by frog
Did everyone enjoy the brief interlude in the election campaign where we got to talk about issues other than Winston Peters and his unusual accountancy systems? (Maybe Jim Bolger was on to something when he made him treasurer, given his ability to run a party on no declared donations.)
Interestingly Winston’s $80,000 donation from the Spencer Trust now shows up on the party donation returns to the Electoral Commission for 2007. And when you go to look for it you also get to see the $230,000 that the Labour Party took from lawyers representing undisclosed clients and the $500,000 that the National Party took from anonymous sources including the Ruahine and Waitamata trusts.
Published in Justice & Democracy by frog on Wed, October 29th, 2008
Tags: , donations, funding, labour party, national party, New Zealand First, ruahine trust, Waitamata Trust, winston peters
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
But how accountable and transparent is the Green Party when it comes to political finance?
Despite pushing heavily for transparency in the political financial arrangements of New Zealand parties, the Greens are somewhat less than open as to their own finances. I’ve found that researching the details of the Greens’ finances is one of the more difficult tasks in political finance in this country. In this sense the party is almost on a similar level of secrecy to New Zealand First.
The Peters funding scandal has shown that the political parties that claim to be the most clean and claim to be the most in favour of transparency can actually turn out to be the worst in practice. It’s therefore interesting that the Greens have taken over NZ First as the party most likely to make allegations and raise questions about unethical political finance. Even as recently as two weeks ago, the Greens were raising questions about whether Labour and National are correctly following the law about donation disclosure. Yet the Greens should be open to similar queries. In the 2002 election the party tripled it’s election expenditure to $765,035, but declared only $86,000 in donations! By the party’s own logic, you have some explaining to do. Your financial agent, Jon Field, explains the discrepancy of the Greens’ $2m by saying the party could have had ‘four thousand members giving $500 each’. I somehow doubt that!
I accept that all political parties – NZ First notably included – constantly give assurances that they follow the law in regard to political finance. But unless the parties volunteer to open their books and be a bit more transparent then it’s very hard for the public to accept their word. Added to this is the problem that the electoral laws designed, in part by the Greens, (including the EFA) have so many loopholes that its very possible that the Green Party is following the letter of the law but not the spirit.
For more on the opaque Green Party finances, you can read the report that I’ve recently put together at: http://liberation.typepad.com/liberation/2008/10/political-fin-1.html Due to the closed nature of the Greens finances it’s very hard to confirm some of this stuff, so I’d welcome any feedback or corrections.
Bryce
http://www.liberation.org.nz
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Bryce, your article contains so many inaccurate “facts” & relies on information 15+ years old I don’t think it is worth commenting on to any great extent.
For a start it says membership is $5 (it is actually $15) and a basic Google search would come up with the fact that Stuart Bramhall is a Doctor. Overwhelming the Green Party’s funding, other than that from the MPs, comes from individuals giving less than $1,000.
I would have thought that someone like you with a PhD in politics would have been a bit more rigorous.
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Hmmm. Bryce says:
“Due to the closed nature of the Greens finances it’s very hard to confirm some of this stuff, so I’d welcome any feedback or corrections”
and you respond with: “your article contains so many inaccurate “facts” & relies on information 15+ years old I don’t think it is worth commenting on to any great extent”
Exactly – he’s ASKING you to clarify things, but you have refused. In particular, this would be a good thing to answer:
“In the 2002 election the party tripled it’s election expenditure to $765,035, but declared only $86,000 in donations!”
How did this occur (particularly when you have criticised in the same way?)
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Congratulations Toad – your Winstonian responses to questions about your party finances are of a quality that the NZ First leader would be proud of.
Never mind dealing with the issue, throw some ad hominem attacks in instead to divert attention.
But seriously, I do appreciate your feedback. I’ll correct the details about the membership fees. However I’m not quite sure what your point is about Stuart Bramhall being a doctor. Did I say his occupation was something else?
Overall of course, I’m pleased that you could only find these two minor inaccuracies in this draft account of Green Party finances. As I hope I’ve already indicated, I have put together this account with the intention to make it as accurate and analytical as possible, but readily admit there might be failings in it, of which I’m very happy to have corrected or debated by anyone. I’ve been writing similar accounts for the other parliamentary parties as well.
Bryce
http://www.liberation.org.nz
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Bryce Says:
October 29th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
> However I’m not quite sure what your point is about Stuart Bramhall being a doctor. Did I say his occupation was something else?
I’m not sure either, but I think I should point out that Stuart Bramhall is a woman.
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Easy to tell where the extra money came from.
679 new members, all donating $999.99 plus a few dollars picked up from raffles and bake sales.
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I don’t know the details of the accounts, but nowhere near $675 000 was raised in 2002. The party had money in the bank going into that year, and by the end of that year it had massive debts to pay off, so you’d have to look at income sources from 2001 and 2003 as well.
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