Following the money in Australian politics: a method to clean and analyse the Federal donations

Political donations are often linked with concerns about secrecy, corruption and undue influence, prompting scrutiny from political scientists, journalists and the public. Yet in Australia (like many nations), efforts to understand and study political donations are hampered by poor quality data. To support efforts by academics, think tanks and journalists to more quickly and accurately analyse donation data, I describe a method to clean and de-duplicate Australian Federal donation data. I apply this method to analyse the political donations of the largest alcohol industry actors. In doing so, I document inconsistent transparency from both alcohol industry donors and political recipients, and more than 500 donations totalling $8,422,819 over the 26-year dataset.