Labour’s move for taxpayer funding

Newshub reports:

One major change would be to lower the threshold at which political parties have to disclose the identity of donors from $15,000 to $1500 – to bring it into line with the regime for individual candidates.

This is a stupid comparison. The maximum you can spend on a candidate campaign is $28,200. So the $1,500 donation disclosure threshold is basically 5% of the spending limit.

The maximum a party can spend on a party campaign is $3,229,400. The $15,000 donation disclosure threshold is already just 0.46% of that and the proposed limit would be 0.05% of that.

ACT leader David Seymour says a law change will not solve the problem of politicians trying to game the system.

“If people think it’s a problem that people who break the law are being taken to court, then they don’t understand what it is for a law to not be working,” Seymour says.

“The law is working – that’s why people are being prosecuted… we aren’t talking about changing the laws around murder because people have been charged with it.”

He has accused Labour of seeking to use its “own political advantage so it can replace the system with taxpayer funding”, which he says could also make it harder for parties like his to raise money through donations.

This is absolutely the end game. Labour want an excuse to bring in (greater) taxpayer funding for political parties.