Who funds the Taxpayer’s Union?

Written By: - Date published: 9:03 am, January 8th, 2025 - 14 comments
Categories: election 2023, election funding, elections, taxpayers union - Tags:

Six months late and in the middle of the holiday period and without any fanfare the Taxpayer’s Union has released its financial results for the year ending December 31, 2023 which also happened to be election year.

Income was impressive and included a total of $2,628,721 in donations from who knows.

Unlike political parties it does not have to release details of its donors. This is a major weakness because for all of this money may have come from Atlas for all that we know. An entity that so overtly injects itself into our political system should be up front about how it is funded.

And it spent a great deal including some of the nearly million dollars that it had in reserve.

A total of $3.326 million was spent on items such as its naff debt clock and fake pig suits. This is more than the Green Party and NZ First received that year in donations.

And this was nearly ten times the amount declared to the Electoral Commission as third party campaign expenses although admittedly the definition does not include day to day running expenses.

The TPU has shown significant growth in revenue and generally in reserves since its inception.

And while we are on the subject do you know how much information about Hobson’s Pledge’s finances are publicly available?

Absolutely nothing. It is a privately incorporated company and has absolutely no duty to disclose anything.

He Arotake Pōtitanga Motuhake, the Independent Electoral Review committee recommended that Government addresses “an existing vulnerability in our system by preventing registered third-party promoters using money from overseas persons to fund election advertising in the three months before an election”.

It also recommended that registered third-party promoters should have a separate election campaign bank account for campaign donations and election expenses, that records should be kept of election campaign donations, and that promoters that spend more than $100,000 on election expenditure during the regulated period should also disclose donors who donate over $30,000 in total during an electoral cycle, if the donation has been used for election expenditure.

Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has ruled out implementing any of the major proposals in the report. To my knowledge he has not commented on this proposal but to date nothing has been done.

But to ensure that we have a properly functioning system that protects our democracy from overseas influence can I recommend that he at least increases the TPU’s disclosure requirements.

At the very least it will improve our confidence that the TPU is not funded by overseas oligarchs whose desire is to undermine environmental protections and rights of workers and indigenous people so that billionaires can increase their wealth.

14 comments on “Who funds the Taxpayer’s Union? ”

  1. Tiger Mountain 1
    8 January 2025 at 9:36 am

    Who funds the Taxpayers Union? (still an egregious misuse of the word union imo).

    Well, with non disclosure of who funds them–at a guess it would be non tax payers, and those that seek to pay absolutely as little tax as they can get away with, including untaxed capital gains and export of profits offshore.

    I do recall during initial COVID Jordan and crew were quite happy to bludge off NZ taxpayers for some wage assistance for staff, it was a bad look indeed, so for PR reasons they later refunded the money, but then had the cheek to tell actual unions to pay back any wage subsidies also!

    Reply
  2. thinker 2
    8 January 2025 at 10:27 am

    Income $2876490

    Cost of feeding and watering the people:

    Staff $1369359

    Kiwisaver obligation $25807

    Board xps $10277

    Total personell costs $1405443 or 49% of gross income

    That seems high to me. Anyone know what the industry average should be?

    Reply
  3. Dennis Frank 3
    8 January 2025 at 10:33 am

    A total of $3.326 million was spent on items such as its naff debt clock and fake pig suits.

    I wonder how many fake pig suits made of genuine gold sequins they could get made for several million dollars spending on it, so planning for a mass public rally of all members togged up in such apparel could surpass the Nuremberg Nazi Party Rallies for spectacle.

    Folks love watching parades, so it would be a suitable recruiting & fund-raising extravaganza too. They're obviously thinking big.

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  4. Bearded Git 4
    8 January 2025 at 12:51 pm

    Great post Micky.

    You only have to glance at those numbers to see that the recommendations of the Independent Electoral Review Committee need to be implemented immediately.

    Labour/Greens/TPM should all spell this out in their 2026 manifestos. Some votes in this I reckon.

    93% of the income is from Donations and Other Revenue with no clue as to the origin. Talk about shady.

    Consulting $360K-isn't this the group that criticises politicians for wasting money on outside contractors?

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  5. Binders full of women 5
    8 January 2025 at 1:43 pm

    The only direct funding into NZ by the Atlas network was to the Free Speech Union to fight AgAINSt the gang patch ban. I'm no more interested in TPU funding than I am Forest &Bird, greenpeace and the rugby Union….which is all zero interest.

    Reply
    • Shanreagh 5.1
      8 January 2025 at 7:45 pm

      I'm a bit the same Binders. They are a lobby group and we have all sorts of lobby groups funded in all sorts of ways. Lobby group of all sorts and stripes are a feature of democracy. At least they are resident in NZ and for all I know are getting donations from NZersm to help with lobbying here in NZ.

      This is unlike the organisations that received funding from overseas orgs such as the Arcus Foundation et al to advance trans issues that have seen men entering womens' safe spaces by saying they have achieved the biologically impossible and changed sex.

      The only niggle I have about the TPU is calling themselves a union but then trade unions have not copyrighted the word union/s (as far as I know & legally I'm not sure they would have the ability to do so.)

      Reply
  6. Ad 6
    8 January 2025 at 1:45 pm

    So are we thinking Labour or the Greens could form a company to 'bundle' and route party donations without more than a single aggregate company disclosure?

    Reply
  7. Booker 7
    8 January 2025 at 6:24 pm

    I think this question needs to be headline news in this country. TPU gets regular press coverage and a few years ago it came out that they were receiving funds from Big Tobacco. It seems entirely like a front group that exists solely to undermine the country’s sovereignty and advocate for multinationals. I struggle to understand why mainstream press gives them the time of day. It’s clearly not a Union, and most likely the backers are tax avoiders.

    Reply

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