David Farrar: TOP says do what I say, not what I do

The Opportunistic Party has said their policy is to restrict donations to a political party over an electoral cycle to $30,000.

So far this years they have banked the following donations:

• $180k
• $100k
• $100k
• $50k
• $41k

So big donations are bad – unless it is to them.

Incidentally I am amused that so many NZ politicians want to turn our healthy political funding system into a US style system. The US has caps across the board on how much you can donate to parties and candidates.

What this leads to is a huge influx of donations to lobby groups. As someone who set up a lobby group, I should welcome this policy. It would probably triple our income.

David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders