I have noticed that commenters seem to be buying the Media Party spin over NZ First’s donation that it all looks a bit dodgy. It is understandable because that is the narrative the Media Party want you to buy as they shill and drip feed dodgy donations stories.
National supporters are busily playing into their hands, following the lead of their master strategist Paula Bennett, while studiously ignoring the dodgy donations for their own party. I don’t blame you for following the lead of National’s leadership and the insinuations of the Media Party.
But it is actually all a trap, one Paula Bennett clearly hasn’t seen, but a trap nonetheless.
The trap is that we will shortly see a massive push by the Media Party, Labour and the Greens to bring in state funding of political parties. They are softening you all up, and you are buying their spin.
The Greens are already very vocal as their own source of donations is a few bewildered people bequeathing to the party from their wills, a couple of tree-hugging multi-millionaires and money they get from taxing their MPs. They desperately need another source of funding and like all good socialists they’d really like to pick other people’s pockets.
Labour too wants state funding of political parties. I once spoke to former Labour Party president, Mike Williams, and he was and likely still is a fan of state funding of political parties. He was a brilliant fundraiser but he told me that he hated it. Another former Labour Party president, Bob Harvey, used to lobby my father, when he was president of National, to embrace state funding of political parties. They too loathe having to fundraise. Again, like the good little socialists they are, they prefer using other people’s money.
So, it’s a trap, one that, sadly, National is falling for.
I believe that all donations should be like votes, secret. If we have a totally transparent donations regime then how long would it be before your private votes in the polling booth are then made more transparent?
We have seen, from the behaviour of the Media Party in recent weeks, that they take great delight in exposing the names of donors. This should, to all of us, be sending a cold shiver down our spines. This is simply an extension of the ‘cancel culture’ that the left-wing enjoys deploying. They are shaming people away from donating. It is quite insidious, but it is their preferred tactic. Nicky Hager and his enablers and supporters in the Media Party did it to me. They used information that was stolen, to cost people their jobs and their anonymity, wreck their careers and hound them in media, all for the terrible crime of knowing or supporting me. That cancel culture is now being applied to shame party donors. It was wrong when they did it to me and it is wrong they are doing it now.
If we accept that what Radio NZ, Guyon Espiner and Matt Shand are doing is fine because it is only NZ First, then don’t be surprised when they start coming for National party donors. They are intent on de-powering conservative voices and the best way to do that is to make people afraid to be recognised as supporters, financially or otherwise, of those conservative voices.
Perhaps we need some additional rules around donations, like those in Fiji. Only natural persons who are citizens can donate to political parties. That also should extend to membership, only for natural persons. That would eliminate corporate or union affiliate memberships and donations. It would be more democratic too, especially in the case of the Labour party.
In any case we should resist calls for state funding of political parties. Democracy is a contest of ideas and the best way to measure that contest is two-fold, by looking at how much people “invest” in political parties and those ideas they espouse, and votes.
There is zero evidence that big money buys elections in this country and scant evidence from other countries. If money could buy results then the Act party would have 20 MPs and Colin Craig would be in parliament. The fact that neither case is true shows big money has almost no impact. In the USA in 2016 Hillary Clinton had the most donations, eclipsing the donations that Donald Trump received. Hillary Clinton is sitting in her adult pull-ups and fulminating how it was meant to be. Michael Bloomberg is spending squillions but a millionaire socialist with a dodgy ticker is kicking him in the proverbial. Money doesn’t win you elections.
As I said at the start of this article, the so-called scandals that aren’t, are designed to manipulate you into accepting state funding for political parties. Do you really want your tax dollars being used to fund the whackos in the Green party? I don’t. It’s a trap, don’t fall for it.
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