Ordinarily, donations are scrutinised only when they are first released during early February. It’s at this point that journalists file a flurry of stories about which parties are being funded by whom, which party has the most money, and so on.
However after this initial coverage there is little scrutiny of donations aside from the occasional royal commission, or if a journalist is tipped off to look at something specific. Political parties are then able to amend their donations with the AEC, and rarely face penalties for such omissions.
It’s a similar story with the register of pecuniary interests, where members of parliament and senators are required to disclose gifts, positions in companies, investments, and other things. There’s a flurry of interest when the register is added for each new parliament, and then little is looked at.
This is why I have created a program that checks for donation amendments and updates to the register of interests every day.
At the moment updates are published to @AusDisclosure.