A state-assisted corruption scheme

Politicians defend their practice of taking huge bribes from the rich in the form of election "donations" by saying that its all out in the open: we can see who is buying them, we can see what they do in exchange and make sure that there is no "undue" influence (as opposed to the "due" influence they have paid for?), and so there is no problem. This is obviously false, and the current regime's actions and the flood of money they have received from fast track applicants, polluters, honours recipients, and other parties with a direct financial interest in their decisions shows that. But even if it were true, there's still a problem: because New Zealand law still allows parties to receive vast amounts of money in total secrecy, so we do not in fact get to see who is buying them after all.

The mechanism is called "donations protected from disclosure", and it has seen nearly half a million dollars funnelled to right-wing parties this election cycle (weirdly, no left-wing party has ever received a cent). It was initially introduced as an ugly compromise in Labour's Electoral Finance Act, to cover their failure to fully eliminate secret donations. And while National repealed the EFA, it kept that part of the law because it was useful to them. The theory is that the donations are made in total secrecy, so there can be no influence - and if you believe that, I have a bridge over Cook Strait to sell you. What it is in practice is the government laundering money for large donors who wish to exercise their influence in secret, or do not wish to suffer the reputational damage of their political views. It is, in effect, a state money laundering scheme to hide corruption.

There are two fundamental principles underlying election finance law: the rich must be prevented from buying government, and any funding that is permitted must be totally transparent. This government money laundry violates both. It allows secret influence, and worse, makes it a crime to expose it. That should not be permitted. This corrupt law must be repealed.

Naked corruption

That's the only way to describe today's exposure by RNZ that over $1 million in political donations is linked to fast-track applicants. But it gets worse:

More than $1 million in political donations linked to fast-tracked projects have been made since 2022.

An RNZ analysis of the latest donation data reveals $400,000 was donated to National and NZ First in 2025 from people or entities linked to fast-track projects. Labour received $8620.

The introduction of the fast-track approvals process was part of NZ First's coalition deal with National. Since 2022 almost 90 percent of donations from people or entities also linked to projects have gone to the two parties.

Since the act came into effect in 2024, a total of 23 fast-track projects have been approved. Of these, seven are linked to people or organisations that have made a political donation.

As the latter makes clear, these companies are basically buying themselves an outcome. Thanks to Shane Jones and Chris Bishop, resource consents and the pillage of conservation land are effectively for sale in New Zealand. And the governing parties are profiting from it.

Which is why the next government will have to not just repeal fast-track, but also force all decisions to be reconsidered under the normal process, according to normal rules. Otherwise there can be no faith that decisions are not being bought. But beyond that, we clearly need a ban on large political donations, and an Independent Commission Against Corruption to perpetually investigate donors, parties, MPs, and ministers, and prosecute them for any wrongdoing. That os the only way public faith in the state can be restored.

Naked corruption

Its election year, so the big parties are already collecting big donations from rich people wanting corrupt favours. But the disclosure threshold for those donations is set at an appallingly high $20,000. Meanwhile, National is nakedly selling access to Ministers for $8,000, and to the prime Minister for $10,000:

The National Party is offering the public a chance to sit next to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon over dinner at a cost of $10,000.

It’s led to criticism from one academic, labelling the event “cash for access”, but the party says it’s a form of fundraising used by many parties.

The “Mainland Dinner” will be hosted by party president Sylvia Wood at Christchurch’s Town Hall next month.

Tables for the dinner start at $5000, which the party calls the “silver” tier.

The “gold” tier will get you a table with either a Cabinet minister or Wood at a cost of $8000.

The most expensive table, the “platinum” tier and where Prime Minister Christopher Luxon will be seated, is priced at $10,000.

This is simply naked corruption. But its all below the disclosure threshold, so there's no requirement to declare it, or for the purchasers of policy to be identified to the public.

The media would be doing Aotearoa a favour by infiltrating someone into this dinner, photographing everyone sitting next to a Minister, and then doorstopping them and asking them what they wanted for their money. And if that deters future corrupt donations, good.

Payment for services rendered

Back in 2021, in the wake of the Tamarind disaster, the then-Labour government passed the Crown Minerals (Decommissioning and Other Matters) Amendment Act 2021, ensuring that the oil and gas industry was responsible for its own cleanup costs. The industry of course hated that, so when the new regime was elected in 2023, they started lobbying hard for its repeal. The regime obediently brought a bill to Parliament to reduce the liability, and got it to the verge of enactment, but it didn't go far enough for the gas industry. After further lobbying, they forced the regime to recall the bill to committee and amend it to lower liability even further, allowing the gas industry to walk away from its mess and leave us with the costs again. And that law eventually passed in July last year.

