Surprise – Cunliffe wants Labour to be funded by taxpayers

I’ve said for days that this donation stuff is all about Labour and Greens trying to change the law so taxpayers are forced to fund their political parties (so they no longer will be reliant on members and supporters). This got confirmed today:

David Cunliffe believes it’s time to consider publicly-funded elections. …

The Labour leader says it’s time to have a conversation.

“There’s a trade off to be made between investing more taxpayers funding in the political process to guarantee fairness and democracy on the one hand and making sure that every dollar is well and prudently spent.”

I’m 100% opposed. For a start taxpayer funding political parties does not reduce private donations – look at Australia where they have state funding – and you have unions donate tens of millions of dollars to Labour.

It is healthy for political parties to need members and supporters to raise funds. It’s a good thing that if a party loses say 75% of its members, it loses a lot of its funding.

Most of all it is wrong to force taxpayers to fund political parties whose policies and candidates they may detest.

But you have been warned. If the opposition get into power, beyond doubt they’ll try to legislate for taxpayer funding of political parties.