Rashbrooke, a senior research fellow in the School of Government at Victoria University, spoke about political donations in a new episode of interest.co.nz's Of Interest podcast as the October 14 election looms. Rashbrooke, and his Victoria University colleague Lisa Marriott, last year published a report on political party funding in NZ called Money for Something. Rashbrooke notes NZ already has state funding for political parties via a broadcasting allowance, and money for parties to run their parliamentary wings. And actually they are incentivised to go out and connect with a huge range of ordinary New Zealanders, which is what we want political parties to do," Rashbrooke says. "So basically through those tax credits the state is subsidising people to give small amounts to political parties, but capping the subsidy at a very low level so the incentive is just for those small donations," says Rashbrooke.

Source: Washington Post September 14, 2023 22:15 UTC