A couple of weeks ago, the Dominion-Post reported that the government would be correcting its biggest blunder in the Electoral Finance Bill, and would be moving to end the practice of anonymous and laundered donations. But if the report in today's Herald is correct, their "solution" will leave a bitter taste in many people's mouths. Rather than cracking down on anonymous donations and imposing proper disclosure of everything so that we will know who is trying to buy our politicians, the select committee has instead tried to go halfway. So, trusts and bagmen will be required to declare the source of the money they are passing on, and there will be a new declaration threshold of $1,000, above which the identity of the donor must be disclosed - all of which looks pretty good. But parties will still be able to receive large anonymous donations, provided they are funnelled through the Electoral Commission. The amount will be capped at $240,000 per party, but the net effect will be the same: we will still have dirty money in our political system, only rather than being laundered by National's corrupt network of trusts, it will be done by the official election watchdog instead.
There's no question that this is an improvement on the current system, where there are no limits on how much secret cash parties can receive while conspiring to keep the identities of the donors (and the influence they gain over policy as a result) out of the public eye, but its a very ugly compromise. And again, it is light years from Labour's early rhetoric, in which they promised to end laundering and impose a declaration threshold of $250. Once again, Labour's self-interest has won out over principle, cloaked in sophistry about how dirty money is harmless if the donations are "truly" anonymous - as if we could ever trust them on such an issue.
I'm with DPF in thinking that the Greens should put their money where their mouth is on this issue, and put up an amendment at the committee stage to kill this system of government laundering and force National and Labour to vote on disclosure. But its also worth remembering that National claims that they too oppose anonymous and laundered donations (despite being their chief beneficiary). It's time we called them on it. National can adopt a constructive approach by putting up amendments and daring the government to vote against its own base by opposing them, or it can continue to display its bad faith through mindless opposition in service of their donors. It will be interesting to see which they choose...