The gas industry was pleased. So pleased that Greymouth Petroleum, one of the chief lobbyists for the change, has just given $100,000 to each coalition party though one of its subsidiaries, GMP Environmental. Why did they launder the donation in this way? I guess because seeing a gas company giving huge amounts of money to politicians would make it just a little too obvious what was going on. But its no great effort to use the companies register and follow ownership up the chain to see who is really paying - or to consider the legislative history to see what they're paying for.

And that's what this regime means: naked corruption. Bribery. Law for sale.

Its not enough to throw them out of office. We need to ban large donations, get money out of politics forever, and break the power of the rich over our political parties. Otherwise, no matter who we vote for, we'll get the laws the billionaires want. And that's not democracy, but plutocracy.

This is what corruption looks like

One of the risks of National's Muldoonist fast-track law is corruption. If Ministers can effectively approve projects by including them in the law for rubberstamping, then that creates some very obvious incentives for applicants seeking approval and Ministers seeking to line their or their party's pockets. And its a risk that seems to have been realised, with $500,000 in donations associated with fast-track projects:

Companies and shareholders associated with 12 fast-track projects gave more than $500,000 in political donations to National, Act and New Zealand First and their candidates, RNZ analysis shows.

The projects include a quarry extension into conservation land and a development whose owner was publicly supported by National MPs during a legal battle with Kāinga Ora.

[...]

An RNZ analysis of donations shows entities and individuals associated with 12 of the 149 projects that will be written into the Bill donated to National or its candidates in 2022 or 2023. These projects will be assessed by expert panels as to whether they proceed through the fast-track process.

Two also donated to NZ First or Shane Jones, and two donated a total of $150,000 to Act within the same period.

Note that this does not include donations given through NZ First's secret bribe trust or equivalent vehicles.

The government says this is all OK because the donations were declared. They would never, never be so foolish as to take a donation in exchange for favours when everyone could see what was happening. The problem is that no matter how often they say this, the public simply does not believe them. We know that people (and especially companies, with statutory duties to pursue profit) do not give away such vast amounts of money for nothing; we know they want something in return. And Jones and Bishop seem to be giving them something. If they're not corrupt, they're trying very hard to give us that impression, and they have only themselves to blame if we draw the obvious conclusion.

Which is another reason why the next government will need to not just repeal this outrageous law, but revoke and review every single consent granted: as a basic political hygiene measure. Because corruption cannot be allowed to pay, ever.

But beyond the bill, this again shows the need to outlaw political donations, for full public funding of political parties, for lobbyist regulation, and for the creation of an independent anti-corruption commission to go over every past and future donor, minister, and governing party with a microscope to see if favours were ever traded for money or other reward. National's open embrace of naked bribe-taking is hugely damaging to public trust in our political system. If we want to restore it, we know what needs to be done.

As expected

Back in May, we learned that National MP David MacLeod had "forgotten" to declare $178,000 in electoral donations. Filing a donation return which is false in any material particular is a crime, and the Electoral Commission has now referred MacLeod to police, since they're the only people who are allowed to prosecute.

...and now, as expected, the police have ended the investigation and declared that they will take no further action. This is effectively a strict liability offence - while MacLeod may not have had any intention to mislead, he also clearly did not take all reasonable steps to ensure his declaration was accurate - so the police are once again deciding to ignore the law to protect the powerful.

Our democracy deserves better than this. Electoral finance law is a key protection against political corruption, and it needs to be properly enforced. Since the police clearly will not do it, we need to give the job to someone who will: the Electoral Commission.

Unfinished business on corruption and transparency

Over the weekend the Helen Clark Foundation released Shining a Light: Improving transparency in New Zealand's political and governance systems, a report on reducing corruption in Aotearoa. It makes the point that while we have a relatively corruption-free culture, and regularly top the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, our lack of formal institutional protections gives us a false sense of security, and we are in fact highly vulnerable - a fact that National's corrupt Muldoonist fast-track legislation is ramming home to us. It makes a number of recommendations around lobbying, political donations, the OIA, and anti-corruption laws to strengthen our defences.

