The Political corruption report that politicians need to read
Turkeys wouldn’t vote for an early Christmas, and politicians won’t take seriously a new report on political corruption in New Zealand. That’s because the report released yesterday by the Helen Clark Foundation is highly critical about the integrity of New Zealand’s political process, and advocates recommendations for reform that would disrupt the status quo.
The report is written by researcher Philippa Yasbek, who was commissioned by the Helen Clark Foundation, also known as Mahi a Rongo. This think tank was set up by the former Labour Prime Minister to foster public debate about some of society’s most serious problems. And this report continues that agenda, summing up the integrity problems of the current political system but also putting forward 26 recommendations to fix things.
The recommendations are about lobbying, political donations, the reform of the Official Information Act, bribes given by New Zealand companies operating offshore, and legal trusts used to hide the identities of business interests. Overall, the report “Shining a Light: Improving Transparency in New Zealand’s Political and Governance Systems”, is an excellent overview of the problems of corruption and vested interests in New Zealand.
The Helen Clark Foundation report should be compulsory reading for New Zealand politicians
I gave interviews yesterday about the new report to RNZ and Newstalk ZB. I argued that the public and those interested in improving New Zealand’s democracy will now need to pressure politicians to take this report seriously and debate its 26 recommendations. Ideally, all parliamentarians should be forced to read the report and state their stances on all its recommendations.
Not all recommendations are ready to be implemented – they’re a mixture of differing ideas and are primarily the subjective ideas of just one person, fitting the framework of one particular think tank. Therefore, the report has biases and flaws – all of which should be openly debated. And the report doesn’t have all the answers. Yet it’s an ideal starting point for working out the way forward on fixing what is increasingly seen by the public as a rotten system.
Politicians themselves will have plenty of reasons to dismiss this report. One will be the observation that the report doesn’t say anything new or that it provides no original evidence or research. While this is true, the point of this report is that it expertly builds on other people’s research, bringing together the arguments and lessons found elsewhere into one short and easy-to-digest read. In fact, it’s referred to in the document as “an article”, as indeed it’s relatively short and to the point.
The real reason that politicians will want to avoid debates on this report is that it draws attention to some inconvenient truths about New Zealand’s democratic deficits, and it contains some remedies that would circumvent what a lot of political actors are currently allowed to do. The list of recommendations is basically a manifesto to better regulate politicians and those they work with, such as corporate lobbyists and donors.
A Moderate report that does its best to appeal to politicians
Given their self-interest, politicians will, therefore hate this report. That’s not because the author and the Helen Clark Foundation are trying to be unkind to politicians – it’s because the nature of regulating politics and pointing out the ill effects of the current lack of regulations inherently involves going against the self-interest of the people who are used to having things their own way. The topic of political corruption and vested interests is an intrinsically fraught one that usually involves pointing out the wrongdoing or unethical behaviour of politicians, officials, businesspeople, and other influential individuals.
Recognising this problem, the Helen Clark Foundation has bent over backwards to try to produce a report that won’t cause too much offence. One technique it has used is to entirely shy away from naming anyone who has done wrong.
Therefore, there’s no mention of Kris Faafoi going almost straight from the Beehive to lobbying or the fact that four of the last five chiefs of staff for the Labour Government were lobbyists. Nor are incidents like National’s Saudi Sheep scandal discussed. There’s no mention of NZ First’s donation court case, etc. Or recent allegations about Te Pati Māori or even National MP David MacLeod being investigated by Police for failing to disclose $178,000 in donations. And wealthy individuals who have given donations, seeking influence, are not named.
While this lack of personalities or scandals makes the report somewhat vanilla, or even dry and dull, the Foundation obviously believes that by making it like this, there’s a greater chance that the politicians from various parties won’t baulk at a report calling them all out.
A second technique used to reduce offence in the report has been to involve some of the more respectable Wellington political insiders in producing the report. Hence the report acknowledges the involvement of PR lobbyists like Tracey Bridges, and the involvement of the anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International New Zealand.
The next technique the Helen Clark Foundation has used is to bring in former National Cabinet Minister Christopher Finlayson to write the Forward to the report. And Finlayson, who was also the Attorney-General in the last National-led Government, does an excellent job of showing that there’s a real problem.
He writes in the forward that “corruption is an insidious cancer” and that he worries that the protections against it, such as the Official Information Act, are only paid “lip service” by governments. He also focuses on the problems of the “revolving door” in which New Zealand politicians and public servants are legally allowed to take their insider information and conflicts of interest into lobbying for the private sector. Finlayson went on Newstalk ZB yesterday, saying, “The idea that you finish up in Parliament on Friday and start lobbying on Monday is unacceptable, and I think most people would acknowledge that.”
The problem of working too closely with those in power
For those who want to “fix politics”, there’s always the dilemma of how much to work pragmatically from within the system and how much to throw stones from the outside. Both techniques have a role to play and can even be complimentary – in a “good cop; bad copy” fashion.
The Helen Clark Foundation report tries to work pragmatically with those in power. That is both a strength and a weakness of the report. And, of course, given that the patron of the Foundation is a former prime minister, it would be surprising if they took any other route. And it should be noted the report is funded by New Zealand-born billionaire businessman Richard Chandler, via his US-based Chandler Foundation. Hence, this report was never going to be too bold or radical in its approach.
