National announces receiving $1.8 million in recent donations

Written By: - Date published: 2:43 pm, April 1st, 2022 - 43 comments
Categories: act, elections, national - Tags:

Last week I posted about how Act had within the past few weeks received $950,000 in donations.  National has guzumped this and has just announced that it will shortly be filing declarations announcing that it has received $1.8 million in donations all of which were over $30,000 in value.

The breakdown is in this Herald article:

Donated $250,000
Graeme Hart
Murray Bolton
Nick Mowbray

Donated $100,000
Trevor Farmer
Bayley family
Craig Heatley
Graeme Harrison
Gary Lane
Ben Gough
Jim Speedy

Donated $40,000-$50,000
Mark Wyborn
Mike Thorburn
Jeff Douglas
Lani Hagaman
Peter Vela
Hugh Jones

Of those who donated to National Trevor Farmer, Graeme Hart, and Mike Thorburn also recently donated significant amounts to Act.

This shows how in lock with each other National and Act are.  It looks like they were engaged in significant fund raising projects at the same time and even have some of the same donors helping them out.

And fancy having this amount of spare cash and thinking that the country was in a bad state and needed change.

It is a good idea to get this out of the way this year and have the publicity done and dusted now.

But be prepared.  National and Act are well resourced and raring to go.  Next year is going to be a really interesting year.

Update:  I have just realised this article is in the Herald Premium section.  Freaking typical.  They have major news that affects the state of our democracy but they restrict access to it to those of us who can afford and are prepared to have an account.

Update 2:  Labour has a fundraising campaign running because of the news.  Details are here.

If someone wants to provide the Green Party details I will put them up too.

43 comments on “National announces receiving $1.8 million in recent donations ”

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  1. Barfly 1
    1 April 2022 at 2:50 pm

    New Zealand – we have the finest democracy money can buy /sigh

  2. Ad 2
    1 April 2022 at 2:51 pm

    Hopefully your "be prepared" message is heard primarily by the Labour Party and its leaders.

    Any time someone wants to generate a decent Labour event with a useful ticket price …

  3. Incognito 3
    1 April 2022 at 2:58 pm

    Looks like a bloody old boys club scratching each other’s backs.

    • mickysavage 3.1
      1 April 2022 at 3:11 pm

      It is hard to understand why they are so aggrieved. I hate to say it but rich are still doing fine.

      • Anne 3.1.1
        1 April 2022 at 3:15 pm

        Yes, but they've lost most of their political power and influence micky. That means as much to them as making ship loads of loot.

      • Barfly 3.1.2
        1 April 2022 at 3:58 pm

        Well I think that 'wealth supremacists' take pleasure not only from their own somewhat obscene wealth but also from the degree of wealth that separates them from the 'unworthy' thus they not only seek to buy politicians that will help enrich themselves but also desire those politicians to more impoverish and reduce to penury those they deem 'unworthy'. The 'unworthy' must be kept in their place of misery.
        broken heartangry

      • Belladonna 3.1.3
        1 April 2022 at 8:29 pm

        I would say that there are several straws in the wind that are making big business very nervous.

        Labour's apparent commitment to Maori co-governance (though not declared as a policy, they appear to be implementing He Puapua) – with 3 waters being the first step along the road. I dont' think we can underestimate what a profound shift in our democracy this co-governance proposal is. And, business is very, very, nervous about it.

        What looks like an inability to get traction on any major infrastructure project. They've delivered or made progress on the ones already underway – but new projects seem to struggle to get off the drawing board – and announcing then walking back projects (Auckland cycle bridge), is just a disaster for business confidence.

        The apparent disdain for the tourism sector. The Covid-related flip-flopping around the border-closures; and lack of understanding that you can't just turn tourism off and on like a tap.

        And, in conjunction with the Greens, the contradictions around managing greenhouse gasses in the farming sector.

        A lot of this is uncertainty. And business hates uncertainty (yes, they can manage crises, but they don't like doing it).

        All of those things will be contributing to money going towards National/Act.

