Tainted money’s political fallout

The Newsroom website has been running an impressive series on the fraught issue of political donations in New Zealand. Donation stories have nagged at some of our most high-profile politicians and affected most major parties. One point on which commentators can agree is that there is need for reform, to avoid the possibility that donors might be seen as buying covert influence.

The murky routes by which donations reach political parties is another concern, albeit one that has been much discussed. The Newsroom series found another, less familiar, angle in the donations story when it asked what politicians should do about donations that are entirely legal but are still ethically compromised. Is money neutral or does it carry a moral stain?

Three examples, two of which were unearthed this week, show the complexities of the problem. Ten days before the 2020 election, Labour’s Te Atatu MP Phil Twyford received $2000 from former Fijian politician and Muslim community leader Ahmed Bhamji, who alleged in 2019 that the Christchurch terror attack was backed by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. It’s the kind of hideous anti-Semitic conspiracy theory one might find in the ugliest corners of the internet.

Of course Twyford does not share this point of view. Nor would Bhamji have expected that his small donation might somehow influence government policy on the Middle East. But it still created a moral dilemma for Twyford.

Bhamji’s rhetoric was covered by some media outlets in 2019, but we could take Twyford at his word when he says he only learned of the comments when a reporter contacted him about the donation. He chose to return the $2000.

That is in contrast to an arguably more problematic story involving the Green Party. It was revealed that Masterton woman Lindsay Fraser donated nearly $54,000 to the party in 2019 and 2020, ‘‘making her one of the party’s biggest donors’’. She also pleaded guilty, in 2020, to what the SPCA described as some of the worst cases of animal neglect it has ever seen, including severely emaciated horses and sheep. Three horses, two of which had deep wounds that were riddled with maggots, had to be euthanised.

There is no way in which the Greens could ever be seen as responsible for this suffering but such gross negligence of animal welfare sits uncomfortably with the party’s strong moral line that it would ‘‘strengthen Aotearoa’s animal welfare standards’’ and call for a Minister for Animal Welfare and a Parliamentary Commissioner for Animal Welfare, as outlined in its 2020 election manifesto. Again, the party only learned of Fraser’s offending when a journalist contacted it, despite coverage of the sentencing in 2020. Yet the party will not return the donations.

Should it? There is an argument that the money is tainted by association. But equally, donations from someone who abused animals can fund campaigns that might ultimately protect others. Bad money can be made to do good.

A similar problem arose in 2019 when ACT accepted a donation from a Christchurch man who posted anti-Islamic material online after the mosque attacks and auctioned a Trump-style ‘‘Make Ardern Go Away’’ hat signed by party leader David Seymour.

Seymour was less contrite than Twyford. He refused to return the donation and accused media of expecting everyone to pass ‘‘a political hygiene test’’, a position also revealing as a statement about the limits of moral responsibility, as he sees it.

There is need for reform, to avoid the possibility that donors might be seen as buying covert influence.