Bryce Edwards: Court ruling shows big political donations can be given secretly

New Zealand’s rules to regulate money in politics can now officially be declared broken. Although, in theory, political parties are required to publicly declare any large donations, we now know that in practice they sometimes don’t, and the enforcement and legal consequences can be extremely weak.

We know this because this month the Court of Appeal overturned the convictions of the political donors who were on trial last year for channelling large undisclosed donations to the National and Labour parties.