Overview of this research workstream

Donations made to politicians and political parties are a core mechanism for the way that vested interests are able to influence the political process in New Zealand. Therefore, this workstream is the second-largest for The Integrity Institute in terms of our resource utilisation.

Purpose and activity

We are going to produce a landmark series of reports tracing political donations by sector, revealing patterns of influence across time and party lines using New Zealand’s donation records since 1996.

We are establishing a database containing all known political donations that have been made to political parties and election candidates. This database can then be used to produce reports on different types of donations, allowing in-depth investigations to be undertaken about different elements of political donations.

Investigations will be carried out about donations made to politicians and political parties. The investigations are mostly looking at the history of donations from particular sectors of the economy (agriculture, property, etc) to political parties. These reports will make use of our database of donations of registered political parties and to general election candidates. The records for these donations go back as far as 1996.

The reports will detail the history of donations that have come from particular sectors, and investigate the influence that these donations may have had. As well as reports on donations from specific sectors, we will also publish two regular reports on donations – 1) the donations declared annually to the Electoral Commission by political parties, and 2) the donations declared triennially to the Electoral Commission by candidates in general elections.

The reports will include “interactive visualisations” for the website (e.g. sector-by-party matrices or timelines), and will include donor networks or repeated funders across elections, highlighting “power donors”.

Scheduled investigations:

1. Who’s donating to political parties? A report on the 2024 donations to political parties
2. Who’s donating to general election candidates? Triennial report on candidate donations at the 2023 general election
3. Who donates to local government election candidates? A history of donations
4. Donations to Fast Track Approval recipients
5. Political donations from harmful health and lifestyle business: The money given to politicians from gambling, tobacco and alcohol sectors
6. Political donations from the property sector
7. Political donations from agribusiness
8. Political donations from fisheries
9. Political donations from forestry
10. Political donations from energy and extraction businesses
11. Political donations from Banking and financial services
12. Political donations from Tech and Telecommunications
13. Political donations from Supermarkets and retail
14. Political donations from Retirement businesses
15. Political donations from Health businesses

The Lead Researcher on Public Sector Investigations is Bryce Edwards