As I have commented previously National and Act have built up impressively large war chests this year.
Clearly the wealthy amongst us want to preserve their privilege. Even Labour’s fairly middle of the road incrementalism is to them a threat. One wonders at the response a full throated Jeremy Corbyn style return to socialism type Government would cause them.
But recently there is a new party that is in favour. Another party that is not even in Parliament which has attracted some pretty major donations.
Can I present to you New Zealand First’s very recent filings of donations over $30,000.
There are other donations this year from people who appear to normally be National or Act supporters including the following:
Who are these paragons of virtue willing to fund a party that has more than a whiff of anti vaxxer about it?
Max Rashbrooke has this to say about one of the donors.
The column Rashbrooke referred to said this:
There’s little confidence Luxon can secure the necessary votes for a National-Act coalition. To the contrary, National’s vote usually falls during an election campaign, even with a popular leader like Key. Luxon’s negative net favourability is not just a problem in itself, but indicates that when people get to know him, they are more likely to dislike than to like him.
The big idea now is to get behind NZ First, including Shane Jones in Northland.
Links between NZ First and the business figures Winston Peters used to condemn grew through lobbying activity to get him and Jones to block Robertson’s capital gains tax and force Jacinda Ardern to rule it out for as long as she remained Prime Minister.
Those links, and the money and advisers that come with them, plus bad blood after the 2017-20 coalition and NZ First’s need to play the field to remain credible long-term as the centrist kingmaker, make backing National this time a dead cert.
Peters would again become Foreign Minister, while the party leadership would pass to Jones, to assure its continuity when Peters retires.
NZ First’s new strategists, including some who have been successful in national politics since the 1970s and are familiar with Northland, point to its vote being split among incumbent Labour MP Willow-Jean Prime, Democracy NZ’s Matt King, Act’s Mark Cameron, National’s Grant McCallum and the Greens’ Reina Penney.
Crucial, they think, will be the 10,000 or so voters who switched from Peters in 2017 to Prime in 2020. If Jones wins them back instead of McCallum, NZ First is back – and Luxon becomes Prime Minister.
Trevor Farmer is also well known for his largesse to right wing parties. John Bayley is a director of Bayley Corporation Ltd which has made significant donations to National in the past. Time prevents me from commenting in detail about the others.
This has the same feel as the recent Auckland mayoral campaign where large amounts of money sloshed around various right wing candidates until matters were resolved by withdrawals and what appears to be some sort of accommodation between the contestants. And it is no surprise that Christopher Luxon is refusing to rule out an accommodation with NZ First.
Winston has done Labour a deal by stating it will not support Labour.
Clearly we are looking at a three headed monster on the right with National, Act and NZ First facing the possibility of some sort of accommodation between the parties.
Talk about a coalition of chaos …
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