KEY POINTS:
Beyond business circles not many New Zealanders would have known of Owen Glenn until he was made an officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the New Year Honours. He has not lived here since 1966 and spends his time in Sydney, Monaco and England overseeing his company, OTS Logistics Group, with operations in 177 countries.
Yet he clearly retains a valuable commitment to this country, contributing $7.5 million to a new business school at the University of Auckland, donating to numerous charities, public bodies and at least one political party. He was Labour's largest donor, with a cheque for $500,000, at the last election.
He thoroughly deserves one of our highest national honours, not for his political contribution alone but not least for it either. Our politics would be very much poorer in every sense if wealthy people were not encouraged to contribute to the cause of good government and parties were to become entirely state financed.
Mr Glenn doubly deserves his honour because he appears to have made no secret of his contribution. He let his name be known and said he expected nothing in return. Nothing, it goes without saying, except sound public policy and sensible, responsible government.
Everyone with a stake in this country wants nothing less, though we may disagree on what is sound, sensible and responsible. But good government is not a trifling cause. Without generous contributions from those who can afford them, political parties would struggle to maintain sophisticated organisations capable of recruiting and supporting competent people, developing practical policies and promoting them to the electorate.
Politics would become the preserve of tub-thumping populists capable only of self-promotion or of state-financed organisations that would quickly form a self-perpetuating professional class out of touch with those whose taxes support them.
We may already have strayed too far in the latter direction. Political parties have ceased to be the mass-membership organisations they were 40 years ago and have come to rely increasingly on state funding through parliamentary allocations for research, communications, electorate office staffing and free broadcast advertising in election campaigns.
The trend will be strengthened by the bill passed late last year to validate the use of parliamentary communications money for electioneering and by the restriction of private political advertising under the Electoral Finance Act that comes into force today. The combined effect will be to increase the advantage of incumbent parties in Parliament and discourage outsiders from participating in election debate.
This New Year's Day has been declared the beginning of the 2008 election campaign, not by voters on summer holiday but by legislation that presumes to protect them from those who might spend their own money to "buy an election", as Labour would have it.
Nobody has been able to buy an election. Mr Glenn did not give half a million dollars to the Labour Party under any such misapprehension. People have been encouraged to contribute to our political life in every way they can. Those with time, energy, ideas or expertise can use them. Those with money contribute too, as the New Year Honour acknowledges.
Nobody in this country can buy honours either. The ONZM would be a modest return for millions given to the educational, political, sporting, health and charitable bodies that Mr Glenn has helped. It would be a sad day if cynicism and suspicion of wealth were to prevail in our political life. Let this not be that day.
