by frog
After voters got a chance to know in time for the election Labour has finally declared it has taken $100,000 from a company called Resource Finance Ltd, which is registered at the same address as the infamous Vela Fishing Ltd.
There are still no declarations from National or the other parties, including United Future, although perhaps we can expect to see them in the next couple of days.
This is appallingly murky and suggests that Labour was treating voters with disdain. Many voters punished Labour for, among other things, its negative campaign. So as it turns out its attempt to circumvent the donation rules didn’t affect the outcome of the election significantly, but it was still undemocratic and disrespectful.
Hopefully with the election now behind us and the large donations from the gambling and unsustainable fishing industries already in the pocket other parties can now turn their bipartisan attention to developing a cleaner and more open set of rules for fund-raising and donations.
Published in Justice & Democracy by frog on Tue, November 11th, 2008
Tags: declared, donations, fishing, frogblog, green party, labour party, new zealand, Vela
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Its all very well taking the high ground now, would you have said anything if you were part of a Labour/Green government?
I doubt it.
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Big Bro – I wrote on this very topic of undeclared donations throughout the campaign – often focused on Labour’s lack of declared donations.
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No wonder they kept that one secret. Which was the whole point of the previous regime, which allowed parties to maintain a pretense of secrecy. This new law isn’t perfect, it still needs a little working out, but you wouldn’t have seen this declaration under the old law.
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Good point george. We needed some guts from nats and Lab regarding the EFC. IF they had gone for TOTAL transparency, no more BS trusts etc… the “line” would be very clear. Instead, I suspect, the knee-jerk reaction will be to slink it back to whence it came…
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Why is there a problem with this?
In my view, ALL donations should be declared, all the time, and NO funding from Tax Revenue (i.e. My Money) should be given to any party. If someone wants to give you money they should be free to do so, as long as we can all know within 24 hours that it has happened, then we can make our own judgements on what, if anything, they expect in return. If they want to retain anonymity they can give to a Trust (like the Spencer Trust) as long as ITS donations are all declared and how many donations were made to the trust are also in the public domain.
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My own position is as it has been for a year or two.
All donations over $1000 have to be declared (before they can be spent and before any election).
I do however allow for tax funding, but only on the principle of matching funds. I mean by this where any donation to a party from an individual is matched dollar for dollar up to $100 (all donations for which matching funds are claimed also having to be declared).
I see this as both transparency and a way to restore a real political voice to the ordinary public (remember most of Obama’s donors only gave $100).
I see this campaign finance reform as a separate matter from the campaign spending mess of this election – the two matters should have been and should be dealt with separately.
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SPC
Why should donations be matched by the tax-payer? One thing I really admired about the Obama campaign was that they refuse public funds and only used what they had raised. An example to all in my opinion.
Look at the reality we have here in New Zealand right now. At the next election ACT will be publicly funded, because they are in Parliament. New Zealand First, (Which I hold NO brief for, ) will receive no public funds because they are not in Parliament, despite them winning more votes than ACT. Add to that the idiocy of Peter Dunne and Jim Anderton bot being funded on less than 1% of the popular vote and you have a terrible anomaly.
If all parties have to fund their own campaigns, then there is a good chance that they have some form of popular support, be it individual or corporate, that will provide them with enough to sustain themselves on. This would see an end to the ‘cult’ parties (Dunne, Anderton & Peters for example) and leave only parties with a specific topic or platform of broad interest to take up our time and energy during the election period.
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