This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Bill Shorten has said he did not know about $400,000 in donations to the Labor party from a tobacco company director and he had called the party administration to “please explain”.



Fairfax Media reported that the Labor party took donations in 2011 and 2013 from Peter Chen, a director of a tobacco company ATA International Pty Ltd, donated through Wei Wah, which sells cheap cigarettes. Wei Wah was approached by Guardian Australia for comment.

Shorten said he was not aware of the donations, which occurred before his time as leader. Labor banned tobacco donations in 2004.

“I think it is a serious issue but, as I said to you, I found out about it this morning and I’ve made some phone calls to the party administration to please explain,” Shorten told the ABC.

“We don’t take tobacco money, the National party still does, we don’t, we haven’t, and even if that has put the Labor party at a financial disadvantage.”

Asked whether Labor would hand the money back, Shorten said he was not aware what had happened yet.

The story comes as the Labor senator Sam Dastyari called for a ban on all political donations.

Dastyari, a former New South Wales Labor general secretary at the time of the Wei Wah donations, resigned from the shadow ministry after it was revealed that he asked for and accepted a payment of $1,670.82 from the Australian Chinese businessman Minshen Zhu.

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As a former NSW party fundraiser, Dastyari called for a complete ban.

“I was one of the weapon suppliers in this [donations] arms race and responsible for fundraising … I’m telling you it needs to come to an end, and the time for that is now,” he told ABC’s Australian Story.



Shorten said the national Labor party was no longer taking foreign donations and he urged the Liberal party to join Labor’s ban as well as its policy to reveal the identities of all political donors above $1,000, disclosed in real time.

“I have asked the national Labor party to not take foreign donations,” he said.

Asked if Labor would refuse foreign donations, Shorten said: “I have asked the party to consider that view, yes.



“I don’t want obscure foreign donations coming into our system full stop – tobacco-related or not.

“Labor is up for donations reform and sometimes – and I make this offer to the Liberal party – we don’t even have to wait for the law to be changed if we could make changes together, that is leadership as opposed to followership [sic] which is what has been the lowest common denominator in a lot of the donation debates.”

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The parliamentary joint committee on electoral matters recommended this year that foreign donations should be banned, though the major parties are split on how to treat donations from foreign third-party activists groups.

The Turnbull government has yet to act on the proposed ban, which would not apply to dual Australian citizens either in Australia or overseas, or to non-Australian permanent residents in Australia.

In the committee report, Labor members agreed that foreign citizens and foreign entities should be banned from making donations to Australian-registered political parties. Labor also agreed the ban should be extended to the associated entities of registered political parties, which would include some, but not all, trade unions.

But Labor members of the committee issued a dissenting report, saying they could not support the Coalition proposal to extend the fundraising and financial disclosure obligations imposed by the Electoral Act “to capture all third parties that are in any way involved in public campaigning”.