Radio NZ’s Farah Hancock has analysed the Electoral Commission returns of money paid to influence the 2023 NZ General Election. Her article $2m surge in election campaign spending by third-party groups (RNZ) shows that as well as the huge donations-directly-to-the-parties imbalance, previously reported, a large amount of untraceable dark money was expended by bodies established to support right wing (really anti-Labour, anti-Greens, anti-Maori Party) election efforts.
Third-party groups poured $2 million into the election campaign, new data reveals.
[emphasis added]
Most of the record spend went on campaigners pushing for policies favoured by the centre right, and is 13 times more than was spent on the 2020 general election.
Figures released by the Electoral Commission show that of the 31 registered third-party promoters, seven spent more than $100,000 in the lead-up to voting. Only groups that spend more than $100,000 are required to share their expenses.
The graphics Hancock prepared for her story are extremely… well, illustrative:
OK so this is a new thing. Hancock’s point that these stats only relate to the seven ‘promoters’ who admitted spending over $100,000 is important.
This is the roll call:
Vote for Better (who dat?)
Taxpayers Union (dirty PR group/ACT Party in drag)
Council of Trade Unions (traditional Labour supporters)
Hobson’s Pledge (colonial/racist dinosaurs)
Better NZ Trust (a zero carbon/pro EV lobby group)
Family First (reactionary Christian nationalists)
Groundswell (puppets of the National Party)
It was pretty clear before the General Election that the left was being vastly outspent by the right. A lot of anti-government sentiment (and advertising) was fuelled by these opaquely-funded bodies.
Vote for Better
Personally, I don’t believe bloodstock/advertising man Tim Barry who fronted the ‘Vote for Better’ money-laundering exercise when he claimed the oh-my-god-look-at-that-we’re-JUST-UNDER-the-legal-spending-cap! ‘promotion’ fund was funded by donations from “hundreds of New Zealanders from up and down the country”. Sure, Tim, sure. That’s not a lie (probably) but it doesn’t seem particularly ‘the whole truth’ either. Refusing to be interviewed about your $386,514 influence operation doesn’t fill me with confidence, either. And covering your tracks. As RNZ’s Farah Hancock reports: “The Vote for Better website and social media pages have been removed from the internet.” Riiiight. Always a good sign. Totally normal and legit.
Oh, these %#&@*! guys again. But with so much MORE MONEY
The NZ Taxpayers Union dirty PR attack machine likewise plays up its ‘ordinary New Zealanders’ donations’ – but is obstructive about how much its um, larger, corporate donors bankroll it.
Nevertheless, we know tobacco giant British American Tobacco funds them, and (naturally, like a good servant) the Taxpayers Union dutifully parrots their PR lines…
We also know rich people poured money into National and ACT (masters of the Baldrick-like Jordan Williams). See this list of ‘big money donors’ to ACT (published August 2023, a month before the election). I wouldn’t be surprised if some these same “New Zealanders from up and down the country” flicked a few roubles into the ‘Vote for Better’ campaign. What’s to stop them? What do you think?
David Seymour’s 7 minute Beehive banquet hall speech after the announcement of the three-headed-monster – oops I mean tripartite coalition government – was like a schoolboy dutifully reciting his homework assignment, cataloguing his many ACT policy ‘wins’ in the coalition agreement – to his donors. He went on and on, until Luxon looked green with nausea*. The way I see it, the ACT Party is bought and paid for.
The shameful National/ACT/NZ First government scurrilous moves to unpick the former government’s smokefree legislation, supposedly to allow them to gather more revenue from the tax paid by smokers, in turn to fund tax cuts for the rich, is just an example of this transactional pay-for-what-you-want aspect of political donations.
No conscience. The donors must be rewarded.
EV and zero carbon enthusiasts Better NZ Trust are still visible on the internet at www.leadingthecharge.org.nz which is a good thing. I don’t know how their mission and fund-raising is going to survive the backward-looking fossil-fuel backed conservatives we currently have in power in NZ as part of the three-headed coalition of chaos. The three-headed monster doesn’t like clean cars…
It feels to me like we’ve imported the worst of dysfunctional US politics including sock puppets disinformation campaigns, hateful personal attacks and now dark money buying influence.
Is that what we want?
-P
*Luxon’s bravado and self-promotion prior to the coalition agreement (“I’ve done a lot of mergers and acquisitions, and I’ve done a lot of negotiations. It’s about getting the chemistry and getting the relationship right”) was revealed as … well, lacking substance.
