Electoral Funding Act 2018

General prohibition It is unlawful (subject to this section) for a person to accept a political donation to a party, elected member, group, candidate, third-party campaigner or associated entity if the donation exceeds the applicable cap on political donations.

Exception—federal campaign donations It is not unlawful for a person to accept a political donation that exceeds the applicable cap if the donation (or that part of the donation that exceeds the applicable cap) is to be paid into (or held as an asset of) an account kept exclusively for the purposes of federal election campaigns.

A political donation of property (not being money) that is held as an asset of an account kept for federal election campaigns ceases to be excluded by subsection (2) from the prohibition under this section if the proceeds of the disposal of the property are paid into any other account.

Exception for third-party campaigner It is not unlawful for a person to accept a political donation to a third-party campaigner that exceeds the applicable cap if the donation (or that part of the donation that exceeds the applicable cap) is not to be paid into (or held as an asset of) the campaign account of the third-party campaigner under Subdivision 3 of Division 5.

Defence—aggregation If a political donation to a person exceeds the applicable cap because of the aggregation of political donations made to other persons, the acceptance of the donation is not unlawful if the person did not know and could not reasonably have known of the political donations made to the other persons.

Donors required to disclose related corporation donors It is unlawful for an individual to make a political donation on behalf of a corporation that is related to another corporation (as referred to in section 9(8)) that has made a political donation to the same party, elected member, group, candidate, third-party campaigner or associated entity in the same financial year, unless the individual complies with the requirements of the regulations relating to the disclosure to the person accepting the donation of particulars of the other corporation and its political donations.