just Peter Dutton who's hosting these events.

RUBY:

After the break – what do Anthony Albanese’s own fancy fundraisers look like?

[Advertisement]

RUBY:

Jason, you've been speaking to people who've attended Peter Dutton's high-end fundraisers and you've got the inside story on how Dutton behaves, what's talked about in the room, but what about on the other side of politics? What do we know about what kinds of fancy fundraisers that Anthony Albanese is attending?

JASON:

Well. It's a great question, Ruby, because I think the Labor Party sees a real opportunity here to go after Peter Dutton. They haven't been able to attack him personally on his own success as a property investor in Queensland, but they are trying to attack his links to some of Australia's wealthiest people, and in a fundraising email sent out last week by Labor's national president, Wayne Swan. The title of that email was ‘Billionaires are Coming for Labor’. And Wayne Swan, who's of course a former Federal Treasurer, asked recipients of this email to “join the dots and see who is running Dutton's campaign”. And just to quote from that email directly, Wayne Swan said, “this week we learned that Rinehart is ramping up her funding and demands on Dutton. With the election too close to call, this is a real risk of becoming reality, Swan said. “The truth is, bosses like Rinehart don't like that we've made it easier for their workers to earn a fair day's pay.”

So I think while Labor's attempts to frame Dutton's billionaire ties as a liability, Its own engagement with corporate donors suggests that the line between grassroots campaigning and elite fundraising is much blurrier than either side might care to admit.

RUBY:

Hmm. Tell me more about that then Jason, what is happening behind closed doors when it comes to senior Labor figures and corporate donors?

JASON:

Well, on the same day that Peter Dutton attended the event at Justin Hemmes’ mansion in Sydney, Anthony Albanese also attended a fundraiser in Sydney on the morning of March the 4th. The way Anthony Albanese has tried to explain it is that ‘on the same day, Peter Dutton flew out of Queensland, I was flying into Queensland.’

Audio excerpt — Anthony Albanese:

“I've been getting on with doing this job. That's what I've been doing. Giving support to people in a totally non-political way.”

JASON:

But on March the 16th, it has emerged that Anthony Albanese attended a $10,000 per head dinner at Sydney's Aria restaurant. which reportedly raised $100,000 for the Labor Party campaign and that event has sparked criticism that the government, just like they've been accusing the opposition, was prioritising elite donors over struggling Australians.

RUBY:

Right. So this is something that everybody is doing despite the optics of it. I mean, politicians know that it looks bad to have fancy fundraisers with wealthy donors, but they do it anyway. So what does that tell you, Jason, about how important these events are as revenue raisers for the major parties?

JASON:

Well, I think it tells us that they're very important. A big part of fundraising campaigns for political parties these days is focused on so-called small donors. These are people who are asked to pay $20, $50 every time they get an email like that one we saw from Wayne Swan.

Both parties are sending out lots of these kinds of emails and so are fundraising vehicles for the independent candidates too. Climate 200, which is, of course, headed by Simon Holmes à Court, they're sending out these kinds of emails every day asking people to stump up small amounts of money.

But while those small contributions are very important, I think until we have the sort of proper public funding model in place, this is the legislation that was passed in the last sitting week of Parliament in February, until those laws are firmly in place in the lead up to the next federal election, dinners like the ones we're talking about are, just as important as money raised from small contributions.

RUBY:

And what should we take from them, Jason? Because obviously there is no formal arrangement made between a donor and a politician at any of these events. So how does it work? What is being implicitly agreed to by a political party when they take these large donations from people who do have an explicit agenda?

JASON:

Well, ultimately, as voters head to the polls, they will not only be choosing between two leaders, but also weighing up whose financial backers and whose vision for the country aligns more closely with their own interests. I think while leaders who attend these kinds of dinners aren't making formal commitments to the people sitting around that table, they are getting a lot of very important feedback from those people as to what they see as being the most important issues affecting the country.

JASON:

And so I think if you've got the money and are able to pay to sit at a table with Peter Dutton or Anthony Albanese, you are being listened to, your voice is being heard. And that gives you perhaps an unfair advantage over ordinary voters who perhaps aren't as well resourced financially.

RUBY:

Jason, thank you so much for your time.

JASON:

Ruby, always a pleasure to talk with you. Thanks very much.

[Advertisement]

[Theme Music Starts]

RUBY:

Also in the news today,

The opposition has promised to cut the fuel excise by 25c for a year, taking the rate from about 50c to 25c per litre.

Outlining the policy in his budget reply speech last night, opposition leader Peter Dutton said his policy would take effect as soon as he won office.

And, a member of Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency team once provided support to a cybercrime gang, according to digital records.

The records reviewed by news outlet Reuters, reveal that Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old DOGE staffer previously ran a company that provided services to a ring of cybercriminals that bragged about trafficking in stolen data, and cyberstalking an FBI agent.

As part of his role at DOGE, Coristine has been given access to official networks to radically downsize the US government.

[Theme Music Ends]