The Climate 200 political action group spent almost $11 million to fund independent candidates that backed climate action at the last federal election, according to the latest disclosures from the Australian Electoral Commission.
The organisation received just over $9 million at the 2025 election campaign from donors, financial disclosures for the 2025 federal election published on Monday reveal.
The disclosure threshold for the 2025 federal election was $16,900.
What did unsuccessful independents receive in donations?
One of the biggest independent spenders at the last election was Climate 200-backed Carolyn Heise, who unsuccessfully ran for the regional NSW seat of Cowper. She spent $1,994,969 on the campaign and received $2,141,655 in donations.
Ben Smith, who ran unsuccessfully as an independent for the seat of Flinders, Victoria, received $1.78 million in donations.
Former Triple J presenter Alex Dyson, who lost to Liberal incumbent Dan Tehan in the seat of Wannon, Victoria, received $2.1 million in donations and poured $1,086,054 into his campaign.
Former independent MP Zoe Daniel, who narrowly lost her Melbourne seat of Goldstein in a tight contest against Liberal Tim Wilson, received $1,834,832 and spent $1,795,594 on her campaign.
What did successful independents receive?
Of the other Climate 200-backed independents who won their seats — Monique Ryan received $1.9 million in donations, Kate Chaney received $1.4 million, Sophie Scamps $1.7 million and Allegra Spender $1.74 million.
Independent MP Zali Steggall, who retained the Sydney seat of Warringah and who was not backed by Climate 200, received $789,000.
Independent member for the Melbourne seat of Kooyong, Monique Ryan, received $1.9 million in donations. Source: AAP / Mick Tsikas
The snapshot shows information from candidates, Senate groups and donors, but major party candidates often can put "zero" in their return forms, rolling their reporting into the annual political party returns, which will be published in February 2026.
Bill Browne, director of the Democracy & Accountability Program at the Australia Institute, said this can give an "unfair comparison" of the independent candidates against major party candidates.
He said at the 2022 election, there was a lot of confusion that independent spending seemed higher because it was disclosed earlier, but when the major party spending figures came out later, it became clear that, on the whole, independent candidates "spent less per seat than did the major parties".
"Unfortunately, the data is not directly comparable. We can't say decisively that in terms of electoral campaign spending, the major parties outspend community independents, but when we look at proxies like just spending on social media, there's no clear trend that community independents outspent their major party rivals," Browne said.
Climate 200 said its donations were far smaller than the "massive amounts of money raised and spent by the major parties".
Byron Fay, the group's executive director, said in a statement: "While the exact party expenditure figures won't be published for several months, the fact they spent close to half a billion dollars in the lead up to the 2022 election is indicative of what they would have spent in 2025."
'Independents face uphill battle'
Browne said it can be costly to run a campaign against the major party candidates.
"Independent candidates face an uphill battle given the advantages that the major parties receive," he said.
"An independent candidate who's going to challenge an incumbent has a degree of spending that they need to do just to catch up to where the incumbent is.
"We also see from the major parties that they can pile in their spending to target seats. So, whereas there might be safe seats where a major party spends very little, we do see million-dollar campaigns from parties in target seats."
Political donation laws to come into effect next year will overhaul election funding, with caps to be placed on donations and campaign spending. Independents say it will disadvantage new voices seeking to enter parliament and bolster the two major parties.
The threshold above which donations must be disclosed will be $5,000 instead of $1,000. The current disclosure threshold is $16,900.
