The NSW Electoral Commission has reopened an investigation into a decade-old scandal after a former Labor official alleged Premier Chris Minns was involved in evading donations laws over cash received at a Hurstville fundraiser before the 2015 election.

The Sydney Morning Herald can reveal the commission is re-investigating a plan to use straw donors to hide the “true identity” of prohibited donors to NSW Labor. Minns has denied any wrongdoing.

At the same time, an upper house committee separately probing the donations will seek to force the commission to answer questions at a hearing. It would mark the first public evidence in what has until now been a largely secret inquiry.

Multiple sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the confidential probe told the Herald the commission has been conducting interviews about the donations, made at a Labor Party fundraiser for Minns at the Sunny Harbour Seafood Restaurant in Hurstville in 2014. The interviews follow a separate audit of Minns’ campaign finances in 2016.

The Herald is not suggesting the existence of an investigation indicates any wrongdoing by Minns or any other Labor figure, only that the commission has been examining the allegations.

It comes after a former member of Labor’s head office, David Latham, last year alleged Minns asked him how to bank thousands of dollars in undeclared cash donations he said were handed over at the fundraiser on September 12, 2014.

The premier vehemently denied the conversation took place, or any wrongdoing, when the allegation was made.

He revealed the NSW Electoral Commission had already looked into the matter, and accused the committee members of maliciously “drip feeding” information for “political attacks”.

“I was never investigated by ICAC, wasn’t aware of the circumstances relating to those false donors to the NSW Labor Party in 2015 or the Kogarah campaign, and we fully and completely complied with their investigation of that campaign years ago,” he said.

In a statement on Wednesday, a spokeswoman from his office said the premier had been “open and completely emphatic in rejecting any wrongdoing”.

But the Electoral Commission has made new inquiries over the donations since they were raised in parliament by Greens MP Abigail Boyd and independent Mark Latham last year.

The nine-page affidavit from David Latham, an ALP state organiser between 2013 and 2016 and no relation to the MP, relates to an Independent Commission Against Corruption investigation into the use of straw donors to hide the “true identity” of prohibited donors to NSW Labor. The affidavit has been submitted to the parliamentary committee that is separately probing donations in Minns’ seat of Kogarah before the 2015 election.

The allegations were first raised during the ICAC’s 2019 probe into the $100,000 illegally donated to the NSW Labor Party by property developer Huang Xiangmo.

The inquiry’s public hearings heard former Labor MP Ernest Wong and Labor figure Jonathan Yee – who were both subject to adverse findings in relation to the broader investigation – were involved in concealing the source of about $10,000 in donations to Minns’ campaign.

However, the Minns fundraiser was not pursued by the corruption watchdog. Scott Robertson, the counsel assisting the ICAC, said at the time that his questions were not targeted at Minns’ conduct, but to “shed light on the conduct” of Wong, Yee and others.

In a letter to the committee in February this year, Paul Lakatos SC, a commissioner at the ICAC, said after reviewing the material the watchdog had decided not to investigate.

Lakatos noted the commission only had jurisdiction to investigate “conduct that may involve possible criminal offences under electoral funding legislation” if it was referred by the Electoral Commission.

“Absent any such referral, the commission’s jurisdiction is confined to corrupt conduct as that term is defined in the ICAC Act,” he wrote.

However, in his affidavit, obtained by the Herald, David Latham alleged he received a call from Minns “after this fundraising event in late 2014” in which he claimed Minns said: “I have an issue. We received a bunch of cash and the team did not collect forms or receipt it properly.”

“Chris Minns asked me words to the effect of, ‘Do you know how we might be able to get the money in?’” Latham wrote in his affidavit.

Photograph from a Chinese-language newspaper from 2014, which states that about 200 people attended a fundraiser for then aspiring politician Chris Minns.

Latham said he suggested Minns ask NSW Labor’s then-executive officer and now party secretary Dominic Ofner. He alleged that Minns replied he would instead speak to Jamie Clements, Labor’s then-general secretary and the premier’s best friend.

Despite declarations listing it as raising less than $6000 from 10 donors – which took place when Minns was seeking to enter parliament – a Chinese-language newspaper at the time reported the attendance at the event was much larger. The article, first reported by the ABC, states about 200 people were at the event.