        We may not like it, but from their perspective it's eminently understandable.

  4. Anne 4
    1 April 2022 at 3:11 pm

    I note the original bank-roller of ACT into being, Alan Gibbs does not appear on either list athough his ex-wife is on ACT's big donor list.

    Two other names once closely aligned to ACT and National, Michael Fay and David Richwhite have also disappeared. Both were fingered over the Winebox Affair so that may be why.

    … be prepared. National and Act are well resourced and raring to go. Next year is going to be a really interesting year.

    Hmmm, a lot of DP is planned? Costs money if you’re gonna do it properly.

  5. Whispering Kate 5
    1 April 2022 at 4:14 pm

    Good God another Mortica has risen from the Crypt. Paula Benefit is doing a Michelle Boag and has been rattling the tin around the rich listers and brought all the dosh in for the National Party. I know one is not meant to get personal but she has a bit of a look of Mortica does our Paula. Happy days.

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/national-party-donations-paula-bennett-organises-18-million-in-funds-from-wealthy-new-zealanders/X33SIFFZ2HEOH5VFWOMCAT6M4M/

  6. DukeEll 6
    1 April 2022 at 5:23 pm

    Nothing like a bit of good fashioned envy politics.

    you should take it as a compliment to the current government that these people take them and their policies so seriously.

    but maybe also wonder why there isn’t a left rich in New Zealand. Shouldn’t be simply a money thing.

    • AB 6.1
      1 April 2022 at 6:36 pm

      Envy is when you want the thing someone else has for yourself. It's frustrated greed. Thinking that nobody should have that thing because it is disproportionate and gives the owner illegitimate power over others, isn't envy. It's something else. Maybe it's principle?

    • NZSage 6.2
      2 April 2022 at 8:12 am

      Envy? Not at all.

      Motivation? Yes. I've just chipped into Labour as a result.

      A small gesture but I suspect Labour has strength in numbers.

      • Patricia Bremner 6.2.1
        2 April 2022 at 12:27 pm

        This is our strength. Little but often. I have put them on my payee list fortnightly.smiley

  7. DirkDirkin 7
    1 April 2022 at 6:42 pm

    And what will major donors want for their money

    • mickysavage 7.1
      1 April 2022 at 6:44 pm

      We should start a list …

      • mac1 7.1.1
        1 April 2022 at 10:46 pm

        Power, access to power and profiting from power. Apart from that, money, wealth, fortunes, fame, recognition and at the end, large tombs.

        • JO 7.1.1.1
          2 April 2022 at 6:11 pm

          To the point as ever mac1. Your 'and at the end, large tombs' shows the fantasies buried under that list perfectly.

          History lurches with such turning points, in which systemic corruption, or the reaction against it, changed the course of world events.
          This story begins in Afghanistan before going back five centuries to zoom in on one of the great 'epoch-making' hinges of history, before coming nearer to where we wait and watch as our era's hinges creak ajar…

          ' 'They preach only human doctrines’ – not Holy Writ – ‘who say that as soon as the money clinks in the money chest, the soul flies out of purgatory.’ So reads Thesis 27 in a carefully sequenced series of statements that a law student-turned-priest and theology professor named Martin Luther wrote in 1517. At the time, the Catholic Church, […] was engaged in a vast extortion racket. Worshippers could avoid the torments of a ghastly pre-Judgement Day refugee camp called Purgatory, if they just shelled out the price of an ‘indulgence’, a papal safe-conduct.

          In 1517, a sales push was launched in Germany. Half the proceeds were earmarked to cover the staggering debt a young cleric had taken on to buy a powerful archbishopric from the pope. A bling-loving scion of the Medici dynasty, that pope routinely auctioned off Church offices and waivers of canon law. The rest of the return on indulgence sales would go straight to Leo X himself, to help pay for a gaudy piece of real estate.

          Thesis 66: ‘The treasures of indulgences are nets with which one now fishes for the wealth of men.' Why, wonders Luther’s Thesis 86, did the stupendously rich pope not ‘build this one basilica of St Peter with his own money rather than with the money of poor believers?’

