We need to clean up the dirty flood of secret money into political parties – Greenpeace

The flood of secret money flowing into political parties shows the urgent need to clean up the electoral finance rules if we are to avoid a US-style system of one-dollar-one-vote, says Greenpeace Aotearoa.

“This flood of secret money into political parties is a systemic threat to our democracy. We need to clean up the electoral finance rules as a matter of urgency,” says Dr Russel Norman, Greenpeace Aotearoa Executive Director.

There has been a surge of ‘anonymous’ donations into political parties, nearly $500,000 so far this year. While the identity of the donors is kept secret from the public, there is no way of knowing if in fact the parties receiving the money know the identities.

“We need to close the loophole that allows these anonymous donations, just as we need to ban corporate donations and put a low cap on individual donations,” says Norman.

“These secret donations could be coming from polluting industries such as agribusiness, the oil industry, the fishing industry seeking to influence the political parties to protect their profits.

“We know already that there has been millions going into the political parties connected to fast track applications.

“The process for reforming campaign finance needs to be led by citizens, not political parties. The last independent review of electoral finance rules recommended removing these anonymous donations but the political parties did not progress these changes.

“We call on all political parties to commit to a citizens assembly led process to review the electoral finance laws and to commit to implementing the recommendations of the citizens assembly.

“As a society we need to make significant changes if we are to address the climate and biodiversity crises, but vested interests are donating to political parties in an effort to protect the status quo. We need to free our political system of the corrupting influence of secret money.”