A new report has warned of “serious storm clouds” on New Zealand’s democratic horizon, calling on the Government to limit voting rights to citizens, crack down on lobbyists and make political parties declare the source of all donations.
The release of the policy brief comes after allegations from former National MP Jami-Lee Ross relating to an alleged $100,000 donation from Chinese businessman Zhang Yikun.
Ross’s claims, currently being investigated by police, have raised concerns about New Zealand’s electoral finance rules and China’s political influence in the country.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has defended New Zealand’s donations transparency, also suggesting the Government had a range of measures to tackle the issue of foreign interference.
However, Dr Simon Chapple, the report’s author and director of the Institute for Governance and Public Policy at Victoria University of Wellington, said while New Zealand had a robust democracy by world standards, there were “serious storm clouds on our democratic horizons” coming from both within the country and the outside world.
Poor representation, rise of identity politics
Chapple said Parliament and the public service did not represent New Zealand society when it came to wealth and socio-economic backgrounds, while voter participation in local and national elections had been declining since World War II.
“Poorer people, welfare beneficiaries, Maori and newer migrant groups are much less likely to enrol to vote and, conditional on enrolling, also less likely to vote.
“Enrolment rates and voting rates are lowest in the poorer areas of the country, and here ethnic gaps are largest, suggesting a socio-economically disadvantaged sub-set of Maori are being left behind other New Zealanders, including middle-class Maori.”
He said the MMP electoral system had led to lower levels of public scrutiny for list MPs, “and a developing notion that at least some of these MPs informally represent an ethnic community rather than New Zealanders as a whole”.
“The move to MMP has coincided with the growth of identity politics, which has a tendency to formalise and reify the fracture lines of identity groups as the basis for political action, rather than to break down group barriers, emphasise a common humanity and seek shared ground.”
High and rising levels of both emigration and immigration had also had an impact, with high levels of “population churn” likely to undermine participation and social connections while possibly changing New Zealand’s political balance.
Chapple was critical of New Zealand’s economic performance, saying 50 years of low productivity growth had not yet been solved despite multiple attempts, with the current “solution du jour” based on “attaching ourselves to the coat-tails of the fast growing Asian economies”.
He said the aggressive pursuit of ties with China, despite its status as an unequal and authoritarian country which had shown a willingness to “weaponise” its economic engagements, carried significant risks.
“A thoughtless, economically driven prioritisation of engagements in this region risks undermining the low corruption nature of our democracy and offering opportunities for rent-seeking by rich vested interests to the detriment of New Zealand democracy.”