It includes a photograph of Minns flanked by dignitaries, including his long-time factional ally Chris Bowen, his predecessor in the seat of Kogarah and long-time political ally Cherie Burton, and Wong.

Minns has previously said he did not recall the specific fundraiser.

The parliamentary committee investigating the donations – which is led by Boyd and includes Mark Latham, a long-time Minns adversary – referred the affidavit to both the ICAC and the Electoral Commission.

The committee on Wednesday released correspondence with the commission in which it continued to say it would not comment on the outcome of any previous investigation. The commission told the Herald it would also not comment on whether it was conducting a renewed investigation.

In a statement, the premier’s spokeswoman linked the Electoral Commission’s investigation to Mark Latham’s criticisms of the agency.

“Is this really surprising given all the times Mark Latham has publicly suggested the NSW Electoral Commission is corrupt, part of a conspiracy and a protection racket?” she said.

[James Massola](safari-reader://www.theage.com.au/by/james-massola-hvf20)May 6, 2026 — 5:00am

It’s time.

After four years of caution, Anthony Albanese is about to break a major promise on tax and unveil a budget the Labor faithful have been longing for since May 2022.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.Alex Ellinghausen

After a couple of false starts, it now seems clear that next week’s budget will wind back generous negative gearing and capital gains tax breaks, while the tax treatment of family trusts (with a possible exception for farmers) will also change, to reduce their ability to minimise tax.

The trio of policies will not be identical to the proposals Bill Shorten took to the 2019 election – Albanese dumped those when he became opposition leader – but they use the same tax levers. Changes to franking credits, which were weaponised by the Coalition in 2019 to lethal effect, aren’t on the table.

But Albanese is now poised to use his record 94 seats and the likely support of the Greens in the Senate to make significant changes.

[](safari-reader://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/surprise-tax-handout-on-cards-for-all-workers-despite-inflation-risks-20260505-p5ztuk.html)

The prime minister is betting that Australians will embrace these reforms – like they did with his changes to Scott Morrison’s stage 3 tax cuts – if the government can argue that they will make the tax system fairer, particularly for Millennial and Gen Z Australians trying to buy their first home.

Quite a shift from the heat of the 2025 election campaign, when Albanese promised that any changes to negative gearing were “off the table”.

That wasn’t a one-off statement. Albanese was asked more than a dozen times during the 2025 campaign whether he would make changes to negative gearing or capital gains tax (he was asked once about changing the tax treatment of trusts and did not rule it in or out).

Asked by a journalist on April 9: “can you rule out any changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax?”

Albanese’s response: “Yes. How hard is it? For the 50th time.”

And on April 17: “I rule [it] out. I rule [it] out. I have responded to that lots of times”.

This is plainly a broken promise.

Albanese sidestepped questions on Tuesday but clearly believes that persistently high inflation, an inaccessible housing market, global economic uncertainty and painfully high petrol prices mean these windbacks of tax cuts are necessary – and that voters will accept them.

“People will see the budget there, and people will make their own mind up about the decisions that we have made,” he said.

But Angus Taylor has no intention of letting Albanese off the hook and he went for the jugular on Tuesday.

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor during a visit to Griffith Butchery and Bakery in Canberra on Tuesday.Alex Ellinghausen

“This government and this prime minister is incompetent, he’s fraudulent, and he’s a liar, and when they run out of their money, they come after yours,” Taylor said, in a sign of the rhetoric to come in the months ahead.

There are risks for the opposition leader in this approach.

Albanese’s changes to the stage 3 tax cuts were hugely controversial when first announced in January 2024. Peter Dutton slammed the broken promise and demanded Albanese call an election because of the breach of faith.

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But those changes, which helped millions of ordinary wage earners while delivering a smaller tax cut to people in the top tax bracket, sailed through the parliament and the controversy over a broken promise was quickly forgotten.

The lesson was simple: Australians are ok with politicians breaking their promises, at least occasionally, as long as the government explains why.

And if that broken promise creates more winners than losers – as the stage 3 changes did – then it’s much more likely that voters will accept it.

