New donation data shows how wealthy individuals and well-funded campaigning organisations sought to shape Australia’s 2025 election through money, messaging and pressure politics.

Australia’s richest people have again been using their money to try to influence our elections. The political donations data released by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) on 2 February showed Clive Palmer’s Mineralogy gave the most – $53 million to the Trumpet of Patriots.

Palmer was not the only rich person who was a significant political actor in the 2025 federal election. Gina Rinehart, Australia’s richest person, also wanted Australia to follow Trump. She urged the Liberal Party ‘to watch and learn’ from Trump, particular in cutting government waste and regulation and saying no to Paris. She backed this up with money via Hancock Prospecting, for example $204,000 to the Liberal Party in 2024–25.

Rinehart’s donations to the Liberal Party have sometimes been indirect. After allegations appeared in news stories, the Australian Electoral Commission undertook an investigation that found Hancock Prospecting had given $150,000 to the Sydney Mining Club in 2020–21 to purchase a subscription to the Liberal Party’s Australian Business Network.

The indirect donation to the Liberal Party was not disclosed until the media interest in 2023 but the AEC found there was ‘no evidence to suggest deliberate avoidance on the part of Hancock Prospecting, the Sydney Mining Club or the Liberal Party of Australia’.

While Rinehart was providing significant support to the Liberal Party, she gave more to Advance, the digital campaigning organisation that was urging the Liberals to go harder on Trumpist policies. In 2024–25 she was Advance’s largest donor, giving it $895,000. Interestingly, she didn’t make any direct donations to fellow Trump enthusiast, Pauline Hanson.

Advance’s income tripled after its success with the ‘No’ campaign on the Voice. It received $15.7 million in 2003–04, including $500,000 from Liberal Party affiliate, the Cormack Foundation. In 2004–05 it received $13,459,752. The inflow of money enabled Advance to hire 23 full-time staff and engage in ongoing culture wars to ‘save’ Australia Day and the national flag from elites and activists.

Ahead of the 2025 federal election Advance also drew on its coffers for two major campaigns – ‘Greens Truth’ and ‘Weak, Woke and Sending Us Broke’.

The most significant expenditure was on the ‘Greens Truth’ campaign, targeting six electorates and aiming to persuade voters that the Greens were ‘not who they used to be’. Its videos suggested the Greens had turned into a ‘malignant political force’ promoting immigration, decriminalisation of drugs, death taxes and antisemitism. By February 2025 Advance claimed its Greens Truth ads had been seen over two million times on Facebook and seven million times on Google and YouTube.

By March ‘Greens Truth’ had been joined by Advance’s campaign against the Albanese Government. A lead item in its 'Weak, Woke and Sending us Broke' video, was an Indigenous breastfeeding project – illustrating both government waste and wokeness. The video also highlighted a drag queen at a ‘Yes’ campaign event and the Prime Minister being ‘weak’ rather than a strongman who would keep Australians safe from anti-Semitism.

The most popular of the Advance online petitions, was its ‘End Welcome to Country’ petition, endorsing Senator Jacinta Price’s call to stop spending taxpayer dollars on ‘elite and activist ceremonies that divide us by race’. Advance ran 14 different ads attacking woke ceremonies in April 2025, with messages such as ‘Don’t welcome me to my own country’. In the last week of the campaign Advance jumped on an unguarded comment by Senator Penny Wong to claim mainstream Australians were being ignored by elites wanting to bring back the Voice – a claim quickly picked up by the Coalition.

The election result was by no means seen as a defeat for Advance’s campaign against elites and activists. They claimed they had ‘smashed the Greens’ and were saving Australia Day. Most importantly, they were soon claiming success for their email blitz giving Liberal MPs the ultimatum to ‘Dump Net Zero or we’ll dump you’.

Gina Rinehart has certainly put her money where her mouth is. The paradox of billionaires using their money to campaign against elites has become a staple of populist politics. The Australian Electoral Commission’s Transparency Register is invaluable in throwing some light on this, but much more is needed.