One thing which stands out from these recommendations is how many of them have been made before, and simply ignored by successive governments. So the report endorses Health Coalition Aotearoa's recommendations on regulating lobbying, the Independent Electoral Review's recommendations on political party finance (both of which echoed earlier work), Transparency International's recommendations on transparency of online political campaigning and foreign influence, the Ombudsman's recommendations on criminal penalties for the OIA, and (the majority of) the Law Commission's 2012 recommendations on reforming the Official Information Act. Putting it all in one place makes it clear that there is a huge amount of unfinished business around transparency and integrity in Aotearoa, which our political class has simply refused to implement - in some cases for over a decade. And you could draw some very unflattering conclusions about their integrity and their incentives for refusing the longer they do so.

There's also some new recommendations around the OIA which would be an improvement. These are focused on reducing interference by Ministers, and include removing existing transfer and consultation provisions which are abused to enable ministers to stick their oar in, creating statutory independence for OIA decision-makers, creating an offence of attempting to improperly influence an OIA decision (separate from the proposed offences for destroying or concealing information), and making agency chief executives liable for OIA abuses in the same way that they are for failings under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 (so, a duty of transparency, similar to the primary dury of care, and an offence of failing to comply with it). All of which sounds like a good idea, and a way of incentivising public servants to resist ministerial fuckery.

The current government being institutionally corrupt, I don't expect them to pay any attention to this report. So the pressure needs to go on the opposition parties to commit to implementing it in its entirety.

A post I hope is incorrect

In May, we learned that National MP David MacLeod had "forgotten" to declare $178,000 in electoral donations. Filing a donation return which is false in any material particular is a crime, and the Electoral Commission has now referred MacLeod to police, since they're the only people who are allowed to prosecute.

Sadly, from past incidents, we know how this will go: despite the enormous amount of money involved and the clear threat to the integrity of our political system, the police will ignore it, fail to investigate, drag out the clock, and then say "whoops, too late to bring charges". Or just nakedly go "not in the public interest" (which is police for "he's rich and white and powerful"). They've done it before, and they'll do it again. Which is why we need to take this power off them, and give the Electoral Commission the power to prosecute electoral crime in their own right. Because unlike police, they at least take it seriously, and don't see their primary role as being bodyguards and bootlickers to the powerful.

I desperately hope that this is a post which will prove to be incorrect, and for which I will have to issue a correction. But from the police's past performance, I'm not betting on it.

Unacceptable

That is the only way to describe an MP "forgetting" to declare $178,000 in donations. The amount of money involved - more than five times the candidate spending cap, and two and a half times the median income - is boggling. How do you just "forget" that amount of money? And like Rimmer's recent claim that $34,000 isn't enough money to matter to anyone, it shows how out-of-touch our highly-paid political class has become.

The MP - National's David MacLeod - says that it is because he misunderstood the law. Which really makes you worry about whether he is properly understanding the laws he is voting on. He has been stood down from his committee positions, but it is not enough. Because filing a false donation return isn't just a mistake - it is a crime. And one that is utterly inconsistent with remaining in Parliament. MacLeod should resign. If he does not, it will tell us something significant about his, and his party's, attitude to electoral fraud.

An awkward coincidence!

The annual list of who's been bribing our politicians is out, and journalists will no doubt be poring over it to find the juiciest and dirtiest bribes. The government's fast-track invite list is likely to be a particular focus, and we already know of one company on the list which paid $55,000 to Shane Jones, and another which gave over $100,000 to the National Party. But obviously they won't be expecting anything in return for their money, oh no.

And I've found another. National Steel Limited (NBN: 9429031545907) caught my attention for its appalling environmental record: the scrapyard company is such a scofflaw that they can't even be bothered applying for resource consent before setting up a toxic waste dump (perhaps because they realised it would be refused), and their scrapyards regularly catch fire, endangering everyone nearby or downwind. The companies register shows its director and principal shareholder is Vipan Garg, of Omahu Road, Remuera. And guess who appears on National's donor list this year?

Which is an awkward coincidence. But I'm sure National has a perfectly reasonable explanation for why they've put an environmental criminal, who just happens to have given them money, on their fast-track invitation list.

Sacked for corruption

So, after interfering with the police, and then interfering with immigration decisions, Stuart Nash has finally been sacked:

Stuart Nash has been sacked as a minister, after Stuff revealed he had emailed business figures, including donors, detailing private Cabinet discussions.

