Malcolm Turnbull, the Goldman-Sachs investment banker turned Australian Prime Minister, secretly donated AUD1.75m to his own 2016 re-election campaign, giving it the funds it needed to squeak into victory.
Though he didn’t initially disclose this fact, he’s since decided to own it, calling it “the purest donation of all” and saying, “I’ve always been prepared to put my money where my mouth is.”
Turnbull made headlines in the USA and Australia yesterday when he was publicly humiliated by Donald Trump, who hung up on him during an official state phone call, apparently because Turnbull kept trying to change the subject from the amazing feat of Trump’s electoral college “victory” to the pending US-Australia deal to shift the refugees being held in an illegal offshore Australian concentration camp to US soil.
Turnbull previously broke with world leaders to praise Trump’s Muslim Ban, apparently in a bid to preserve the refugee deal.
Labor MP Jim Chalmers accused Mr Turnbull of effectively “buy[ing] his way out of trouble” before the election, which he won with a tight 76-seat majority in the 150-seat House of Representatives.
“He couldn’t win an election on his merits so he got out his wallet,” Mr Chalmers said.
“If he didn’t have $1.75m to splash about he wouldn’t be the leader of the Liberal Party and he wouldn’t be the prime minister.”
Labor’s deputy leader, Tanya Plibersek, suggested the money would have been spent on polished adverts and directly targeting voters.
Australian PM reveals he gave A$1.75m to own campaign
[BBC]
(Image: Vampyroteuthis1, Ewald Rübsamen; Malcolm Turnbull, ITU, CC-BY)
