Posts Tagged ‘donations’

SFO to Investigate Labour Donations

Written By: - Date published: 4:32 pm, July 13th, 2020 - 39 comments

The Serious Fraud Office has commenced an investigation in relation to donations made in 2017 to the Labour Party.

UPDATE: The investigation may involve donations made at a ‘silent’ art auction, something that Labour was upfront about back in February.

Pretty Legal: SFO to Investigate Nat Donation

Written By: - Date published: 10:36 am, March 12th, 2019 - 77 comments

NZ Police have confirmed that the Serious Fraud Office is investigating donations received by the National Party.

CGT as a Charitable Donation

Written By: - Date published: 12:44 pm, March 2nd, 2019 - 31 comments

Treat CGT like a semi-voluntary donation and give people a say in how it is spent.

Ross saga quiescent, but donations scandal needs addressing

Written By: - Date published: 4:26 pm, October 25th, 2018 - 21 comments

The Jami-Lee Ross scandal may have quietened down but issues raised by his explosive tape recording of Simon Bridges still need addressing. Does the $100k Zhang Yikun donation suggest we are going down the US track and, if so, what needs to be done about that

No smoking gun but plenty of sunlight from Bridges tape

Written By: - Date published: 3:32 pm, October 18th, 2018 - 207 comments

Maybe not a smoking gun, Jami-Lee Ross’s tape recording of Simon Bridges sheds plenty of sunlight on the influence that money can buy within the National Party, casual racism endemic within National, the manipulation of ethnic communities and, most importantly, insights into the wielding of “soft power” by China.

Generous donation – why was it necessary to get a hospital built?

Written By: - Date published: 12:58 pm, July 11th, 2017 - 28 comments

Thank you Mark Dunajtschik. But why did it take a generous private donation to get a badly needed public hospital off the drawing-board?

Party donations analysis

Written By: - Date published: 7:02 am, June 20th, 2017 - 101 comments

Max Rasbrooke has done an analysis of donations to political parties, and raises the concern that donations buy influence. There is a solution to this problem.

A generous donation to Labour

Written By: - Date published: 11:13 am, May 31st, 2017 - 34 comments

Thank you Robert Smellie QC, I’m sure your donation will be put to great use. Smellie said: “I am a practising Anglican and as such I see socialism as being far closer to the Gospel than free enterprise.”

The countries that accept foreign donations to political parties

Written By: - Date published: 9:31 am, August 23rd, 2016 - 86 comments

map-foreign-donations-red

More Panama papers and other dirty money

Written By: - Date published: 6:38 am, May 30th, 2016 - 143 comments

Both One News and The Herald have pieces this morning highlighting different cases of dirty money being “filtered” through NZ. Panama papers, National donors, SkyCity and more…

Trying to spin the Hagaman donation

Written By: - Date published: 10:59 am, April 21st, 2016 - 122 comments

Little is doing his job. Dirty Politics Farrar is spinning like mad. The real questions are – who knew about the donations, when did they know, and were they involved in awarding the contract?

Gould on Nats’ sleaze and corruption

Written By: - Date published: 10:29 am, April 20th, 2016 - 138 comments

Bryan Gould has some choice words on the latest Nat donations scandal.

Political donations and conflicts of interest

Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, March 2nd, 2015 - 53 comments

Whether it’s about election donations or portfolios, some people do seem to think MPs should always get the benefit of the doubt.

Nats laundering donations (as ever)

Written By: - Date published: 10:09 am, February 28th, 2015 - 28 comments

National have found new ways to launder their donations. Makes you wonder what they’re hiding.

Is the $15,000 even true?

Written By: - Date published: 1:28 pm, June 20th, 2014 - 214 comments

John Key’s alleging that hundreds of thousands flowed to Labour from Donghua Liu, but as the Nat’s smear campaign unravels, even the $15,000 can’t be found. Who do we trust – an unnamed ‘party source’ in the Herald, or Party records? $15,000 is a sizeable donation that is likely to be noted or remembered. And where’s Donghua himself in all this – surely he could clear this up very quickly…

Emails reveal Key & Banks’ Dotcom links

Written By: - Date published: 7:52 am, May 16th, 2012 - 102 comments

John Key might be regretting his moan about the media yesterday. His reward has been to be shown to be lying in the banks.com affair. Key has previously claimed he first heard of Dotcom the day before he was arrested. A new email, however, shows Dotcom’s staff met with Key personally months earlier over his attempt to purchase the Crisco mansion.

Better write those cheques, Len & John

Written By: - Date published: 6:31 am, April 5th, 2012 - 81 comments

Update: Labour had accused Banks of not declaring the $15,000 donation from SkyCity as required under local government electoral law. The law is strict. If he is charged and convicted he’ll be kicked out of Parliament. Key will have to take his portfolios if Banks didn’t declare the money.

Private sector can’t compete with ACC

Written By: - Date published: 12:04 pm, February 27th, 2012 - 35 comments

Government documents from last year reveal a plan to make ACC boost its levies and pay the government a dividend so that private insurers can compete. But that wasn’t enough. Now, the plan seems to be to exclude ACC from workplace injury insurance altogether. Private insurers just can’t offer cover as cheap as ACC can. So that Nats’ solution is to deny us access to ACC workplace cover.

Nats’ Crafar Farm kickback

Written By: - Date published: 12:17 pm, February 16th, 2012 - 43 comments

On November 30th, after the election, National received a $55,000 donation from Oravida, a company formerly owned by Terry Lee, director of Pengxin’s Crafar Farms vehicle, Milk New Zealand. In light of National’s illegal decision to let Pengxin buy the farms despite a lack of real benefits to New Zealand, maybe we ought to examine that donation a little  more closely.

Cash for cars?

Written By: - Date published: 5:26 pm, May 11th, 2011 - 117 comments

A $50,000 donation from a BMW franchise to National?

This latest twist to the BMW saga has a real stench about it.

A few questions

Written By: - Date published: 9:53 am, August 28th, 2010 - 40 comments

1) Did the PM declare his conflict of interest when the alcohol reforms were debated at Cabinet?
2) Aren’t these exactly the reforms you would expect from a guy who owns a high end winery? No extra excise. No controls on advertising. Demonise the kids.
3) Has National or any of its MPs recieved donations from alcohol sellers? Like Tony Astle, for example?

Electoral donations reported

Written By: - Date published: 9:50 am, May 1st, 2008 - 52 comments

The Electoral Commission has published the parties’ donation returns for 2007. It is worth noting from the outset that under the electoral law then in force only donations over $10,000 had to be declared and anonymous donations, including the use of anonymising trusts, were legal. Labour has the largest return, at $1,030,446.39. But $700,000 was […]

Same old faces, same old tactics

Written By: - Date published: 2:06 pm, January 23rd, 2008 - 251 comments

Well it looks like Free Speech Coalition founder Cameron Slater has taken a break from stalking John Minto and photoshopping underage bloggers’ faces onto porn and decided to finally publish the Coalition’s updated donors list (and only a month after he said he would). Interestingly, a “P Shirtcliffe” is listed as having donated $5000. Now […]

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