While there are always good arguments in favour of working pragmatically with those in power to fix the system, sometimes the compromises of principle involved dilute the reform programme and often end up doing more harm than good for the reform agenda.
For example, Transparency International NZ, which former National Cabinet Minister Anne Tolley chairs, has taken a similar approach of trying to work within the Wellington political class to find ways to reform the integrity problems. And it came into trouble last year when RNZ’s Guyon Espiner exposed the way the organisation was secretly working with Wellington lobbyists to help come up with a voluntary code of conduct for those in the lobbying industry.
Therefore, caution must be taken against any such political reform efforts being too cosy. The problems of “chumocracy” and “cosyism” often derail attempts to fix problems in politics. The good work becomes co-opted and watered-down.
In talking about the next steps for dealing with the Helen Clark Foundation report, Chris Finlayson said the following on Newstalk ZB yesterday: “What I would like to see is the two big parties having a good look at it, recognising that it’s not ‘party-political’, and seeing if there are ways in which they can agree, for example, on improving the Official Information Act. I don’t think it’s beyond the wit of the two big parties to reach some kinds of consensus on some of these issues.”
This is an admirable recommendation. But the first problem, of course, is that the politicians in power will want to avoid dealing with this report from the outset. It makes excellent recommendations like bringing Parliament under the control of the Official Information Act, tightening up the conflict of interest policies in the Cabinet Manual, and stopping politicians from going into lucrative lobbying careers – all of which will go down like a cup of cold sick with just about every MP.
The second problem is if parties like Labour and National did take up Finlayson’s advice to get together to work out a deal between them to implement some of this, they would be likely to do so in a way that works only for the major parties and keeps the most necessary recommendations off the agenda. The problem with the status quo at the moment is that the rules have been drawn up mainly in a cosy consensus behind the scenes without real debate. Where necessary, politicians band together in cartel-like behaviour to make sure that political reforms are only done in a way that suits themselves.
Instead, what is needed is for the opposite to happen – we need the public to be engaged in this debate about fixing democracy. So, yes, politicians need to be pressured to read this latest report and clarify where they stand on the various recommendations. But if we leave it to them, they will do their best to subvert the reform agenda.
Will this report sink without a trace?
For those concerned about making sure our political system properly translates the will of the people into laws and public policy, there’s plenty to celebrate about the Helen Clark Foundation report. In particular, it does a great job of highlighting that perhaps the most “insidious” risk for political corruption in the New Zealand political system is corporate lobbying. While there’s traditionally been much more focus on political donations, there is now a growing awareness that lobbying is the biggest risk to democracy and the area in which New Zealand has the least regulation or even focus from the media or researchers.
Now, the rest of the media and political activists need to do more to get corruption issues and this report taken more seriously. So far, some news outlets haven’t picked up on the report – it’s mainly been TVNZ, RNZ, Newstalk, and the Herald that have reported on it.
One of the best responses to it so far has been the cartoon in the Herald today by Guy Body, which depicts New Zealand as a rotting apple with two worms eating it up. The first worm, a “lobbyist”, says: “We’re not a corrupt country – A donation isn’t a bribe!” And the second worm, a wealthy donor, says: “Precisely – it’s an investment!”
While this cartoon isn’t quite in line with the more politician-friendly Helen Clark Foundation, as it doesn’t pull its punches, it’s a valuable addition to debate on the new report. We now need others to continue the campaign for reform.
If not, the most likely outcome from the publication of the Helen Clark Foundation report is that it will soon be forgotten about. The author, Philippa Yasbek, has done a great job selling the report in the media. But without others to keep pushing forward its recommendations, those in power will too easily let it languish.
Dr Bryce Edwards
Political Analyst in Residence, Director of the Democracy Project, School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington
Key Sources
1News: NZ's political lobbying, donations rules need tightening - think tank
Derek Cheng (Herald): Political corruption, donations and lobbying in New Zealand: New report from the Helen Clark Foundation on rules in need of overhaul (paywalled)
Helen Clark Foundation: Helen Clark Foundation Calls For Tougher Rules Against Corruption, As Public Unease Grows
Newstalk ZB: New Helen Clark Foundation report calls for political overhaul to reduce corruption
RNZ: Tougher rules needed to combat risk of political corruption - Helen Clark Foundation
Philippa Yasbek (Helen Clark Foundation): Shining a Light: Improving transparency in New Zealand's political and governance systems
Thanks for an excellent summation and Guy Body does amazing work too.
I will also highlight the multi-year Independent Electoral Review report, which was delivered in January 2024, with its major recommendations promptly buried by the National-ACT-NZ First government.
Their report included reforms around donations, transparency of donations and attempts to remove large money from influencing our elections.
The review was instigated by Jacinda Adern and involved a number of relevant experts.
Agree with you that improvement needs to be made in terms of transparency and regulation around lobbying interests in particular. It is tempting to try to put New Zealand into more of an international context, where the scale of what might be viewed as "corruption" here vs. elsewhere is relatively minor. But it is a slippery slope over what is permitted and acceptable practice; when money and influence are involved things can get "dirty" pretty fast. Will be very interested to see the outcome of ongoing investigations into TPM and Manurewa Marae. If those incidents had involved ACT, NZ First, National, or even Labour, can only imagine the cartoon production!