The election year party donations returns

mickysavage
6 years ago
Categories: act, conservative party, democratic participation, election 2017, election funding, elections, electoral commission, greens, labour, mana, national, nz first, Politics, progressives

These were publicly released recently and make for interesting reading.

And it should be noted that they do not include all donations that a party receives. Non anonymous donations from a person that total less than $1,500 in a year are not recorded in the return.

The highlights are that Labour received $1.6 million up from $0.93 million last time. National received an eyewatering $4.6 million up from $3.8 million last time.

Labour’s big donors included retired High Court Judge Robert Smellie, the unions and a group of artists captured by Labour’s treatment of their art sold at auction. Prices paid over any return are I understand treated as donations. Phillip Mills was also a large donor and has in the past made generous donations to Labour and the Greens.

National’s big donors included the interestingly named Inner Mongolia Rider Horse Industry (NZ) Limited. Its shareholder is a Mongolian company with a similar name. Perhaps Matthew Hooton, honorary counsel to Mongolia, is involved.

The vote per dollar donated analysis is interesting. Some parties spent lots of money getting little support. ACT was beaten only by the New Zealand People’s party whose donation of quarter of a million dollars by Roshan Hauinca resulted in not many votes.

Party	Total Party Donations	Vote	$ per vote
ACT New Zealand	$783,830.17	13,075	$59.95
Conservative Party	$62,027.26	6,253	$9.92
Green Party	$848,468.97	162,443	$5.22
Internet Party	$882.42	499	$1.77
Labour Party	$1,611,073.77	956,184	$1.68
MANA	$2,708.00	3,642	$0.74
Māori Party	$388,860.60	30,580	$12.72
National Party	$4,579,086.44	1,152,075	$3.97
New Zealand People’s Party	$259,985.30	1,890	$137.56
NZ First	$546,253.77	186,706	$2.93
The Opportunities Party (TOP)	$2,344,110.50	63,261	$37.05

And it shows Labour’s advantage over National and its disadvantage. Labour has always had fewer financial resources but better activists and a greater moral authority. Long may this continue.

Update: A regular reader has asked me to point out that Inner Mongolia is actually a province of China and that the company has no connection with Mongolia, any Mongolian citizen or to Matthew Hooton.