Integrity Briefing: End of week wrap-up
Welcome to The Integrity Institute’s “End of week wrap-up”, providing some further details of what our researchers are doing and thinking about.
We’re still hiring!
As The Integrity Institute expands, we are looking for some talented and passionate people to join our team. As I advertised in last week’s Friday Integrity Briefing end-of-week email, we are currently looking for an Office Manager / Executive Assistant. – see: “The Integrity Institute is growing, and we need an Executive Assistant”.
We are hoping to employ someone with great administrative and organisational skills that can help run things and whip the team (myself included) into shape, aiding us to deliver a big impact. So, if you or someone else you know is Wellington-based and has great administrative experience and an interest in helping change the world, please get in touch. We’ve already received some promising applications, but we want to make sure we get as many as possible before we make a decision. If you’re interested or have anyone in mind, please contact me before Wednesday next week: bryce@theintegrityinstitute.org.nz
Building up a media strategy
We are incredibly ambitious as The Integrity Institute, trying to build our research and advocacy organisation into something with high impact. We’ve been building the foundations of the project, hiring researchers – and will engage more soon – to start new investigations and get our integrity agenda out to the public.
We therefore want to play a close working relationship with as many media outlets as possible. So, we are now reaching out to journalists, broadcasters and media editors to provide content and analysis for their platforms.
We already have a strong audience reach with our online presence and Substack platform – our emails go out to nearly 9000 subscribers, which includes plenty of politicians, public servants, journalists, and political activists. But we want to start sharing our research and analysis to a much wider audience.
As you might have noticed, we are now advertising on our “Integrity Briefing” emails that the analysis contained in these can be published by other media outlets. Sometimes our “Integrity Briefings” and various reports will be too lengthy and detailed, but we are able to repackage these succinctly for newspapers and websites. So, if you’re a media editor, website manager, please get in contact about using our content.
More generally, we are now developing our media strategy. So, as always, I welcome feedback and ideas about how we build The Institute to have a big public and political impact.
Our analysis outputs this week
We’ve published three Integrity Briefings this week on substantive issues:
1) “How the alcohol industry continues to get a seat at the policymaking table” by Dr Melissa-Jade Gregan
2) “Uber’s influence empire in New Zealand – A tax dodger’s political playbook” by myself
3) “Gifts, Graft, and a $12bn defence spend-up” by myself
I’ve also done a few media interviews this week about controversies over spending of Whanau Ora funds. You can watch two of these interviews here:
1) Radio Rhema: “Whānau Ora Under Scrutiny: Is Public Trust at Risk?”
2) The Platform: “Bryce Edwards On Moana Pasifika Whānau Ora Funding”
Integrity-related media articles this week
Some other important integrity-related stories have been published in the media this week:
Kate MacNamara (Herald): Whānau Ora funds probe: Pasifika Futures’ family ties questioned (paywalled)
Matt Nippert (Herald): New Zealand company linked to $113m UK tax money-laundering probe (paywalled)
Jamie Ensor (Herald): Special tax change for fossil fuel companies was proposed ahead of Budget 2025, ministers went for $200m co-investment option (paywalled)
Federico Magrin (The Post): Dodgy motel received $2.9m in emergency housing grants (paywalled)
Cécile Meier (BusinessDesk): Officials urged exclusion of school lunch supplier over billing breaches and safety failings (paywalled)
1News: Uber accused of not paying its fair share of taxes in NZ
Dita De Boni (The Post): Only a breakup will fix this, expert says after Foodstuffs warning (paywalled)
Adam Pearse & Julia Gabel (Herald): Whānau Ora reset: Minister calls for transparency as ‘electioneering’ review progresses
RNZ: Review into Whānau Ora Commissioning funding terms of reference released
Guyon Espiner (RNZ): New 'rules of engagement' with alcohol lobby after alarm at 'way too friendly' interactions
NZ elections declining in integrity?
New Zealand is now ranked 21st in the world for the integrity of its election processes according to the “2025 Global Electoral Integrity Report” released today. New Zealand was previously ranked at 18th. The country’s rating out of 100 is now only 75 (it used to be 77).
Below is a list of rankings of the top 21, and the ratings out of 100. New Zealand’s rating has been dragged down by evaluations of the country’s political donations rules (52 out of 100) and the media’s coverage of politics (54 out of 100).
Previously, Australia was well behind New Zealand in this annual report, but unlike New Zealand, which is declining in integrity, Australia has jumped from a score of 66 to 75 (the same as NZ) on the back of efforts to improve political integrity rules. New Zealand is still (just) ahead of countries such as Panama, Spain, France, and Italy.
The Top 21 countries for electoral integrity:
1. Sweden (89/100)
2. Denmark (87)
3. Canada (86)
4. Iceland (86)
5. Finland (85)
6. Lithuania (85)
7. Germany (84)
8. Netherlands (81)
9. Norway (81)
10. Latvia (81)
11. Costa Rica (81)
12. Switzerland (79)
13. Portugal (79)
14. Ireland (78)
15. Belgium (78)
16. Slovenia (77)
17. Chile (80)
18. Uruguay (79)
19. Cape Verde (77)
20. The Ghana (76)
21. New Zealand (75)
Australian political donations reform
Politics in the state of South Australia became almost donation-free this week. On Tuesday, new legislation banning donations to political parties and MPs came into effect. The Electoral (Accountability and Integrity) Amendment Act was voted in November, introducing radical regulation of money in politics.
The state Labor Government, run by Premier Peter Malinauskas, secured support from the Liberal Party and Greens to ban donations, except those for new parties starting out. The rules also apply strict spending limits and regulate interest groups spending money in campaigns.
According to Malinauskas, “This reform is not in my Government’s immediate political interests. But it is the right thing to do. South Australians rightly expect that their politicians should be focusing on the issues that matter to them, not spending their days chasing dollars.”
Similarly, Dan Cregan, who was “Special Minister of State” when the legislation was voted in, has stated: This reform sets out to end the pervasive impact of political donations in our electoral system and reverse an emerging trust deficit seen worldwide. Decisions taken by members of parliament must always be made in the public interest and a ban will prevent donors from enjoying greater influence or access. It recognises the constitutional guarantee of freedom of political communication and is calibrated to avoid placing an unconstitutional burden on that freedom.”
The state of Tasmania is also reforming its political donation laws – from next year, all donations above the threshold of $1,000 will need to be publicly declared. And at the federal level, election candidates are going to be barred from accepting donations of more than $50,000.
The Integrity Institute will monitor how these Australian attempts to get “money out of politics” works out, and what the lessons might be for New Zealand.
For a very good eight-minute video interview about the latest reforms this week, watch the ABC’s “Political donations banned in South Australia”.
Other ongoing research by The Integrity Institute
Our researchers continue to work on important stories and reports. A lot of the work is on continuing to build up our “NZ Lobbying & Influence Register”, which continues to be useful for our research, but also hopefully for other journalists, academics, and people who want to know who is having major influence on our politics.
We are also carrying out some major research at the moment on political appointments by politicians in New Zealand. We hope to have a report and some articles on cronyism out very soon.
Dr Bryce Edwards
Director of The Integrity Institute
Great stuff - thanks