          Nearly all 95 of those epoch-making premises are taken up with aspects of what we would call corruption: harnessing public office to the purpose of self-enrichment. In this egregious case, the offices in question were sacred and the stakes eternal. Public indignation burst across Europe in a shockwave that dramatically reshaped the continent’s politics, culture and economy.

          https://aeon.co/essays/corruption-has-shaped-history-why-do-we-still-ignore-it

          • mac1 7.1.1.1.1
            3 April 2022 at 2:27 pm

            Great article, JO. It may well have influenced my somewhat more than jaundiced musings today here. It is as it is, but does it have to be?

    • Incognito 7.2
      1 April 2022 at 6:48 pm

      Tax cuts, for starters, and the Bright Line Test gone by lunchtime.

    • Barfly 7.3
      1 April 2022 at 8:40 pm

      I am sure some want to called "Sir"

  8. Belladonna 8
    1 April 2022 at 7:32 pm

    Looking at this article – especially table number 1

    "Big donors, big donations: descriptive statistics of party donations in excess of theanonymity disclosure thresholds, 1996–2019, in real 2020 dollars"

    https://ojs.victoria.ac.nz/pq/article/download/6818/5966/9542

    It doesn't seem that there is a significant difference between Nat + Labour (12 million vs 10 million) in large donations.

    [NB: this is a once-over-lightly glance at the article – I'm perfectly willing to be corrected on any misunderstanding of the statistics involved]

    • mickysavage 8.1
      1 April 2022 at 8:03 pm

      I think you need to reread it. Anonymous donations definition has changed over the years. The current donations are massive ones that need to be declared pretty well immediately.

      There is also this passage:

      "[T]his data suggests that individually anonymous donations may be on the increase, as they have risen in successive elections. They have also flowed disproportionately to National over this shorter period ($14 million compared to $4 million for Labour, for example). Such anonymous aggregate donations account for two thirds of National’s donations. The large amount of reported donations beneath the disclosure threshold received by the National Party has also been rising over time. Either there is growth in the number of people willing to donate to National under the threshold or they are increasingly avoiding the disclosure threshold."

      • Belladonna 8.1.1
        1 April 2022 at 8:14 pm

        Yes, I did read that section. However, it was in relation to the below-the-threshold donations, rather than the headline grabbing large ones, which were referenced in the OP.

        Referring back to Table 1 – it appears to me that N & L are on the same playing field, with major donations.

        • mickysavage 8.1.1.1
          1 April 2022 at 8:47 pm

          No they are not. Total up the $30k plus donations for both parties over the past decade then come back and argue the point.

          • Belladonna 8.1.1.1.1
            1 April 2022 at 10:55 pm

            Well those figures are the aggregates from 1996–2019, in real 2020 dollars – for above-the-threshold donations.
            So that does cover the last decade.

            If you think that there is something wrong about the table or the calculation, then just explain what it is.

    • Patricia Bremner 8.2
      1 April 2022 at 8:10 pm

      The difference is a few really wealthy and many quite poor people on the left giving regularly over years, against the big funders of the right gathering to try to defeat any laws or changes they see as slowing their ability to gather in wealth.

      This means the Government is actually making an impression!!

      Some of the wealthy donators listed under National and Act may have received Government covid subsidies.

      devilHope they paid them back.

  9. Pataua4life 9
    1 April 2022 at 8:45 pm

    Just like the Unions on the left. No big deal

    • mickysavage 9.1
      1 April 2022 at 8:49 pm

      Yep the Unions have given Labour $1.8 million in the past year and $950k to the Greens. Are you embarrassed that you have said something that is so clearly untrue?

      • Barfly 9.1.1
        1 April 2022 at 9:26 pm

        Lol "embarrassed" he'd probably have to look it up – I suspect the concept is foreign to him.

  10. infused 10
    1 April 2022 at 10:02 pm

    Labour took 1.6m in 2017 and 1.5m last year. What's your point?