Democracy Briefing: A Year of declining integrity

It’s been one year since the coalition government of National, Act and New Zealand First was formed. The political commentator Matthew Hooton likes to say that each MMP government is worse than the last, and in terms of ethics and transparency this appears to be true. 2024 was another discouraging year for the integrity of our political system.

Is the Fast Track the Wrong Track?

During the pandemic the Labour government introduced the Covid-19 Recovery (Fast-track Consenting) Act 2020 which would stimulate the economy by rushing a list of “shovel ready” developments across both the public and private sectors past the standard consent processes, bypassing a host of processes and laws. The purpose was to create jobs and kick-start the economy.

When the new government was formed the policy was resurrected by New Zealand First, who won the policy in their coalition negotiation with National. The original proposal was for a trio of three ministers to approve projects: Shane Jones, Chris Bishop and Simeon Brown. This was immediately identified as a potential vector for corruption.

Even natural supporters of the government like the New Zealand Initiative, queried the bill. Senior fellow Nick Clark wrote: “The biggest problem is the opportunity for ‘rent-seeking’ – manipulating the political environment for private benefit. Getting projects on the fast-track list could be incredibly valuable for proponents. While projects should have strong economic benefits, the process heightens the risk of bad outcomes – ranging from misallocation of resources reducing economic efficiency to encouragement of corruption and cronyism. The risks might be small initially but may increase over time”.

And National’s pollster David Farrar noted: “Having Ministers as final decision makers is not a great idea in principle. You might trust the current group of Ministers, but would you have wanted Rob Muldoon in charge of consenting major projects, or Helen Clark?”

The number of New Zealanders who would trust Shane Jones over Helen Clark is possibly not a large one. Jones has been a vocal promoter of the bill, especially its ability to override environmental concerns and laws protecting endangered species.

In June Newsroom revealed that Jones had dinner with mining company executives in February, encouraged them to apply for fast-track consent and then failed to disclose the event in his ministerial diary. Ministers are expected to declare all meetings related to their portfolios. Jones claimed that the dinner was a last-minute affair, but it was subsequently shown to have been pre-organised by his staff. He also claimed that its omission from the diary was a mistake and amended the record.

The bill was altered in select committee to give decision-making powers to an independent committee rather than ministers. 149 projects were included in the Fast Track bill. An investigation by RNZ determined that $500,000 worth of donations to Act, National, New Zealand First and their candidates in 2022 and 2023 were linked to fast-track applications. Chris Bishop explained that political donations were not deemed to be a conflict of interest.

One of the projects was Winton Land’s Sunfield development in South Auckland, which had been denied a streamlined consent process by Kainga Ora. One of the company directors is former National Cabinet Minister and lobbyist Steven Joyce. The chair is a significant donor to the National party. Auditor General John Ryan is currently investigating the conflicts of interest around the Fast Track bill.

Thank you for smoking

In late January Post journalist Andrea Vance reported that one of New Zealand First’s guests at the ministerial signing ceremony at Government House was the Director of External Relations with Phillip Morris International, one of the world’s largest tobacco companies. He was pictured with Shane Jones, who confirmed they’d long been friends, and that they’d discussed tobacco policy.

One of New Zealand First’s newly elected MPs was Casey Costello, a co-founder of rightwing lobby group Hobson’s Pledge, and former chair of the Taxpayer’s Union, an organisation linked to donations from British American Tobacco. When the government was formed Costello became Associate Minister of Health, taking responsibility for government policy on tobacco and smoking.

Shortly after taking office Costello proposed a three-year freeze on CPI tax increases for tobacco products. The policy was not taken up, but a document Costello sent to health officials claiming that the “tobacco industry was on its knees” and arguing that nicotine was as harmful as caffeine raised questions about her links to tobacco companies. Costello denies having any connection to the industry.

In February the Government repealed Labour’s smokefree legislation, designed to gradually reduce the number of habitual tobacco smokers to zero. In July Costello reduced the excise tax on Heated Tobacco Products (ITPs) at a cost of up to $216 million, claiming that this might reduce smoking rates. Ministry of Health officials protested that no evidence existed to support the policy, and that it would overwhelmingly benefit Phillip Morris.

The recently released 2024 Health Annual Survey showed that smoking rates had failed to reduce over the last year: after ten years of consistent declines.

Follow the money

The parties of government are not the only questionable actors in Parliament. Te Pati Māori are at the centre of a number of enquiries around donations, election funding and alleged misuse of data. Many of the allegations revolve around Manurewa Marae, which is closely linked to Te Pati Māori and its president John Tamihere. The CEO of the Marae during the 2023 election was Takutai Moana Natasha Kemp, who is now the Te Pati Māori MP for Tāmaki Makaurau. John Tamihere is chief executive of the Waipareira Trust, a charity delivering social services in Auckland.

This trust is predominantly funded by the state via the Whanau Ora Commissioning Agency, where Tamihere is also the Chief Executive. This year’s Budget allocated it $182m for the next financial year.

The trust has held events promoting Te Pati Māori, and it’s also under investigation after claims it used vaccination drives and census data to harvest private information. There are multiple investigations underway into these claims, conducted by Police, Statistics NZ, the Privacy Commission and the Public Service Commission. In addition, the Electoral Commission has referred Te Pati Māori to the police for its failure to lodge an annual financial statement.

Declining trust in politics

Police will probably choose not to take any action against Te Pati Māori. For many years they have consistently failed to hold politicians to account for breaches of electoral law. In August they decided not to take any action against National MP David MacLeod, who failed to disclose $178,394 in donations.

Transparency also remains an unresolved issue in New Zealand politics. Casey Costello was rebuked by the Chief Ombudsman for failing to adhere to the Official Information Act when Radio New Zealand and a public health researcher at Otago University requested information on tobacco policy.

There are no robust mechanisms for ensuring politicians and officials are obeying the law, and no consequences if they are caught breaking it. When data from the 2023 General Social Studies Survey was released in 2023 it indicated a decline in trust for most of New Zealand’s institutions with Parliament experiencing a significant decline.

There will be many causes for this shift, and many theories attempting to explain it – but perhaps Matthew Hooton’s theory is correct, and the public are merely observing the behaviour of our politicians and judging them accurately.

Dr Bryce Edwards

Political Analyst in Residence, Director of the Democracy Project, Victoria University of Wellington

Note to Media: This analysis can be freely re-published by any media outlets.