‘Change needed’: report backs revealing political party donors
Donors giving more than $1500 to political parties should be identified, no individuals should be able to give more than $15,000 in a year and only eligible New Zealand voters should be able to donate to political parties, a new report recommends.
Researchers Max Rashbrooke and Lisa Marriott released the findings of Money for Something: A report on political party funding at Parliament yesterday, hosted by Green MP Golriz Ghahraman.
Marriott said they interviewed former MPs and party presidents, major political donors and other experts ‘‘on what they’ve seen and done’’.
‘‘We’ve polled New Zealanders, and analysed what other countries are doing,’’ she said.
‘‘We’ve found loopholes which have resulted in multiple scandals over the years. And all this has led to one conclusion: change is needed.’’
An amendment to electoral law is currently making its way through Parliament, aiming to increase transparency and temporarily allow more New Zealanders overseas to vote in the next election. It would also lower the threshold for party donors’ identities to be disclosed from $15,000 to $5000.
National and ACT were against the proposal, questioning the decrease to $5000 as being unnecessarily low, fearing the bill did not address a key issue of splitting up large donations into multiple small donations. There was also a worry it would put people off donating more than $5000.
The researchers echoed concern around splitting up donations, which breaks up a donation to avoid disclosing a donor’s identity, in their first recommendation of disclosing identities of those who give more than $1500.
The researchers said lowering it to $1500 would make donation splitting harder.
‘‘We found some real issues with donation splitting,’’ Marriott said.
‘‘Alongside the donation splitting, which is problematic on its own, there was a general acceptance that this was something that happened and there was very little consequences from that donations splitting.’’
Marriott pointed to an absence of separation in a few cases between people who had influence and the donors. ‘‘Some of the donors did say to us that they expected access from the money they contributed – not all of them but certainly a few – they did expect to have meetings or different types of access as a result of giving that money.’’
The system should be equitable, she said. The recommendations also included that donations be limited to $15,000 per person, per party each year, that donating should be reserved for New Zealand voters, the Electoral Commission should be given more power and state funding should be introduced via tax credits and ‘‘democracy vouchers’’, where citizens are sent vouchers to spend on the party they choose.
When asked about the appetite for state funding given the cost of living issues New Zealanders faced, Rashbrooke said the cost would be about $6 million to $8m.
‘‘The benefit of that is that will essentially allow us to remove these very large donations from politics,’’ he said.
‘‘Some of those donations are fine and are given with good intentions. But ... we’ve found a lot of problematic things around some of those donations.’’
Rashbrooke said there needed to be more transparency in political donations, and lower caps on donations and incentives for smaller donations – ‘‘all things that are working well in other countries already’’.
The research was paid for through Victoria University of Wellington funding.