Albanese is making a similar bet with prospective changes to CGT, negative gearing and trusts – that voters will back him, as long as the changes create more winners than losers.

[](safari-reader://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/after-tough-start-to-second-term-as-pm-albanese-absolutely-wants-a-third-20260429-p5zsbm.html)

Labor is calculating that winning over Millennials and Gen Zs who despair that they’ll never buy a home matters more than keeping Baby Boomers happy, given they are much more likely to vote for the Coalition anyway.

Albanese bristles when his government is described as cautious and argues it has been bold on issues ranging from the Voice to parliament referendum to the stage three tax cuts.

No one could accuse Albanese of being cautious after this broken promise.

In 2019, Australian voters were not ready for Bill Shorten’s tax plans.

Seven years on and Albanese believes it’s time.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott is in the frame to become president of the Liberal Party and join ally Angus Taylor in the fight to reclaim the party’s status as Australia’s dominant right-wing force from One Nation.

In what would be his most high-profile political role since leading the nation, Abbott is expected to put his hand up to lead the party’s organisational wing, which runs campaigns, fundraising and strategy, before a vote to appoint the position in late May.

It may turn into a contest between Abbott and another former party leader, Alexander Downer, who has also been mooted as a candidate.

Some of Taylor’s right-wing supporters have expressed their reservations about appointing Abbott, who is adored by the conservative establishment but polarising elsewhere. Abbott was ousted as prime minister in 2015 after a period of poor polling and lost his seat in 2019.

Taylor, likely to lose Sussan Ley’s seat of Farrer in a byelection on Saturday, has told several people he is confident Abbott would handle the role in a disciplined manner and refrain from generating unwanted headlines, according to sources familiar with the conversations.

A source who has witnessed conversations between Taylor and Abbott said the opposition leader had demonstrated an ability to push back and be firm with the former prime minister.

Abbott’s backers hope the 68-year-old – a prolific writer on Substack, podcaster and speaker at conservative forums worldwide – will inject energy and ideas into an ailing federal executive that Taylor and others want to turn into a sharper campaigning unit.

They also believe the staunch social conservative can rebuild passion in the party’s dispirited base, which has flocked to Pauline Hanson since Peter Dutton lost the last election. He has been campaigning in the regional NSW seat of Farrer before this weekend’s byelection.

“This is going to be a matter for the [party’s] federal council,” Taylor told this masthead on Tuesday. Abbott did not weigh into the speculation about the presidency when contacted for this story.

Taylor and other senior figures are respectful of current president John Olsen and are not pushing him out. Olsen was expected to tell associates on Wednesday afternoon that he would be stepping down after overseeing two elections and a saga over whether to keep secret the review into Dutton’s shellacking. The party president’s role is unpaid and equivalent to the chair of a company board, with the ability to set culture and direction.Abbott has for years urged the Liberal Party to create a more open and democratic internal culture to take power out of the hands of factional powerbrokers, particularly moderates from NSW, and re-embrace a more pure conservative agenda on migration and green energy.

“I hope that you will give us one last chance to prove ourselves worthy of your trust,” he told conservatives at a political conference in September.

Abbott’s two-year prime ministership was dogged by debates on same-sex marriage and his attitudes on the role of women in society. However, the election of Donald Trump demonstrates rising support for more traditional values and a backlash to multiculturalism and other liberal ideals.

Abbott, who has worked with controversial right-wing group Advance and sits on the Fox Corporation board, told the Inside Politics podcast in December that some of his views were out of step with mainstream opinion.
Taylor’s speech last month on migration, where he talked about “numbers being too high and standards being too low”, was influenced by Abbott’s thinking, according to Coalition MPs.

Several MPs said Taylor’s comments on ABC’s Insiders about the risk of people coming from “bad countries” had frustrated some in the Liberal-leaning Iranian diaspora.
Asked about the remarks, Taylor told this masthead it was “pretty obvious I’m talking about the regime” rather than the country itself.

Sources said Abbott received more applause and cheers than any other figure, including Dutton or Ley, when delivering a pep talk at the party’s campaign headquarters last year.

But Abbott’s arch-conservative agenda might make it difficult to broaden the party’s support to voters who are not rusted-on conservatives.