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins confirmed the people Nash emailed were donors to his campaign, which he said was a serious breach of trust and expectations for ministers.

“His conduct is inexcusable,” Hipkins said. “He is no longer a Cabinet minister and won’t be coming back.”

Good. Because there's a name for spilling sensitive cabinet information to your donors: corruption. People who do that should have no place in cabinet, no place in parliament, and indeed no place in our politics at all. So its not enough for nash to just be sacked: he needs to resign from Parliament as well.

While on this occasion Nahs was just venting, the real worry here is what else he has disclosed, and whether anyone made money off it. Because that's a serious criminal offence, and one which would cast serious doubt on the integrity of our political system.

(Meanwhile, pre-sacking, Newshub had raised the issue of how Nash could possibly be seen as holding a credible inquiry into forestry slash when he had received thousands of dollars in donations from the forestry industry. Its a good question. And the fact that he was appointed Mininster of Forestry with those donations hanging over him shows very poor judgement on the part of those who appointed him).

The rich are trying to buy the election

The Herald this morning reports on the rich's efforts to buy this year's election. And you'll never guess who their chosen vehicle is:

The National Party may start election year with a $2.3 million war chest raised from 24 big donors in 2022, while Labour has declared just $150,000 in large donations, according to Electoral Commission records.

The disparity has seen National raise more money from large donors in one year than Labour has raised in nearly a decade.

Most of National’s funds are thanks to a fundraising blitz from former deputy leader Paula Bennett who tapped richlisters, including New Zealand’s wealthiest man, for as much as $250,000 each last year. It is not clear how much of this funding was spent in 2022, and how much has been put aside for campaigning this year.

So we have a tiny elite throwing huge amounts of money around in an explicit attempt to subvert the democratic process and buy themselves power. Which you'd think is the sort of thing our electoral laws ought to prohibit...

The obvious question is what National has promised them in exchange for all this money. Because nobody forks over quarter of a million dollars for nothing. Especially a rich person.

But what really bites is that this is the last time we'll have such easy access to these figures. Because just before the holidays, Labour changed the law to make large donations less transparent. Where previously parties have been forced to declare them within ten working days of receipt, we'll now only get that level of disclosure in an election year (and then only up until polling day). Donations outside of that period - like the $2.3 million given to National reported on above - will only have to be declared annually. Which makes it much harder to link donations to policies (which was the point of rapid disclosure).

The public understands that there is too much money in politics, and the people providing it are getting something in exchange. Lower donation thresholds and real-time disclosure - the obvious methods to try and limit this - are overwhelmingly popular. And once again, the big parties effectively conspired with each other to write the law to suit themselves and cut us out. Just like they always do. And then they wonder why an increasing proportion of the public views them as institutionally corrupt? Maybe they should look in the mirror for once.

Democracy means one person, one vote, and all votes are equal. Money subverts this. We need to cut the rich out and level the playing field between citizens again. Which means not just transparency, but public funding, a ban on corporate donations, and a cap on individual ones. And actually jailing people who try and subvert our democracy, rather than looking the other way.

Reported back

The Justice Committee has reported back on the Electoral Amendment Bill. The bill implements the recommendations of the Ministry of Justice consultation on election funding - the one where the Ministry of Justice conspired with the labour party to keep its highly influential submission totally secret - and the Labour-dominated select committee has recommended that that regime is basicly unchanged. So, the disclosure threshold will be lowered from $15,000 to $5,000 - which is better, but not far enough - but at the price of reduced transparency over very large donations. Coming in the wake of Monday's report on how donations buy influence over policy, it just seems like the big parties writing the rules to suit themselves (and their donors) in the usual corrupt stitchup. And it seems unlikely to go far enough to resolve the real trust issues that have built up around election donations.

Meanwhile, National and ACT are screaming bloody murder over the lowered threshold. Which really makes you wonder: what corrupt deals are they trying to hide?

We need greater transparency on party funding

Yesterday Max Rashbrooke and Lisa Marriott released their report on political party funding. The gist of it can be gathered from the title: Money for Something. Big donors are donating big money for big influence over policy, and the current regime seems designed to facilitate rather than prevent this undermining our democracy. But they have some solutions as well:

Donors giving more than $1,500 to political parties should be identified, no individuals should be able to give more than $15,000 in a year and only eligible New Zealand voters should be able to donate to political parties, a new report recommends.

