Political donations data has dropped

Its a big annual event for us – the day the AEC drops the annual political donations data.

We had all the Donations Gadgets up to date within 90 minutes of the drop and added in a new Gadget (showing the top donors for 2020-21) a few minutes later.

As always, touching the donations data just reinforces what a mess this is. Donors and recipients don’t have top use ABNs or any standard identifier so looking at data is all about searches and algorithms. There are many ideas for reforming donations in Australia (for example removing the ludicrously high reporting minimum) but for me the most important reform would be to require a standard identifier (ABN is obvious as a starting point) for both ends of the donations process.

Anyway, reform is for another day.

Right now the latest data is available to dig into. The new list of top donors is a great starting point.