Within days of being the star turn at a $5000-a-head Liberals dinner for the Queensland state election, John Howard was selling tickets at $20 a pop for NSW Liberal MP Matt Kean's Hornsby fund-raiser this month.
Call it a sign of the times. While Queensland, also heading to the polls in 2015, has shaken off donation restrictions, NSW parties are heading into the first state election campaign where the ability to tap any donor will be capped at $2000 for a candidate, and $5000 for a party.
In a post-Independent Commission Against Corruption world, fund-raising is suddenly harder. Companies are less inclined to give, after the public washing of dirty laundry at ICAC and scrutiny of donors. The quick cash fix of traditional business networking events, with an entry price of $10,000 for proximity to the political stars, are out.
"You can't have small dinners with big prices, you have to have big dinners with small prices," summarises Labor's NSW general secretary Jamie Clements.
Labor's biggest was a dinner for 800 hosted by the Arabic Friends of Labor, at a profit of $50 a head.
Major and minor parties agree that fund-raising has become a long game of persistence, forcing them to cast a wider net to solicit funds.
"You have to beat the drum all the time with the cap in place," said Shooters and Fishers Party MP Robert Borsak, who faces re-election in the upper house.
Last election, Shooters party received $400,000 from the Sporting Shooters Association of NSW and its Sydney club in two fat cheques. Like most parties, the Shooters had largely completed fund-raising by the time the donations caps took effect in January 2011.
This time, Borsak says the party must approach individual branches, and other hunting clubs, to raise funds from members. They began last September.
The Liberals are buying commercial lists of email addresses and phone numbers, based on products purchased by consumers, or geographic location, to solicit regular $50 donations through "giving programs".
"The days of getting $100,000 or 10 big boys around the table are gone," said a Liberal insider.
The typical Liberal breakfast or cocktail event now earns $3000, ticketed at $200 to $500 a head. Money raised in blue ribbon seats is sent to head office, to be redistributed to marginal western Sydney and coastal electorates.
"All fund-raising conducted by the party will comply with the laws of NSW," says the Liberal's cautious new state director Tony Nutt.
Labor, the Greens and the Shooters have turned to the American software system Nation Builder to harness social media to fund-raise and campaign.
NSW Labor is urging Labor members on Twitter and Facebook to chip in $200, or $33 a month, to become a Project One Million Ambassador, and help reach a target of $1 million by March 2015.
In the wake of Gough Whitlam's death last week, social media users were asked to sign a card to say "Thank you, Gough Whitlam" – it also asked for permission to receive updates from NSW Labor.
"Online fund-raising has grown exponentially and it's effectively limitless," says Clements.
"You connect on issues. A lot of the people who will give us money aren't party members, they are people who support Labor. Some don't always vote Labor, but if you can connect on an issue they will donate."
The Shooters have 15,000 email addresses loaded into Nation Builder, and are looking for ways to reach the 230,000 licensed shooters in NSW. The campaign website is embedded in a contact management system, says Borsak.
The US company says on its website: "Nation Builder profiles aren't some sterile and contextless lists of names and email address, but rather rich social profiles with pictures and bios linked to people's social media profiles."
The software is being used widely by American political campaigners, and the Liberal Democrats and Labor ahead of Britain's 2015 poll. But the powerful datamining technology can have pitfalls for novices.
Californian Democratic candidate Ro Khanna made headlines when Nation Builder "accidentally" set up fund-raising websites for all 1000 of his Twitter followers, including press gallery journalists, which began to automatically solicit donations for his campaign. Nation Builder had mistakenly marked the Twitter followers as supporters, was the excuse.
Unlike other marketers, political parties in Australia are exempt from the Privacy Act.
The Greens MP for Balmain, Jamie Parker, is using Nation Builder to keep in contact with supporters who RSVP to events, but says his office won't use it to full capacity, as they are wary of breaching people's privacy.
"We treat people's information very carefully. We don't use information we gather for campaigning. I think politicians often have a blase attitude to people's private data. We act as if the Privacy Act applied to us," says Parker.
Parker is the only Green politician defending a lower house seat, although the party will run candidates in all 93 electorates, so will qualify for public funding under the new model which reimburses $4 per vote won.
Parker says the Greens fund-raising burden is reduced by relying on volunteers to door knock and run community stalls. While Greens fund-raising traditionally consists of trivia nights or town hall meetings, with a $10 entry fee, the Newtown Greens used crowd-funding to pay the rent for a campaign office last month.
The Greens have never run a television ad for a NSW state election. But in a first, the NSW Greens are considering taking out a bank loan to bankroll a bigger campaign for 2015.
The Greens statewide campaign co-ordinator, Sylvie Ellsmore, said the Greens "massively underspend" the public funding cap in elections. Greens campaigns for lower house seats would typically range from $5000 to $20,000, while central office would spend $1 million.
The use of bank loans to fund the gap between election spending, and the later reimbursement of public funds, is common among the major parties.
NSW Labor funded its 2011 election campaign largely on bank loans. Steady fund-raising has put the central office back into the black, and insiders say the bank account is healthy ahead of the 2015 election.
But Labor candidates are angry that changes to election funding laws passed through Parliament last week stop the public funding of candidate campaigns, and will limit their ability to secure bank loans of $30,000 for individual seats. They say this has racheted up the amount they will need to fund-raise for 2015.
Labor headquarters expects candidates to spend at least $50,000 on campaigns. A candidate would typically fundraise $20,000, and take out a loan for $30,000 which had previously been reimbursed with public funds.
But the new system prohibits the automatic refund of public money to a candidate, although a party can choose to redistribute a portion of its refund to them. Reimbursement is based on votes gained, not how much was spent, increasing the risk for banks.
During parliamentary debate last week, upper house MPs complained about the pressure placed on them by party central offices to fund-raise. They argued this was the underlying issue at ICAC that led to the emergence of party powerbrokers and the acceptance of brown paper bags stuffed with cash to meet targets.
ICAC heard that Liberal politicians are given fund-raising targets which range from $10,000 to $240,000, but were typically $70,000 to $100,000 for a blue-ribbon seat.
"This has led to candidates being selected based on the amount of funds they can raise and those with money in political parties having undue influence," Labor's Lynda Voltz told Parliament.
Within Labor, it was historically her experience that someone who could raise $100,000 also believed they could choose the candidate.
Liberal Catherine Cusack said the "Eddie Obeid model of campaign funding", whereby Obeid would fill three tables worth $10,000 each at a candidate's fundraiser, and then hold influence over that MP for the rest of their career, had become corrosive to all sides of politics.
When Cusack realised she was unable to meet her mandatory fundraising target of $58,000 for 2011, she says the only "ethical" option was to pay it off gradually out of her own pocket.
But Labor's Steve Whan said he didn't want to see Australian politics going down the same path as America.
"Without proper controls our campaigns will get more difficult and will prevent those who are not independently wealthy from running for Parliament because they cannot loan money to their campaigns. That will reduce the diversity of our parliaments and it will be a negative move for our democracy," he said.
