How “the tithe” funds political parties from politicians’ salaries

Politicians are among the biggest donors in the country. The then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull funded the Liberal Party’s 2016 election campaign to the tune of $1.75 million. And, through his company Mineralogy, former MP and candidate Clive Palmer has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the Palmer United Party, United Australia Party and now the Trumpet of Patriots.

But these political donations are only part of the story. Parties often encourage or compel their elected MPs (and sometimes their political staff) to pay a contribution to the party out of their parliamentary salary. It’s called “the tithe” or a “levy”.

These payments are not quite public funding (though the taxpayer ultimately pays for them) and not quite donations (though they can be as or more profitable for the party than donations are).

These levies are often exempt from donation caps, giving the major political parties an uncapped stream of revenue while new entrants have to raise money through small donations.

So how does the tithe work?

The tithe is set as a percentage of a politician’s salary. In Western Australia, for example, lower house Labor MPs pay 4% of their salary to the Labor Party (roughly $6,600 per year), while their upper house counterparts pay 7% (roughly $11,600 per year). Given its excellent performance at the 2025 state election, WA Labor could be expected to raise almost half a million dollars each year from its state MPs alone.

Queensland Labor is particularly transparent. Financial returns from the Queensland branch of the Labor Party clearly identify tithes. In 2023-24, the branch had 52 state MPs, three federal senators and five federal lower house MPs. Together, these 60 people contributed $1.26 million to the Queensland branch of the Labor Party. That amounted to around 17% of the branch’s private income, almost as much as all small donations (those below the disclosure threshold) received by the branch.

The tithe can be worth more than political donations. Australia Institute research shows that, from 2018 to 2022, the Victorian branch of the Labor Party raised $3 million from levies on MPs and staffers, but only $801,000 in disclosed donations.

In other words, the party raised almost four times more money from its 70 elected politicians and their staff than it did from the other six million Victorians.

The practice is not exclusive to the Labor Party. Most, if not all, branches of the Greens also collect levies from MPs. To give one example, parliamentarians in the ACT Legislative Assembly contributed $178,000 to the ACT Greens in 2023–24, about one-third of the branch’s total revenue for the year.

The Liberal Party seems to be more ad hoc in how it raises money from its parliamentarians, but it does at times use levies.

What is the effect of the tithe?

Parliamentarians argue that tithing is one of the sources of money that carries the least corruption risk because the payment is a condition of belonging to the party, not a discretionary contribution that can be given or withheld to wield influence.

But collecting tithes is only possible for political parties that have already had electoral success. New entrants, like independents and minor parties, are left to depend solely on private donations.

This imbalance means that caps on political donations hurt independents and minor parties more than they do major parties. New and growing minor parties and independents have few fundraising options other than private donations, while the major parties can still fund multi-million-dollar campaigns out of non-donation revenue, including the tithe.