The National Party’s candidate for New Plymouth in last year's election failed to disclose Auckland property investors had donated large sums of money to back his campaign to win the local seat.
David MacLeod, who successfully won the seat off Labour’s Glen Bennett, received $65,000 in donations from Aucklanders — which he failed to disclose until Monday.
One of these $10,000 donations came from a supermarket owner, Jason Witehira, but most came from property investors or developers, some of whom are worth hundreds of millions and were not residents in the New Plymouth electorate.
The wealthy donors from the Auckland region with significant property interests were Trevor Farmer, Mark Wyborn, Hugh Jones, Gary Lane, Peter Francis, and Colin Reynolds.
In total, MacLeod failed to disclose $178,394 worth of donations when filing his return for the 2023 election. Most, but not all of this money, was donated in large sums during 2022.
The New Plymouth MP only declared $29,268 on his return to the Electoral Commission in February this year, apparently believing he only needed to report donations from 2023.
However, he also under-reported his 2023 donations by $10,059 — or almost 25%.
National picked up on the problem when it was completing its annual consolidation of accounts in May and contacted MacLeod’s electoral office.
Yesterday (Monday), the MP filed a new return with the Electoral Commission declaring total donations of $207,662 and apologising for the previous return — which only showed $29,268.
“This error was inadvertent, and I am extremely disappointed in myself for not spotting it,” he wrote in a letter to the Commission.
“There was no ill intent — I mistakenly thought the return was for 2023 only, and the 2022 donations had already been filed. Clearly, I was incorrect”.
Prime Minister and National Party leader Christopher Luxon has stood MacLeod down from his positions on the Environment and Finance and Expenditure Select Committees. The MP had been chairing the committee hearing a huge number of submissions on the Government's controversial Fast-track Approvals Bill.
No small mistake
Max Rashbrooke, an author and researcher who writes about wealth and democracy, said there needed to be consequences for this type of failure — even if it wasn’t intentional.
“This is a very large amount of money coming from very wealthy Aucklanders and property developers. We can’t have a country where it is okay to fail to disclose that kind of money.”
MacLeod raised at least $65,000 for his New Plymouth campaign from donors who lived hundreds of kilometres away, on the other side of the North Island.
Letting the error go without some kind of punishment would send a message to future candidates that disclosures did not need to be taken seriously, Rashbrooke said.
“It is so important that we know who is funding politicians, that I do not think this is something that can be taken lightly”.
Rashbrooke said $180,000 was a lot of money in the context of an electorate race, where candidates are only allowed to spend $32,000 in advertising during the official period.
The rest of that money had to be spent on advertising prior to the campaign period, or on back-office functions and other non-advertising items.
MacLeod said he believed he was only filing a return for donations made in 2023 but even then he missed a quarter of them. He disclosed $29,268 when he received almost $40,000.
He was in an “extraordinary” position that he could afford to forget about a $10,000 donation, Rashbrooke said.
The law
Candidates are legally required to disclose their total donations and the identities of anyone who has contributed over $1,500. Not doing so is a crime under the Electoral Act.
The seriousness of the offence depends on the intent. If an incorrect return was filed deliberately, that may be a “corrupt practice” and result in a two year prison sentence.
Even filing a late return “without reasonable excuse” can be considered a corrupt practice.
However, if the candidate can prove there was no intention to hide donations and that they took all reasonable steps to ensure an accurate return, then it is just an ‘illegal practice’.
In that case, the candidate could be subject to a fine of up to $40,000.
35 Comments
Yes, there'll still be some 'black market' corruption, but for a few bucks each we could eliminate the 'grey market'. While there will still be some politicians wanting to make an extra buck, at least the parties will be able to function without offering policies to appease rich lister and property developer donors.
Part of that is democracy itself. Different views getting across, it just happens to sit badly for me that some views have more money than others.
My personal preference is for absolute complete transparency on all funds.
Anything (cash, goods, services) must be declared no matter what size or type, and must be tied directly to a registered voter. No corps, no orgs, no trusts, no exceptions.
You didn't read earlier. The primary issue I have is that public funding candidates wont stop "donations".
There are also other issues.
- How comfortable will the public feel about giving cash to "extreme" candidates. I mean what if a neo-nazi ran, or a CCP member?
- Whats to stop candidates gaming the public system? e.g. Parties running candidates in areas just to get funding. Candidates getting funding then withdrawing. Candidates not using funding correctly.
- Administration and eligibility. Do we really need more red tape around elections?
I read earlier. My counter is that it will massively reduce the opportunity for corruption and make an uncovered donation clearly 'wrong' rather than the grey zone we see here. If you are against corruption, then any cost-effective measure to reduce corruption could be seen as a good thing, even if it isn't a perfect, one-hit solution. The phrase 'the perfect is the enemy of the good' springs to mind.
The other concerns are fair - there would have to be some thought into the system. To me, they are all second order problems when compared to the status quo.
Making giving donation it illegal will stop all legal donations.
I am completely comfortable with money going to extreme candidates. Its the price we must pay for democracy.
Of course you need to have rules, no don't need to pay these people lots of money you could provide a free platform for them to discuss their uncensored ideas. Any funding would have to be accounted for. There is no need to give the actual people doing the campaigning money to live, just cover expenses of campaigning.
What I am not comfortable with is system that by its very nature requires the funding of rich people, an the implicit obligations it implies, transparent or not.
In a democracy we should strive as much as possible to give everyone an equal say irrelevant of their wealth, race, sex etc.
Perhaps we should outlaw political parties? Make candidates stand on their personal virtues? Make use of referenda? Instead of having half of parliament unelected, make electorates smaller so voters are closer to their representatives, rather than representatives closer to lobbyists?
The National Party itself uncovered the fault. Likely it was carelessness and overall as inconsequential as Mr Woods of Labour, problem should have been with undeclared shareholdings except that he was slack and too tardy in correcting the problem. The thing is though these are mps and as such one would have hoped would have the organisational skills, accuracy and disciplines to run their office properly. Obviously not, and then how do they go about running anything else.
This just goes to show who funded the National Party Election campaign a bunch of Property Developers.
I wonder why ????
Wake up NZ you are going down the same track that John Key took us down.
What a disaster the killing of the Kiwi dream your own home.
I Know David Macleod well fits well with the National party.
That's because the corruption measures don't count this kind of corruption. It's all about briefcases full of money and under the table bribes, not the above-board political donations that happen in plain sight.
Remember when Michael Wood was done over (rightly) for having a few grand in undeclared shares, and that was considered a conflict of interest while the above-board, declared million dollar property portfolios are absolutely not a conflict of interest? Same deal.
The MP had been chairing the committee hearing a huge number of submissions on the Government's controversial Fast-track Approvals Bill.
Hmm.
So HO had the deposits and was unable to reconcile them with this MPs individual return.
Perhaps the MP himself wasn't directly offered these sums but someone (perhaps an AKL member) forgot to give him the 'memo' about them 'coming his way'?
We welcome your comments below. If you are not already registered, please register to comment.
Remember we welcome robust, respectful and insightful debate. We don't welcome abusive or defamatory comments and will de-register those repeatedly making such comments. Our current comment policy is here.