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To: The House of Representatives

Fix Political Donations

There are three ‘quick fixes’ that would address the worst abuses of our electoral funding system until we can work out a more long term solution.

We ask that the following changes are made to protect our democracy:

All donations over $1500 should be declared and the donors named.

Loopholes that allow fundraising through trusts, dinners, and charity auctions to remain anonymous should be closed.

Donations should be publicly disclosed in real time, to allow greater and immediate scrutiny.

Why is this important?

Recent scandals have once again brought our loose electoral finance laws to light.

The current rules around campaign finance are allowing anonymous donations to hide motives and influences. Our democracy should be transparent and open, we should know who is bankrolling our representatives, and who they are listening to.

In New Zealand there are no limits on the amount anyone can give to a political party (this is uncommon internationally). It’s only if your donation is over $15,000 do you even have to be named.

That has lead to a lot of shifty accounting. Last year it was reported that four out of every five dollars donated to big parties is in secret. That is tens of millions of dollars in anonymous donations funding our politics.

There are three ‘quick fixes’ that would address the worst abuses of our electoral funding system until we can work out a more long term solution.

All donations over $1500 should be declared and the donors named.

Loopholes that allow fundraising through trusts, diners, and charity auctions to remain anonymous should be closed.

Donations should be publicly disclosed in real time, to allow greater and immediate scrutiny.

Introducing those changes would have an immediate impact on the transparency of our political system, allowing much greater scrutiny of who has influence of the politicians elected to represent us.

Why not just make all donations public? There are good reasons some people can’t make their political beliefs public, like family pressure or sensitive employers. But when anonymity is used to hide motives and influence bought through major donations, it becomes a problem. A $1500 threshold would be a balance.

There should be a complete rethink of the way our politics is funded to make sure it’s fitting of the society we want, and there are some exciting ideas of how that would look. But these quick fixes are a first step towards a fairer system.

Updates

2018-10-18 14:22:58 +1300

500 signatures reached

2018-10-17 20:12:09 +1300

100 signatures reached

2018-10-17 18:45:31 +1300

50 signatures reached

2018-10-17 18:19:22 +1300

25 signatures reached

2018-10-17 18:10:27 +1300

10 signatures reached