Secret money
“Well, that was an informative political investigation into the corrosive power of secret trusts and large private donations to politicians,” she said brightly. “Who’s next?”
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22 Responses to “Secret money”
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August 29th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
If only New Zealand First had access to some taxpayer funding - then perhaps they could have avoided all this.
August 30th, 2008 at 6:09 am
I can’t believe they go on and on and on about this stuff in question time, like they did yesterday. Sure get some department to investigate these matters, but there should be more for all those politicians to do than sit in the chamber listening to this.
And why does parliamentTV show that one image the 15 or so hours a day they aren’t in the house, why can’t they put on a documentory or a bit of news, seems a bit of a waste of satellite time.
August 30th, 2008 at 8:28 am
Just heard Kim Hill being contradicted about poor reporting of climate change (she is hmmmm, not sure about it). The guest said that there was in fact a lot of published information by scientists so it was , in fact, quite easy to get the facts
[8:12 Nick Davies
Nick Davies has been named Journalist of the Year, Reporter of the Year and Feature Writer of the Year for his investigations into crime, drugs, poverty and other social issues. He writes regularly for The Guardian and makes TV documentaries. The most recent of his five books is Flat Earth News (Chatto & Windus, ISBN: 978-0-70118-145-1), about falsehood and distortion in the media.]
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday
August 30th, 2008 at 8:36 am
Exactly right. they’re all on at Winston forgetting why some parties consistently get a lot of funding and some don’t.
NZ First is the only party which draws a ring around Kiwis as (residents + expats). The other parties have the gates wide open (and realters scattered wide): great for the construction industry and its noble lords the property developers. Being run by Marxists the Green Party feels workers should be free to settle wherever they like.
August 30th, 2008 at 10:24 am
Glad your EFA is acting as intended?
a) not stopping big money backing
b) not exposing big money backing (that was left to the private sector media)
c) free speech in election year (Tuis, etc)
Shame, Greens. Shame on you.
August 30th, 2008 at 10:31 am
BluePeter Says:
August 30th, 2008 at 10:24 am
> Glad your EFA is acting as intended?
> a) not stopping big money backing
All the allegations against Winston peters relate to donations received BEFORE the act was passed. The act was never expected to go back in time and prevent things having happened before it was passed.
August 30th, 2008 at 10:53 am
The point, kahikatea, is the EFA won’t catch these kinds of shenanigans, now or in the future.
The ETA shuts down free speech, and leaves anonymous donations untouched.
August 30th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
So what relevance did “Glad your EFA is acting as intended?” have then?
August 30th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Don’t think the EFA would’ve stopped the multiple donations from the Velas though - several $9,999 donations through multiple entities. Hmm.
August 30th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
The EFA wouldn’t stopped Peters from lying about anything either.
August 30th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
The point is it was supposed to prevent big money influencing elections. It clearly fails in this regard.
It wasn’t supposed to limit freedom of speech. It clearly fails in this regard.
WHAT WAS THE FLIPPIN’ POINT?
To fund incumbents, and silence dissent.
In that respect, it is working exactly as intended.
Shame on the Greens. Shame.
August 30th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
BP - How can you describe something a failure that hasn’t even gone through one election cycle, while rabbiting on complaining about the very sort of funding rort the EFA is intended to mitigate? You’re just a nonsense.
Shame on the BluePeter. Shame.
August 30th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
>>very sort of funding rort the EFA is intended to mitigate
It won’t. That’s my point.
August 30th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Yep, BP, it is not as effective in stopping election funding rorts or anonymous donations as the Greens, and it seems you, would have wanted.
But blame Labour for that, not the Greens. The Greens faced the situation, after negotiations, of supporting the Bill to the extent that Labour were prepared to bend in the Greens’ position, or not supporting it at all.
Not supporting it all would have permitted unlimited proxy advertising on behalf of political parties such as the Exclusive Brethren engaged in last time round to continue unmitigated. It was a “lesser of two evisls” situation.
