Advance Australia
Where the money comes from2024-25 return
Advance Australia, source by source. Each named payer is on the left; the kind of money it is sits in the middle; the vehicle on the right.
Advance took $13.46m in 2024-25 and itemised $5.27m of it: 39%, the rest arriving below the $16,900 threshold with no name. Of the money that is named, 21 companies and trusts gave $2.90m and 30 individuals $2.36m, the first of which is a $556k tax refund. Hancock Prospecting is the largest single payer at $895,000.
- Itemised and named
- Not itemised, or named and unverifiable
- Public funding
Advance Australia, source by source. Each named payer is on the left; the kind of money it is sits in the middle; the vehicle on the right.
Advance took $13.46m in 2024-25 and itemised $5.27m of it: 39%, the rest arriving below the $16,900 threshold with no name. Of the money that is named, 21 companies and trusts gave $2.90m and 30 individuals $2.36m, the first of which is a $556k tax refund. Hancock Prospecting is the largest single payer at $895,000.
- Itemised and named
- Not itemised, or named and unverifiable
- Public funding
What it is
A conservative campaigning organisation, formed in 2018 as a response to GetUp! ANU Press . It runs advertising rather than field work, and it targets seats rather than a party: at the 2022 federal election its billboards went after the independent ACT Senate candidate David Pocock and the Warringah independent Zali Steggall ANU Press .
Where the money comes from
Its 2024-25 return reports $13.46m in receipts and $10.11m of electoral expenditure, which is 75% of everything it took in AEC . It itemises $5.27m of that, so less than 40% of its receipts carry a name. The declared gifts are $4.72m from 50 payers. Hancock Prospecting gave $895,000, Willimbury Pty Ltd $300,000, WHSP Holdings $250,000 and SP Newcastle $250,000 AEC . Thirty-two of the 50 gave under $100,000 and together account for $1.08m.
The second vehicle
The year before, its itemised receipts were $13.06m, and $11.89m of that — 91% — arrived from a single entity, Australians for Unity Ltd, booked as an other receipt rather than a donation AEC . Australians for Unity files no return of its own and appears nowhere in the federal donor file. Money routed through a second vehicle is invisible twice: the vehicle’s donors are not disclosed, and the receiving vehicle does not have to itemise a receipt it did not book as a gift. The Cormack Foundation paid Advance $500,000 in 2023-24 on top of its usual Liberal transfers AEC .
In Victoria
It is a registered third-party campaigner in the state register, which records $35,593 from 11 donors in the current cycle — the largest $5,189, the smallest $215, several of them interstate addresses VEC . The Victorian cap is $5,190 a donor, so the state arm cannot be funded the way the federal one is.
Getting involved
The organisation takes donations and membership through its own site; the research records no volunteering page for it.