New regulations around naming small political donors means a more transparent system. But is it a big enough change?
Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi
A Kiwi businessman donated half a million dollars to the National Party because he simply "likes what Christopher Luxon is doing".
Warren Lewis - who owns a sheet metal company - has been revealed as a first-time donor for the right, coughing up the largest single donation the party has received from a person since 2014.
"That's really interesting, he's brand new, we have never heard of him before - he came out of the blue and nobody expected it,'" says RNZ journalist Farah Hancock.
All New Zealand political parties, apart from Te Pati Māori, recorded a big jump in donations last year.
As a group, the six parties received almost $25 million. That's the biggest total declared in history, and almost three times more than the amount declared in 2017.
"It was a massive jump. It was a little bit perplexing to begin with but when I dug into the figures, I realised there were a couple of big things that changed. One was the reporting change - for the first time, parties had to declare the amount of donations they had received - and the total value - under $1500. They never used to declare this. It was kind of like dark money, we didn't know what it was or how much they had, and everyone was guessing. The rules were changed to make everything more transparent, there was concern about trust in the system."
Hancock says the National Party is still "miles ahead" of their political rivals when it comes to donations... of any size.
"I think of the $10m National got in 2023, $4m was in little donations. Labour got $2.6[m] from little donations. Nobody expected that, everyone thought Labour would come out on top when it came to small donations, that's always been the argument - National got the big donations, Labour got the smaller ones."
Parties must now name any donor who gives $5000 or more. It used to be that donors could stay under the radar for anything up to $15000.
This revealed a Labour secret: Labour MPs donating to their own party.
"This again was brand new. We always knew about the Greens, the tithing arrangement where they give a percentage, but it was the lowering of the declarable threshold from $15,000 to $5000, we suddenly saw all these Labour MPs names there and it was quite a lot of money - about $600,000 all up in total - that was given," Hancock says.
One of the recommendations in an independent review of the electoral system is to put a cap on the amount a person can donate to any single party. The recommended amount is $30,000 over three years.
"This would effectively incentivise parties to raise money in different ways."
Hancock says, at the end of the day, Kiwis simply want more trust and transparency.
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