The EFA is far from ideal, but don’t blame the Greens.
August 30th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
It was a mistake to support the EFA. What people spend their money on is no-one elses business.
Winston is a clever operator and his slush fund was designed to hide what was going on.
But who cares?
Who has been hurt??
This whole thing simply makes it possible for rats like Bob Jones to bring down politicians.
We should instead encourage politicians to take as much money as they like from big business.
As long as the politicians make the decisions WE want (instead of the decisions the funders want) then everything is fine.
The real issue is how we can FORCE politicians to make their decisions more representative of our opinions.
Fine tune MMP, and don’t worry about the funding.
August 30th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
greengeek: Are you arguing that it is okay for a political party to set up untold proxy organisations for the sole purpose of circumventing their election spending limit?
Or that there should be no limit? In which case you get the sham democracy that is solely about money rather than policy that they have in the US.
What about anonymous donations? Don’t we need transparency in political donations to ensure that politicaians make the decisions we want, rather than those the funders want. Sure, the EFA didn’t get us all the way there, but imo is a better option than allowing rorts like National’s Waitemata Trust to continue.
August 30th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
As to my wish list.
1. Every dollar paid to a political party is identified at source (see 2).
2. All money to a political party comes from either membership payments (there being either no limit on individual donation amounts or one at a high level, like say 10% of an MP’s pay) or a taxpayer matching fund payment to the same amount (up to a maximum donation level of say $100).
3. There be a Green activist group set up independent of the Green Party - there job being to activist in support of the Green cause in New Zealand (not the same thing as the local branch of the international group Greenpeace). Their job being to be idealist - whereas the Green Party has to comorimise in the parliamentary/government process and to win votes.
August 30th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
3. There be a Green activist group set up independent of the Green Party - their job being to activist in support of the Green cause in New Zealand (not the same thing as the local branch of the international group Greenpeace). Their job being to be idealist - whereas the Green Party has to compromise in the parliamentary/government process and to win votes.
August 30th, 2008 at 8:18 pm
My biggest concern about the New Zealand First scandal is about what Winston Peters may have done in return for the donations. Were some of the changes he made as racing minister perhaps made in return for donations from the Vela family and Owen Glenn?
Did he change his approach to the scampi inquiry in return for the donation from Simunovitch?
Has he negotiated anything in the ETS about emissions from deep-sea fishing boats in return for the Veal or Simunovitch donations?
Unfortunately, the inquiries seem unlikely to find answers to these questions.
August 30th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
I used to play social cricket with Peter Simunovich (big bro, take note). He struck me as a nice guy then, but an absolutely useless cricketer. Couldn’t bat, couldn’t bowl, and couldn’t field.
Mind you, if you get to inherit a fishing empire and can do the deals with Winston that have to be done to ensure your commercial advantage, I suppose it doesn’t matter.
August 31st, 2008 at 9:32 am
Yes, I believe it is unimportant what mechanisms there are for a party to obtain non-taxpayer funding.
It is of course very important that TAXPAYER funding of parties be transparent.
The greater issue is about representation.
If a party is elected on the basis of a manifesto, then it should be possible to see pretty clearly whether or not that party is representing those who elected it, or if they have gone off track and are instead representing the interests of their funders.
In many cases of course, the interests of the funders might match the interests of the electors, but nobody loses in that case. In that case it would not matter how much slush money that party received; it’s electors would still be happy with the outcome.
The real problem occurs when a party votes against the express wishes of those who elected it (S59 repeal as an example), and that is a problem that is completely independent of funding as far as I can see.
August 31st, 2008 at 9:38 am
I think it is best to assume that every political representative is being swayed by other factors (money being just one), and carefully exercise the right to vote and choose our representatives every three years.
That is one reason I am very strongly opposed to the politicians push to extend the electoral period from 3 years to 4 or more.
We need more scrutiny, and more representation, not less.
The money is just a sideshow.