Election funding: returns

The Electoral Commission has published last year's annual returns of political party donations. This not being an election year, donations were down, but the picture is still disturbing. Firstly, National is still making extensive use of anonymous trusts to launder donations and undermine the intent of the law - $146,000 of $170,000 was laundered in this way. Secondly, the returns tell us absolutely nothing about who is seeking to buy influence with donations of less than $10,000. As the Coalition for Open Government argues, this simply isn't good enough, and shows the need for reform. But perhaps the most disturbing aspect is that a large number of parties - including ACT, the Maori Party, and the Alliance - have flouted the law by not sending in a return. That return may be nil, but by law they are still required to send it. This is a perennial problem, and while the law allows for a penalty of $20,000 for party secretaries who fail to comply, clearly it is not sufficient to force the required level of openness. Though it might help if the Electoral Commission actually bothered to press charges rather than just sitting around and letting parties piss on the disclosure regime.