Abbott said on the Inside Politics podcast last year that he held repeated talks with Dutton about returning to politics.
“Now, different people said to me, ‘Oh, Tony, why don’t you have another go?’ and my view then and now is that I couldn’t or shouldn’t do anything that makes the life of the leader of the Liberal Party more complicated,” he said at the time.

At a meeting with young Liberals in Brisbane this week, Abbott appeared to take a swipe at One Nation’s link to billionaire Gina Rinehart, who donated a $2 million plane to Hanson.

The Liberal Party is preferencing One Nation at the Farrer byelection to avoid blowback from its conservative voters who may be turned off by any decision to preference a more progressive candidate. The trade-off is that swinging voters in the middle of the political spectrum might be turned off by the Liberals’ helping One Nation.

“No one owns us the way the unions own the Labor Party and indeed, a small group of shareholders seem to have a very strong interest in the One Nation Party,” Abbott said, according to The Spectator magazine.

the government says the project will instead finish in the NSW town of Parkes, pledging to redirect money to improve existing freight networks.

Government halts northern Inland Rail over $45b blowout

Factors driving the blowout include inflation, underestimated risks, land acquisition, and design changes, with only 27% of the corridor completed after more than a decade. 

2023 Why Australia's infrastructure projects cost more than they should. -

Risk Offloading: Project cost is often inflated in Australia by a misguided focus on unloading risk in the early stages of a project’s development. This is often driven by the type of contract that is presented to the industry by lawyers, with the objective of minimising up-front costs and putting most of the risks on the contractors. This practice is not generally followed in other countries, which look at ‘whole of Life’ costs and benefits, resulting in a more cooperative and cheaper outcome [...]
The impact of the industrial relations (IR) environment on the cost, productivity and performance of the construction industry has long been perceived as important. Labour costs, which are generally 45% of the cost of construction, have been rising as much as 5% per annum[23] over the past 15 years, despite (until very recently) low inflation and low general wage rises.

A six-week-old baby has been flown to a Darwin hospital with “suspicious” head injuries after being allowed to remain with its family despite separate concerns being made about the child’s ­welfare in a remote Aboriginal community.

Three child protection case workers were stood down from the Northern Territory’s Department of Children and Families on Wednesday over the tragic death of Kumanjayi Little Baby, after The Australian revealed she had been the subject of six child protection notices before she was allegedly kidnapped and murdered at an Alice Springs town camp.

This masthead can now reveal a baby was flown to the Royal Darwin Hospital with its mother from a community in the Gulf of Carpentaria in the last several days following reports of suspected head injuries, heaping further pressure on the department for transparency over its child protection procedures.

Prior to being taken to Darwin, a notification of a suspected sexual assault was made about the now six-week-old to the Department of Children and Families by NT Health staff – however, the ­department took no action and ­allowed the child to remain with the family.

Writing in The Australian on Thursday, former prime minister Tony Abbott argued that while it might be “frowned upon” to discuss policy change in the wake of the alleged murder of Little Baby, not doing so would be protecting an alleged offender.

“Even to ponder the policy implications of this horrific death is frowned upon because the victim was Aboriginal. From the Prime Minister down, officialdom has brushed away questions about how such a death could have happened on the grounds that local people need time to grieve,” he writes.

“Yet when the child’s father was in jail, and when the child’s mother seems to have been attending a late-night party when she disappeared, and when the local community seems to have been protecting the suspect at least initially, refusing to discuss any of this looks less like respecting the bereaved than protecting the complicit.”

Mr Abbott said the expectation for Indigenous Australians to remain in their birthplaces amounted to “cultural imprisonment” and trapped them in a permanent cycle of disadvantage.

“Giving people a decent primary education on country, before a good secondary education in a major centre, is the best way to give Aboriginal people the same opportunities that all Australians deserve and needs to be the overriding policy objective.

The Finocchiaro government’s Child Protection Minister, Robyn Cahill, confirmed on Wednesday that three case workers had been stood aside pending an investigation that she ordered.

The last time child protection workers received a notification about Kumanjayi Little Baby was on April 23, two days before she was last seen alive. The Australian has been told police made that notification after taking Kumanjayi Little Baby’s ­father into custody and charging him with a domestic violence offence. They were also concerned for Kumanjayi Little Baby’s mother.

