Like the Clubs NSW gifts, the AHA's $45,000 was donated to the Menzies 200 Club, which is dedicated to supporting Mr Andrews as the local federal member for Menzies in Melbourne's east, and the Liberal party. And like Clubs NSW, the AHA declared the donation to electoral authorities, but nominated the Victorian Liberal Party as the recipient, which blurred the link to Mr Andrews. The Menzies 200 Club did declare the donation for the financial year, 2012-2013. Fairfax Media does not suggest the donations directly influenced Mr Andrews' decision-making. But they are the latest in a long string of controversies that highlight problems with Australia's notoriously lax federal regulation of political donations. On Monday Mr Andrews did not respond when asked why the AHA would donate to the Menzies 200 Club, referring Fairfax Media to the AHA itself. AHA Victorian chief executive Brian Kearney did not answer calls. Mr Andrews refused to answer directly when asked if the Menzies Club was operated from his office, but stressed it was run by volunteers.

Last week a staffer in Mr Andrews' electoral office told Fairfax Media that the Menzies 200 Club was run out of the office. For some years the telephone number of the electoral office was filed with the AEC as the contact number for the Menzies 200 Club. The AHA donation appears to have been made in August 2012. The Clubs NSW donations were made in August 2013 and June 2014. Such donations would be prohibited in the United States, Canada, and – due to their size – in state elections in NSW. While the AHA is ostensibly a liquor industry lobby, the importance of poker machines to many Australian hotels has seen the association take a leading role against tighter pokie regulation over many years. On Sunday Mr Andrews denied that the Clubs NSW donations had influenced Coalition gambling policy and highlighted how the Clubs NSW donations were made after the policy was largely in place. A spokesman for Mr Andrews said that any suggestion Mr Andrews' decisions were influenced by the donations was "wrong and offensive".

The spokesman stressed the Coalition had released a discussion paper on gambling reform in November 2011. The policy taken to the election varied in a minor way only from the discussion paper, he said. The spokesman said the gambling policy was determined together with the Coalition policy committee, shadow cabinet and opposition party room. The treasurer of the Menzies 200 Club, Michael Gartland, has refused to discuss the donations. Both Clubs NSW and the AHA heavily backed the Coalition in the 2013 election. The AHA's $45,000 donation was part of almost $300,000 it gave to the Liberal party in 2012-2013 alone.

The Gillard/Rudd Labor government had introduced reforms opposed by the industry, including a trial of mandatory pre-commitment technology in the ACT requiring pokie players to nominate how much they are willing to lose before being allowed to gamble. So too it had introduced maximum $250 withdrawal limits from ATMs. In August 2013 the Coalition announced a gambling policy that included scrapping mandatory pre-commitment and ATM limits. The Coalition's policies were potentially worth many millions of dollars in revenue to the clubs, which are heavily dependent on poker machine revenue. In March 2014, the Parliament passed the bill repealing the former Labor government's poker machine reforms, introduced by Mr Andrews.