Donations don’t follow policy. Policy follows donations.
- Grant McLachlan - Column
- 7 hours ago
- 5 min read
Stuff’s Glenn McConnell asked New Zealand’s biggest political donors why they give. He should have asked what they got.
In “Big spenders reveal why they give tens of thousands to political parties”, Stuff political reporter Glenn McConnell did the right kind of legwork — contacting every donor over $20,000 — and reached the wrong conclusion.
The headline reports the donors’ stated motives. The subheading “Donations don’t buy influence, donors and politicians say” reports denials as a finding. Both treat what donors say about themselves as the answer.
The better question is what the money correlates with. On that question, the public record is unsparing.
The Greymouth sequence
In 2019, the Malaysian-owned petroleum company Tamarind Taranaki abandoned its Tui oil field off the Taranaki coast. New Zealand taxpayers paid approximately $293 million — from an initial $443 million appropriation — to clean up a field a private company had profited from but refused to close. Labour’s response was the Crown Minerals (Decommissioning and Other Matters) Amendment Act 2021, which made petroleum operators trail liability for their own decommissioning costs. The industry opposed it from the day it passed. Greymouth Petroleum — controlled by NBR Rich Lister Mark Dunphy, who had personally sued Energy Minister Megan Woods in 2018 over the offshore exploration ban — was among its most persistent opponents.
On 5 August 2025, the coalition repealed those trailing liability provisions through the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2025. The same Act changed the statutory purpose of the Crown Minerals Act from “manage” to “promote” extraction and reopened offshore exploration. Labour MP Deborah Russell named the unseen authors of the late-stage amendments in the third reading: “shadowy participants in the oil and gas industry… who much prefer to be able to lobby a minister” than work to a statutory rule.
Six months later, on 19 and 20 February 2026, GMP Environmental Limited — a subsidiary of Greymouth Petroleum — donated $100,000 to National, $100,000 to ACT and $100,000 to New Zealand First. Three identical deposits. Two days. Three coalition parties. $300,000 in total. None to Labour or the Greens.
McConnell’s article shows the $300,000 figure in its chart and never mentions Greymouth, the legislation, or the timing.
That is not advocacy. That is a receipt.
The fast-track payback
The Fast-track Approvals Act 2024 — written into the National–NZ First coalition agreement and championed by Resources Minister Shane Jones — places ministerial sign-off above ordinary consenting for 149 listed projects.
RNZ’s investigation found that during 2024, NZ First received $121,680 and National $58,897.25 from donors whose projects were then fast-tracked. Fishing giant Sanford gave $12,000 to NZ First; three of its projects were listed. Sand miner McCallum Bros gave $12,000; its Bream Bay extraction bid was listed. Quarry firm J Swap donated to NZ First, to Shane Jones personally, and to National’s David MacLeod — who, until he was stood down for non-disclosure, was chairing the very Environment Committee considering the bill. The Auditor-General is still investigating ministerial conflicts of interest under the Act.
McConnell’s article displays Michael Sullivan in its donations chart at $200,000 and never identifies who he is. Sullivan is an Auckland construction and civil engineering businessman. On 20 January 2026, in three transfers made the same day, he donated $100,000 to National, $50,000 to ACT and $50,000 to NZ First. He declined to comment.
The article also omits the Carter Group’s $81,608 to National in 2025 — a company with three Fast-Track applications totalling more than 5,000 housing units and a 55-hectare industrial development, led by the brother of a former National Cabinet Minister and Speaker.
What McConnell didn’t ask
McConnell asked the donors to explain themselves.
They obliged.
Mowbray said his $200,000 to ACT was about “less bureaucracy” and that since Zuru does less than 1% of business here he can’t benefit. Seymour said donations reflect “people liking what they’re hearing”.
Christopher Luxon, asked the day after dining with property mogul Bill Horncastle’s son at a National fundraiser, could not remember his name.
Each denial was reported. None was tested.
The two-direction pattern is the giveaway.
Sometimes the donation precedes the policy:
Sullivan’s same-day three-way deposit a year out from a Fast-Track-friendly election;
J Swap to Jones before the QEII-covenanted land bid;
donations made in expectation of consenting decisions yet to come.
Sometimes the donation follows the policy:
Greymouth’s $300,000 arriving six months after its trailing-liability problem was legislated away.
Both shapes are the same animal — the first is a down-payment, the second is a receipt — and neither is what McConnell’s donors said they were doing.
The chorus and the conflict
There is a second giveaway: how those denials read on the page.
Mowbray’s quote ran “less bureaucracy… an economy freed up to grow, innovate and compete globally” — a corporate mission statement, not a conversation. Seymour’s was a campaign line.
Mills warned about “cronyism” while donating to the parties he prefers.
These do not read like spontaneous answers. They read like lines workshopped in consultation with party press staff.
McConnell tells readers, openly, that he wrote to every $20,000-plus donor “via emails and the postal system” — a slow, telegraphed process.
Word travels.
The donors who replied sang in chorus. The donors who did not want to coordinate — Cartmell, the Lindsays — simply declined to reply.
There is a third layer the piece does not disclose. Stuff is, with NZME, one of New Zealand’s two dominant online property-listings platforms — a revenue stream that depends on the goodwill of real estate agencies and developers.
Bryce Edwards’ Democracy Project profile of Barfoot & Thompson records the Barfoot family’s long pattern of donating to National, including Garth Barfoot’s regular five-figure cheques going back years. The same outlet that frames him as a sweet 90-year-old marathon runner depends commercially on his industry. That conflict is not flagged in the piece. It should have been.
When policy and money move in lockstep — when trailing liability is repealed and $300,000 lands in coalition accounts six months later, when Fast-Track applicants account for six-figure donations to the parties controlling the panels, when a developer’s three deposits hit three coalition parties on the same morning — the journalist’s job is not to print rehearsed denials under a headline that says donations don’t buy influence.
That is more than a missed opportunity. It is a signal.
The donor class reads pieces like this and learns what it needs to learn: that the press will accept the press-release answers, that structural conflicts will go unmentioned, that the timing of deposits will be charted but not interrogated.
To a property developer wondering whether a six-figure cheque will attract awkward questions, McConnell's article is a green light. To a party press team drafting the next round of donor talking points, it is a template. The coast is clear, and the invitation has been extended.
It is to publish the timeline.
