A top secret fund-raising dinner for the Liberal National Party in Brisbane has come under fire from the sausage sizzling Labor Opposition.
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The Four Leaders Dinner, to be held at an undisclosed Brisbane location on Thursday night, was expected to raise half a million dollars for the LNP, through 100 diners paying $5000 a plate.
Hosting a sausage sizzle at the Moorooka Bowls Club on Thursday, Opposition Leader Annastacia Palaszczuk played up the difference of scale of the two events.
"While I'm here having a sausage sizzle with the mums and the dads, the Grange will be flowing at the $5000-a-head secret fund raiser," she said.
"Let's also not forget that at this fund raiser, we will not know who's attending, we will not know who is donating to the LNP.
"Half a million dollars will be raised in one night, half a million dollars of secret cash donations."
Mr Palaszczuk said Labor believed any donation over $1000 should be declared to the Electoral Commission of Queensland.
"I understand that the Deputy Premier, Jeff Seeney, will be [at the dinner] as well as the Premier," she said.
"Who is sitting at their table? Who is donating to the LNP? Queenslanders will be kept in the dark."
Mr Seeney said while he would attend the fund raiser, he did not know where it would be held.
And he suggested the LNP would not have had to declare its donations even if donation cap and disclosure rules had not been changed by the Newman government last year.
"What we did in Queensland was to align our declaration rules with the Commonwealth's declaration rules," he said.
"In a function such as this, where you've got the Prime Minister and the ex-prime minister, I would suggest, without knowing definitively, I would suggest that would have been conducted under the federal rules anyway, so it's a nonsense to say there's been any changes made to the declarations."
An LNP spokesman said the event, which was organised by the party ahead of the 2015 state election, complied with all state and federal electoral laws.
"The LNP does not have the same heavy financial backing from unions that Labor does and instead relies on the general community for support," he said.
That sentiment was shared by the Deputy Premier.
"The Labor Party gets a constant funding stream from the union movements and they don't even declare it to people whose money it is – the members of the unions," Mr Seeney said.
"Look, fund raising is part of the Australian political culture and I'd say at least our Prime Minister and former prime minister can be in the one room together when the other side of politics would have difficulty doing that."
