The coalition Government’s pro-industry agenda has seen the Opposition and environmental groups poring over the big-ticket party and candidate donations already released by the Electoral Commission.
The deadline for filing party donations under $20,000 came and went on Tuesday, and the commission says it will release them publicly as soon as they are fully compiled.
It expects that to be either later on Friday or early next week, but by midday on Thursday the commission said three parties were yet to file their donation paperwork.
Perhaps the Government’s largest controversy so far is fast-track consenting, which either cuts unnecessary red tape or constitutes a war on the environment, depending who you ask.
Resource Management Reform Minister Chris Bishop released the list of organisations that received letters about the fast-track applications process in mid-April.
There were 182 organisations on the list. The vast majority (119) were Māori groups, sent letters after expressing concern or wanting more details on the scheme.
The second-largest group was property developers – including two high-profile National Party donors.
The most obvious donor on the list was NZX-listed Winton Group (not the South Island town, as some speculated).
Winton is a large-scale property developer headed up by Chris Meehan, who donated $103,260 to National in August 2023.
That followed a $50,000 donation to Act earlier in the year and a $52,984 donation to National in 2022.
Winton has been fighting tooth and nail to get approval for its 5000-property Sunfield subdivision in south Auckland and, not shy of lawyering up, filed a case against Kāinga Ora for refusing to fast-track the project.
At the time, Bishop backed Winton’s stance, “I’m just frustrated that at the time of a housing crisis, you’ve got a private sector development that wants … to fast track large-scale housing developments, and it looks like there’s one rule for the government and another rule for the private sector. And I think that’s a mistake.”
Max Rashbrooke, from Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington’s Institute for Governance and Policy Studies, told Newsroom at the time that it would be unethical for Bishop to be involved with Winton’s Sunfield project.
“If Chris Bishop became Minister of Housing, ethically he would not be able to have anything to do with the Winton case,” he said. “The thing about donations to a political party is that they compromise the entire party in one go, because the whole party is potentially beholden to, or at least in a relationship with, that donor.
“I think it makes it very hard for the National Party to make an unbiased decision about Winton’s project.”
Just courtesy
But in releasing the list, Bishop said it was merely a courtesy form letter directing potential applicants to the Ministry for the Environment’s online application form.
“Having been sent this letter in no way guarantees that an applicant will choose to submit a project into the new process. If they did choose to submit a project, having received the form letter from me does not mean they would receive any preferential treatment,” Bishop said.
Another major donor on the list was Christchurch’s Carter Group, the property developer behind Christchurch’s The Crossing shopping precinct.
Its owner Philip Carter donated $50,000 to National ahead of the 2023 election. The Press recently crowned Carter the most powerful person in Canterbury for 2024.
Some more tenuous links to companies on the fast-track letter list have also been dug up, with a finance company associated with the director and half-owner of Kings Quarry donating $50,000 to New Zealand First and $5000 to Shane Jones.
Fisheries
One on the list to watch is Talleys Group. Sir Peter Talley gave $29,950 to New Zealand First in 2019 but hasn’t featured in election donation disclosures yet and may not at all.
When asked about meeting Fisheries Minister Shane Jones along with other seafood sector leaders, Sir Peter said, “You can just piss off, cobber, piss off.”
Fisheries is another key area where election donations, past and present, have drawn criticism.
Jones has overseen a 180 in the tone of New Zealand’s approach to fisheries management, backing out of high seas trawling restrictions and generally taking an economic-first view of the sector.
In the most recent election cycle, Jones received $5000 from Westfleet Seafoods, a Greymouth-based commercial fishing outfit owned 50/50 by businessman Craig Boote and Sealord.
Marine and industrial engineering company Aimex, also directed by and partially owned by Boote, gave $2000 to Jones’ Northland campaign.
Boote has called for Jones to overhaul the fishing boat camera regime, which he said invaded workers’ privacy.
“It’s going to be very, very difficult for us to recruit young men when they’re gonna get perved on 24/7,” he told Newsroom in February.
Jones is currently undertaking a review of the camera regime. Figures released as part of that review show a significant uptick in reporting of protected animal interactions.
He strongly rejected any notion that relationships or donations from within the fishing sector made him unfit for, or comprised, his ability to be fisheries minister.
“Any suggestions that electoral donations associated with the fishing industry mean that we are not following proper governmental processes are not only grossly inaccurate, but New Zealand First is not going to tolerate a steady flow of bile.”
What are these workers doing on the fishing boats? Going through people’s drawers? If they are not working on the deck, then it does make you wonder what it is they are doing, and that needs to be kept “private”.
Ages ago, Gordon Tullock asked a difficult question for scholars in Public Choice. It was something like the following – this is just my paraphrase, but I did once teach this stuff at Honours level. “We have all this great theory about how campaign contributions can sway policy outcomes. But if you think hard about it, it’s really the entire wealth of the country that’s potentially up for grabs in an election. And in that context, the scale of political donations is tiny. Sure, the numbers are big. But how can it possibly be an equilibrium for a million-dollar donation to buy you a regulation that’s worth a billion dollars to your company? The puzzle isn’t why there’s so much money in politics but rather why there is so little.”
If the fishing industry really bought ‘no cameras on boats’ for less than $10,000 all-up, how is that an equilibrium? Couldn’t ‘keep cameras on boats’ outbid that pretty easily – if that’s what’s going on? Or if it’s rather that you can only buy policies that are broadly in line with a party’s pre-existing views, but all policies require legislators’ time and effort so there’s only so many that can be auctioned, wouldn’t some other group be willing to pay more than $10k to get a different policy ahead of that in the queue?
If your model of the world is that money buys policy, how is $7k a market-clearing price?
What is the place for a moral compass, Eric?
Good question Gary
Take as read that they shouldn’t. If they are doing, the price is a puzzle!