KEY POINTS:
Labour backed off this week from its proposal for taxpayers to give political parties $10 million to fund next year's election campaigns. Of course, they had little choice as every other party had bailed out on them after the public outrage.
What shocked me though was that the Government thought for a minute they'd get away with it. The public fallout from the Auditor-General's report, that found party leaders and their staff helping themselves to parliamentary funds to pay for election materials, was huge. It had all the parties, with the exception of NZ First, scrambling to pay the money back.
Labour owes a whopping $824,000. Getting the grassroots party members to raise this on top of campaign funds is very difficult. In my view the party should have made Cabinet Ministers chip in $30,000 each to pay the bill. After all, the decision to raid the parliamentary piggy bank wasn't a decision of the party organisation. MPs will be well aware that if this money hadn't been spent it is quite likely the Nats would be sitting in the Beehive. Given that the difference in salary between an opposition MP and a Minister is over $300,000 over a parliamentary term, it's not a big hit given the returns.
I can only assume that Labour thought that the public were upset enough at the Brethren's secret campaign, that if they proposed tightening donation rules the public would accept State funding. The Government obviously didn't grasp the possibility that people would see this proposal as nothing more than a cynical rort to cover the costs of next year's election campaign. They must have assumed that the minor parties would line up at the trough too. But in this climate it just wasn't a runner and I am perplexed that they would think their political enemies weren't going to hammer them on it.
I think most of us would agree with stopping overseas interests from making political donations and we do want transparency of political donors. The National Party are masters at setting up blind trusts to collect big cheques from corporates. How public companies can get away with writing out anonymous donations to paper political trusts is suspicious. Do their auditors know? Do their shareholders know? Do the parties know? Of course they do. Therefore both the companies and the parties are working together to circumvent the rules.
In my years being the bag man for political donations for the Alliance, only twice in 10 years did I receive a genuinely anonymous cheque over $5000. Corporations want a party's leadership to know that they are contributing. Generally, the more business a company does with Government the bigger the cheque. For example, I remember Telecom giving me $25,000 which I recorded in our annual returns. When we filed our return publicly I received a call from a very pissed off senior executive berating me as their cheque was supposed to be recorded as anonymous. Although he admitted that Telecom had made significant larger donations to other parties, none recorded a single donation from Telecom. I'll let you draw your own conclusions as to why Telecom was able to have a telecommunications monopoly for so long.
There are some companies who genuinely make non-partisan donations on a basis that they are contributing to the democratic basis. But they are few. It's also true that businesses tend to send more money to right-wing parties that serve their interests. And that why Labour wants to crack down.
For Labour to win the next election it has to go after secret funding to National. A John Key-led National Party will do well in the boardroom when election donations come up. Passing a law forcing companies to publicise their donations would ensure corporate cheque books stay closed. While it would affect Labour, it would hurt the Nats a lot more. Despite the scaremongering by certain commentators, the unions affiliated to the Labour Party don't give that much. They do declare their donations so transparency requirements won't stop these contributions.
Everyone knows the funding base of political parties is at an all-time low. Labour's proposal is that we recognise this reality and accept that State funding is needed. It's a legitimate proposal, worthy of discussion. For those outraged at the idea of State funding, be aware that the taxpayer already funds all the parliamentary party's election expenses. Who do you think is funding the airfares and chauffeur-driven limos for party leaders and their entourage when they sweep into your area on the election hustings? What about the media people and minders? What about the TV election advertisements? The taxpayer pays for all of this and more.
There does need to be an overhaul of the system, but trying to sneak it through has been a public relations disaster and will reinforce a growing perception of a self-serving Government that is arrogant and out of touch with the public mood.
What they should have done is set up a Royal Commission or public inquiry to make a non-partisan recommendation. Their claim that it would take too long is nonsense. The Government could have set the agenda and the timeline. I'm sure Labour would then have got what it wanted and locked in enough parties to get it through.
Now Labour gets the worst of both worlds. They won't get State funding through and they get bad press for appearing self-serving.
How dumb is that?