If this seems familiar, its because its what people have been recommending, and parties resisting, for years. And the reason it never happens is because our political parties and the politicians who belong to them are corrupt, addicted to a stream of dirty money. Currently the government is trying to make some moves on donation reform, but its basicly half-measures, undermined by that addiction and corruption (so corrupt in fact that the Labour party thinks that its submisison to the Ministry of Justice on the issue, which is likely to highly influential given that the Ministry serves the Minister, can be kept secret).

The report also recommends state funding of political parties, linked to tax credits or "democracy vouchers". The cost of this - $6 to $8 million a year - is a pittance, especially compared to the known cost of corruption (just look at how much Winston forked over to the racing industry, or how Ministers funded by the fishing industry just cost NZ $200 million). And its a tiny price to pay to break the influence of the rich over our political system, and kick them out of their perpetual government.

We need tougher penalties for electoral donation fraud

Writing in Stuff, Max Rashbrooke Lisa Marriott examine the dismal history of election donation fraud in Aotearoa, and conclude that there are no real consequences for it. Prosecutions are rare, and the penalties derisory:

It looks awfully like one law for the rich and one for the poor. At one end of the justice system, people can be fined or jailed for relatively minor crimes such as the driving offence of “wheel-spinning”, where no injury is caused. But there seem to be few legal consequences for breaking the laws around donations to political parties, something which typically involves the rich and powerful.

[...]

Meanwhile, the penalties in the act are often relatively minor, at least from the point of view of wealthy individuals. Admittedly, a party secretary convicted of any corrupt practice faces a prison term of up to two years, or a fine of up to $100,000.

But wilfully misleading the Electoral Commission attracts a maximum fine of just $2000 – and many other offences similarly have maximum fines of $1000 to $2000. This is roughly the same maximum penalty that applies for tagging a tree.

They suggest greater penalties, and greater powers for the Electoral Commission to investigate the prosecute offences. I agree. You can get seven years for stealing a TV set; stealing an election seems rather more serious. The problem of course is that one of these crimes is committed by poor people, while the other is committed exclusively by rich people and politicians, who write the laws to suit themselves.

Submit!

The Justice Committee has called for submissions on the Electoral Amendment Bill. Submissions are due by Wednesday, 31 August 2022, and can be made at the link above.

The bill improves disclosure of party finances, lowering the declaration threshold to $5,000 and requiring parties to disclose their annual financial statements. But it would also grant greater secrecy to ultra-rich donors, by ending the immediate declaration of donations over $30,000. And of course amendments to it would be a perfect way of plugging the loophole exposed by the NZ First Foundation trial, which now allows parties to bypass the entire transparency regime and receive unlimited amounts of money in secret, provided they launder it through a trust.

In short, this is an important bill, and if we don't want the rich buying our politicians and controlling our elections, we should speak up on it.

A new standard for BORA consistency?

Golriz Ghahraman's Electoral (Strengthening Democracy) Amendment Bill will probably face its first reading today. And three months after it was introduced - pissing on the "as soon as practicable" requirement of Standing Order 269 - it has received a section 7 report from Attorney-General David Parker stating that its proposed donation cap is (potentially) inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act.

I say "potentially" above because Parker doesn't actually find that the bill is inconsistent. Instead, he makes the report because while

a donation cap is certainly capable of being a justified limit on the s 14 right [to freedom of expression], but I have insufficient policy information at present to conclude that the proposed cap is such a justified limit.

To which the natural question is "did he ask"?

The fundamental problem here is that, being a member's bill, there isn't a pile of background policy documentation analysing the choices made to demonstrate that the limit is proportionate to the limitation of the right. In the absence of such information, Parker has taken a conservative approach (as used by the Court of Appeal in the voting age case, and by Parker recently over the Rotorua District Council (Representation Arrangements) Bill) that the absence of justification means a provision cannot be considered justified. I welcome that approach - we should be cautious about limiting human rights and demand that limitations be properly justified. And I look forward to it being similarly applied to government bills, Labour member's bills, and existing archaic law.

At the same time, we need to recognise that this imposes a greater burden on member's bills than on government ones. The easiest solution of course is to amend Standing Orders to allow sponsors of member's bills to make submissions to the Attorney-General on justification before a section 7 report is issued. This should prevent the government using this structural unfairness to unfairly target bills.

