Politics
The more opaque party funding is, the better politicians seem to like it.
If there was sufficient honour among politicians, this week’s allegations of dodgy funding practices against New Zealand First would have touched off an “I am Spartacus” conga line.
Most parties’ funding activities look dodgy as hell, even while being legal. Businesses, lobby groups and wealthy and influential people give money to parties that they hope will advocate and ideally legislate for their benefit. Oh, yes – and out of a sense of duty to support the democratic system and from the kindness of their hearts, too. But mainly for the first reason.
If the donations are below $15,000 a throw, they can do so anonymously, so voters can’t tell who has – democratically and kindly – given how much to whom in the hope of what. Parties and donors sometimes contrive to break up much larger sums so they’re received in amounts under the threshold, notionally from separate donors, who may or may not subsequently be privately reimbursed by the primary donor from whom the entire sum of money is really coming. The law doesn’t allow us to probe this because politicians have tacitly agreed – with the occasional futile plaint from the Greens – to keep it delightfully vague.
Although the average voter might prefer all donations be made public, Parliament has never embraced such frankness, because politicians know many moneybagses would rather snap their purses shut than be publicly seen to back any particular party.
If we wanted to be extremely prissy about it, it’s been suggested we ban private donations and have the state fund political parties. But it’d be hard to do this fairly. If you based it on the last election result, it wouldn’t necessarily reflect the parties’ ongoing relative standings and would disadvantage newcomers. Party membership is too blunt an instrument of measurement and easily bulked up artificially. We’d have to regulate the bejesus out of politicalparty constitutions, and there’d be no danger of getting an accord on that. Just ask the British Labour Party. It was subject to a reverse takeover by a couple of pressure groups that signed up masses of new members for nominal fees and then proceeded to unseat moderates and in some cases drive out Jewish candidates. Were they sincere Labour converts, or an alien invasion? How should a prospective state-funding system treat that situation?
UNFAIRNESS RULES
Inevitably, any funding formula devised would give some parties an advantage over others, which is pretty much the effect of the system we have now.
It’d also be somewhat antidemocratic to deny citizens, be they rich, poor or incorporated, the right to back the parties of which they approve.
So, we’re probably stuck with a dodgy-looking system. The problem for the Government is that NZ First’s way of doing it might be only, to quote the immortal verdict of former finance minister Steven Joyce, “pretty legal”. All parties’ funding looks bad. NZ First’s looks badder.
The party’s long-term practice has been to place the extra modesty screen of a private foundation over the source of a big chunk of its donations. As long as that foundation lends rather than gives the party money, and those loans are repaid, or are in the process of being repaid, then that’s legal.
It appears to be a two-tier system in which rank-and-file donations from cake stalls, membership fees and the like are fed into repaying loans from the foundation, which is stoked with money from, shall we say, more generous and provident sources.
Many moneybagses would rather snap their purses shut than be seen to back any particular party.
It’s all a bit cute, since it’s been obvious for years that party leader Winston Peters and his caucus have good rapport with the racing, transport, fisheries and forestry sectors, and doubtless there are other wealthy supporters who, it would be naive to doubt, have donated to the party indirectly by putting money into the foundation. Frankly, if not, why not?
Another politician might be quite swaggery about this financial pulling power. But Peters is fanatically secretive to the point where he may not even trust himself with his own secrets. To say he is paranoid about the media would be to trivialise the position. We could tell him it was sunny outdoors and he’d demand affidavits before setting out without a brolly.
Guarding this cone of silence like a snapping Cerberus is his longtime friend, fellow lawyer and party rules chief Brian Henry, and the pair are doubtless not the only lawyers who have beetled over the legalities of how the party’s affairs are arranged.
Estranged party officials, including a former treasurer and president, have publicly accused NZ First of suspicious secrecy in refusing to let even them know the source of the party’s funds. One suspects they were a bit slow on the uptake. It’s pretty obvious where the money comes from, and it’s just as obvious that Peters wouldn’t confirm it to mere footling party officials even at gunpoint.
HUNT FOR THE ROBBER BARONS
It’s now over to the Electoral Commission to determine whether the transactions that have been leaked to the media conform with the Electoral Act. Its answer is likely to be somewhere between “a bit” and “up to a point”. But this is now almost irrelevant. The media are on this story like jackals, and even if the commission declares the party innocent as a litter of kittens, it could still be incredibly damaging.
Someone as self-righteous and finger-pointy as Peters has been is prime carrion. He made his name castigating fellow politicians for conniving at corruption with the robber barons of business. Why would he go to so much trouble to hide the identity of the barons who might be conniving with him?
NZ First has hovered perilously below the 5% support threshold in some polls, so hasn’t a vote to lose.
Its only hope is that other parties spring their own leaks. The Jami-Lee Ross debacle showed donations are an equal-opportunities peril. Labour, too, has had its Chinese-soundingnames embarrassments around donors.
Still, if the commission does ping NZ First for faulty finances, the subsequent resignation, sacking or prosecution options will be the least of it for Peters. In his strict hierarchy of vanities, any imputation against his utter brilliance as a lawyer would quite finish him off.
Someone as selfrighteous and finger-pointy as Peters has been is prime carrion.