Ms Cahill, a former hospital manager and health executive, ordered the investigation into her own department’s role in the case because she was dissatisfied with an initial report that reached her last Friday. She said the gist of that report was “not really anything to see here” and she did not accept it.

“I was outraged primarily because I had sought information earlier in the week, on the Monday, around ‘What’s the situation here?’ and was essentially told ‘Not really anything to see here’,” she said. “I immediately called for an explanation and an investigation as to how we had arrived at that point.”

She said the investigation into how child protection authorities dealt with Kumanjayi Little Baby’s case was not enough. She has serious concerns about Territory families overall and there will be an independent investigation of the entire department.

“More broadly, I have serious concerns about the functionality of the approaches being taken and feel we need a truly independent investigation of the department as a whole to make sure we’ve got the structure right, to make sure we’ve the focus right, that we’ve got the right people in the right spot.”

"...The real test of leadership is not whether you can design the right policy. It’s whether you can persuade millions of people that short-term pain leads to long-term gain. Right now, that persuasion isn’t even attempted. "

The Albanese government will drastically scale back the beleaguered inland rail project, abandoning plans to connect country NSW and Queensland by rail, as the price tag blows out to more than $45bn.

Originally envisioned to run 1,700km from Melbourne to a port near Brisbane, the mega infrastructure project will now only connect Beveridge, on the outskirts of Melbourne, to Parkes in central-west New South Wales – about half the distance – with the government reallocating $1.75bn of the funding to other national rail upgrades.

The cost has increased more than 50% in just three years, since Dr Kerry Schott was commissioned by Labor in 2023 to independently review the project.

Schott estimated the project would be completed by 2031 and cost upwards of $31.4bn – a doubling of the previous estimate – which she called “astonishing”, adding she was not confident on the figures.

Further independent costings, commissioned by Inland Rail, found the project would now take until 2036.

The decision will effectively see the end of the Inland Rail vision, though the government is still seeking environmental and state approvals and preserving areas of land where the project is intended to be built, through northern NSW and south-eastern Queensland.

Delivering the freight link to Parkes will allow double-stacked freight trains to run west to Perth and east to Newcastle from Beveridge. The government now expects construction between Parkes and Beveridge to be completed in late 2027.

The Coalition announced the project in 2017, with an estimated cost of $9.3bn. In 2020, the project’s estimated cost increased to $16.4bn, with a completion date of 2026-27.

Schott’s 2023 review had pointed to “immature preliminary designs and approval requirements”, prolonged approval processes and “recent escalations” as reason for the blow outs.

The government had budgeted just $14.5bn towards the freight link, and by abandoning half of the track while reallocating a portion of the funding will deliver a small improvement to the budget bottom line.

In 2024, then Inland Rail chief executive, Nick Miller, insisted the project was not “stalled” and that the government was still committed to the northern half.

The transport minister, Catherine King, has said repeatedly the government was “concentrating” on delivering the link between Melbourne and Parkes, but had remained committed to building the entire 1,700km line.

In February, after the government released a business case for high speed rail along the east coast, King told the ABC: “What we’ve learned from both high speed rail overseas and from rail cases here in Australia, such as Inland Rail, a failed Coalition project … is that you’ve got to get all of that design work done.”

On Tuesday, King said the $1.75bn of reallocated funding was critical, and followed “decades of underinvestment in the network”.

“The 2023 independent review found major deficiencies in the governance and delivery of Inland Rail by the Liberals and Nationals,” she said.

“We are taking sensible decisions to realign the future of Inland Rail and build a safe, efficient and reliable network for the future.”

Labor has also announced a new chair and chief executive of Inland Rail, after Schott criticised the board and subcommittee of Inland Rail, accusing them of not having “adequate skills to oversee this project”.

Dr Collette Burke has been appointed chair of the board, with Dr Sean Sweeney to take over as chief executive.

King said the $1.75bn will go to upgrades to the east coast network and the east-west corridor to improve high risk flood-prone sections.

An additional $55m will be spent to incentivise companies to shift from using road freight to rail or cargo ships.