Plugging the loophole

A couple of weeks ago the High Court exposed a loophole in our electoral donations law, enabling corrupt parties to take in unlimited amounts of secret money and explicitly sell policy to the rich. Pretty obviously, this is unacceptable in a country which wants to call itself a democracy, and so now the government has promised to fix it:

The Government will close a “loophole” in electoral law exposed by the New Zealand First Foundation court case, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says.

Ardern, speaking to RNZ on Monday morning, said the court ruling in the case was an “unexpected interpretation” of electoral law that could be remedied in “quite a timely way”. Last week she cast doubt on whether the Government could legislate in response to the court ruling before the 2023 election.

“We have a piece of electoral law that covers issues of donation that is currently now in the process of going through the House.

“We believe there's a way that we can, without creating any unintended consequences, address this issue through that process.”

Good. Not that there's any virtue here on Labour's part - party officials are currently being prosecuted over Labour's own dirty financial dealings, and Ardern had to be dragged kicking and screaming to this (its as if the status quo parties are addicted to secret money or something). But the public is pretty firm on wanting big money out of politics, and I guess the focus groups were strong enough on this that Labour felt it had to listen. As for the "how", hopefully they'll give some indication in the House tomorrow afternoon before the Electoral Amendment Bill goes to committee.

So its worse then

When news about the New Zealand First Foundation broke, electoral law expert Andrew Geddis put it succinctly:

[T]he alternative conclusion is, if anything, even more worrying. If it turns out that the foundation and the party somehow are operating lawfully, as we should note Winston Peters maintains, then that demonstrates our electoral law simply is not fit for purpose.

[...]

If this is legal, then there’s no way that it should be. You can’t have a country’s political system run in this way and be considered the second least corrupt nation on the planet. Or, at least, you can’t do it for long.

Today the high court found that it was indeed legal (and granted those involved permanent name suppression, because being rich means never having to face the reputational consequences of your actions). Which means that it is worse. A political party can literally sell policy, taking donations in secret, then using its influence within government to benefit the donors, without even the usual paltry warning signs from our pathetic disclosure laws. It is a sign of the total corruption of our political system.

The question we should all be asking of our politicians is "what are you going to do about it?" Because I don't think this is acceptable to the vast majority of kiwis. Conveniently, the government just introduced its Electoral Amendment Bill, which deals with donations. I expect significant pressure at the select committee stage to patch this gaping hole in the law. And if the political class refuses to, we should regard it as both a statement of intent and an admission of guilt.

A conspiracy against the public

Earlier this year the government held a public consultation on proposed changes to the election donations regime. Naturally, political parties - who have a strong interest in the rules around donations and what they have to disclose - submitted to it. But the Ministry of Justice cooked up a crooked deal to keep those submissions secret:

The Ministry of Justice struck a deal with political parties to keep secret their submissions on donation law reform.

[...]

As part of the reform, political parties – and the public – were asked for their feedback on a range of policy options.

The ministry says it will release submissions from ordinary people. But it will not disclose those from three political parties.

“The political parties which the ministry received submissions from, provided these on a confidential basis,” Kathy Brightwell, general manager of civil and constitutional policy said in response to an Official Information Act request from Stuff.

“These parties may not have provided submissions if they knew they were going to be identified, so it would be within the public interest to withhold their submissions, as release of this would likely prejudice the supply of similar information, and it is in the public interest that the ministry can continue to consult with political parties in the future.”

Weirdly the Ministry can't even keep its story straight on how many parties it granted confidentiality to - they told me it was only one. But either way its bullshit. Firstly, because the idea that political parties would not submit on a consultation about the rules they operate under is simply absurd and does not even pass the laugh test. Secondly because insofar as there is any obligation of confidence, it can apply only to truly confidential information, such as membership and financial numbers - not to the views of the parties and the arguments they are using to try and influence policy. Thirdly, because of the public interest: this is an issue which is the subject of widespread public disquiet. Bluntly, the parties are perceived as writing the rules to suit themselves, in flagrant disregard of public demands for greater transparency (which are themselves driven by real questions about who is buying our politicians). This refusal is simply going to strengthen that disquiet and that perception, to the detriment of our democracy.

Of course, while the Ministry says "parties", the party in question is Labour. We know this because National has already publicly released its submission, while Labour refused to do so. Why not? The obvious reason is that they believe that the public will not like what they are saying, and will judge them for it at the ballot box. But we should judge them on their refusal as well. If a party isn't willing to be open about its views on electoral donations, the public should judge them as corrupt-by-default. There are clean parties out there - vote for one of them instead.