As Aotearoa New Zealand heads towards the general election, the money behind our political parties is again in the spotlight.
What that spotlight reveals is limited by gaps in our transparency rules. Even so, disclosed donations show that some parties are receiving substantial funding from wealthy individuals, companies and other organisations. Since January, publicly reported large and protected donations have totalled around $6.5 million.
Money is only part of the picture. Without a mandatory lobbying register, it is extremely difficult for the public to know who is seeking to influence government decisions, on whose behalf, and about what. The lack of transparency around lobbying also makes it difficult to assess the role private influence may have played in decisions such as the failure to progress a register of the beneficial ownership of companies and trusts.
Transparency International New Zealand (TINZ), alongside other civil society organisations, has called for:
- a mandatory, searchable lobbying register, supported by a statutory code of conduct and an independent integrity commission with enforcement powers;
- less reliance on urgency to pass legislation;
- stand-down periods before Ministers and senior political staff can move into lobbying roles;
- stronger management of conflicts of interest among government appointees;
- tighter political donation rules, including near-real-time disclosure, caps on individual donations and the removal of the “donations protected from disclosure” mechanism; and
- public registers of the beneficial ownership and control of companies and trusts.
Some parties are already putting specific proposals before voters.
The Opportunity Party’s Clean-up Politics policy proposes a $30,000 annual cap for each donor, reducing the disclosure threshold to $1,000, and allowing only registered voters—not companies or trusts—to donate. It also proposes a public lobbying register with quarterly reporting, a one-year cooling-off period for former Ministers entering lobbying roles, and a new independent anti-corruption body.
The Green Party has long argued that democracy should work for everyone, not only those with the deepest pockets. Its proposals include an annual donation cap of $35,000, a $1,000 disclosure threshold and a ban on foreign donations. Its 2026 manifesto renews its commitment to making politics work “for people, not big money”.
Silence is also a choice
National, ACT, New Zealand First and Labour have not yet set out political integrity policies for this election.
Voters deserve to know where every party stands. What will each party do to strengthen political integrity, limit undue influence and protect the institutions and processes on which our democracy depends?
TINZ shares public concern about the potentially unequal influence of wealthy donors and well-resourced interest groups compared to ordinary citizens and groups with less resources. We are also concerned about restrictions on public participation in law-making and recent changes that limit opportunities to enrol and vote.
Gaps in political funding transparency
From January to the end of August, around $6.5 million in large and protected donations was reported. ACT and National received close to $2 million each, Labour more than $700,000, and New Zealand First and the Opportunity Party around $500,000 each. The Green Party and Te Pāti Māori received smaller amounts.
Several donors have given more than $100,000, and at least one has donated to more than one party. These large donations are publicly recorded on the Electoral Commission website. However, New Zealand places no overall cap on how much a person or organisation may donate to a political party.
Parties must disclose donations exceeding $20,000 during an election year, but the reporting period has been extended from 10 working days in 2023 to 20 working days in 2026. This creates a risk that voters will not see significant donations made in the final weeks before election day on 7 November.
New Zealand also has an unusual “donations protected from disclosure” scheme. It allows eligible donors to give more than $1,500 through the Electoral Commission without their identities being disclosed to the receiving party or the public. By the end of June, approximately $468,000 had been received through this mechanism in 2026.
The scale of these protected donations suggests that the scheme is being used for considerably more than small donations from privacy-conscious individuals. TINZ believes the mechanism should be removed and an appropriate upper limit placed on individual donations.
There are further transparency delays. Donations below the election-year immediate disclosure threshold generally become visible only through parties’ annual returns. Much of the information about donations received during 2026 will therefore not be available until those returns are filed by 30 April 2027—nearly six months after the election.
New Zealand now lags behind comparable democracies in several important areas of political integrity. The equal value of every vote and a fair opportunity to participate in and influence public policy must be protected. They are central pillars of a healthy democracy.
Every party seeking the public’s vote should tell voters clearly what it will do to strengthen them.
