“Dark money” would be eliminated from Australian politics under a plan by senator Jacqui Lambie to require the declaration of multiple small donations and for fundraising dinners to be declared as gifts.

Lambie will release a private senator’s bill to reform donations on Wednesday, proposing a system of real-time disclosure and lowering the threshold for disclosure from $13,800 a year to $2,500 every six months.

On Monday the Australian Electoral Commission revealed the Liberals had collected a total of $165m in the financial year ending June 2018, of which $22.6m was donations above the threshold. Labor received $126m, of which $18.2m was donations above the threshold.

Donations disclosure reform is an area ripe for cooperation between opposition and crossbench parties, with private member’s bills lodged by both Labor and Centre Alliance proposing lowering the disclosure threshold to donations of $1,000 or more.

However, such proposals require government agreement to be debated in the lower house, even if they pass the Senate.

Lambie’s bill would require aggregation of donations, so that multiple gifts from the same source to the same recipient must be disclosed if the sum is greater than or equal to the threshold.

Lambie told Guardian Australia “the problem is when you give a donation under $14,000, you can give that every day for seven days and don’t have to write any of that down”.

Parties declared less than one third of what they got, she said. “It’s way too loose, it’s open to corruption … by these lobbyists that come up here.”

In 2018 the Grattan Institute calculated that Australian political parties earned more than $62m in so-called dark money from untraceable sources, including donations below the threshold and “other receipts” such as money from fundraising dinners or returns on investment.

Lambie’s bill would also require:

Disclosure within seven days of any gift that tips a donor over the threshold of $2,500 or more in a six-month period, and any gifts thereafter

Revenue from the sale of tickets to fundraising dinners or related events and membership fees to parties or associated entities to be reported as political donations by expanding the definition of a gift

Explanation of the reason for other funds being paid to a political party

Political bodies to only make campaign expenditure from a nominated bank account

Lambie said attendees at fundraising dinners paid $10,000 and got “soggy chips and overcooked steak” not “crayfish wrapped in gold” because “they’re coming to buy influence”.

Lambie said voters should be able to read disclosures on an open portal to “see if there’s any pattern of behaviour”, such as major donations around the time of contentious bills.

“When it comes to the pokies, you can see that both Liberal and Labor are same-same on them – they don’t give a stuff how much destruction they’re doing to people in society, because they’re getting pay cheques from those people they shut up.”

Lambie cited major donations by the Australian Hotel Association, which gave $1.53m in the last financial year, the majority ($1.01m) to Labor; and Crown, which gave $45,412 to Labor and $15,000 to the Liberals.

Major parties raise money from corporations through associated entities like the Federal Labor Business Forum and the Australian Business Network, which sell memberships that entitle companies to access senior federal politicians for up to $25,000.

In September Channel Nine caused controversy when it hosted a $10,000-a-head corporate fundraising dinner for the Liberal Party.

In submissions to a Senate inquiry the Minerals Council of Australia has conceded it makes political donations and pays to attend fundraisers to gain access to members of parliament.