A couple of weeks ago, the Chief Electoral Office released the details of electorate candidate donation and expense returns. Unfortunately, they only released them in summary form [XLS], but some of the amounts some cabinet ministers received were sufficiently large that I thought they were worth OIAing. Today, I got a fat packet of returns in the mail. Most of it is boring - candidates funding their own campaigns, $1,000 here, $1,000 there - but a few bits caught my immediate attention:
- Maori Party co-leader - and now Minister of Maori Affairs and Associate Minister of Corrections and Education - received a total of $35,000. $20,000 of this came from Fletcher Construction, who would benefit greatly from any future prison construction. $10,000 came from Pie Melon Bay Farms, which is wholly owned by Bruce Plested (who in turn founded Mainfreight, but is also a trustee of Alan Duff's "Books in Homes" program). $5,000 came from the Waiuku Trust of 11 Stanmore Road, Grey Lynn. No information was given on the donors to that trust.
- Allan Peachey isn't a cabinet minister, but received a massive $46,250 - including $10,000 from photocopier company Ricoh, $10,000 from Corporate Cabs, $10,000 from gym membership company Adfit, and $10,000 from loyalty scheme promoter Incentive Solutions. I guess people must really like him.
- Wayne Mapp declared donations down to $300, well in excess of disclosure requirements. Way to go Wayne!
- Rodney Hide received $10,119.70 - all of it from ACT New Zealand. Many candidates receive donations from their local party, but this seems to be a conscious effort to exploit the higher disclosure threshold for party donations to launder donations and avoid disclosure.
- Nick Smith - now Minister for the Environment and Climate Change - was given $5,000 by the Road Transport Forum. That's a pretty significant conflict of interest, neh?
