Call for election fund clarity

A screeshot from the RDRR website.

A call by a Rotorua political bloc to 'invite anonymous” donations has been labelled hypocritical.

A local councillor candidate Kaya Sparke and likely candidate Ryan Gray say anonymity opened the door for dodgy deals.

They were concerned that the Rotorua Districts Residents and Ratepayers group says on a recent Facebook entry they 'invite anonymous donations to restore open and democratic debate and decision making in the public interest”.

The post was authored by mayoral candidate Reynold Macpherson, nominated again by his group to unseat what the group terms 'the mayor's power bloc”.

Sparke and Gray say in a statement they are concerned that RDRR is offering details on how to manage donations if the donor seeks anonymity.

The RDRR provide their bank account details, and instruct the person making a donation to place the words 'Anon Donate” in the description field, but 'omit your name”, the pair say.

But 'anonymity leaves room for dodgy deals”, says Sparke.

'And means representatives could not be held accountable for potential biased decision making.”

Gray says this showed a 'huge” hypocrisy.

'The RDRR have often accused the [Rotorua Lakes] council of a lack of transparency, so it is rather ironic to see themselves show a distinct lack of transparency by inviting anonymous donations to fund their campaign.”

He called the RDRR plea 'sneaky and dishonest”.

Sparke and Gray say they accept that fundraising for campaigning is a standard part of any election, and encourage anyone wanting to financially back a candidate to do so.

'The only way for the public to be sure that there is no undue influence from cash donations is for all donations to be made public.”

Reynold Macpherson says Ryan Gray 'is disingenuous in criticising the RDRR's open crowd funding strategy while failing to disclose his own known affiliation with the current Mayor's power bloc, acknowledge her heavy reliance on donations from one interest group, and her payback projects, such as the Lakefront Redevelopment.

"He is deceitful in portraying RDRR's transparent invitation to voters at its Facebook page, to help crowd fund their campaign, as either inconsistent with the law or as immoral.

'It's neither. Crowd funding attracts many small donations.

'It's a democratic antidote to dodgy 'big money' donations that Gray somehow overlooks.

'His twisted claim of hypocrisy is as fatuous as his illogical projections, rendering his candidature inappropriate.”

Gray says "while Dr Macpherson is happy to revert to his modus operandi of trying [to] change tack by attacking, using false information, there is nothing 'open' about his method of hiding who is giving cash to his campaign.

'The question residents and ratepayers will be asking is if Dr Macpherson has nothing to hide, then why won't he be 100 per cent transparent with his donations?”

Ryan Gray and Kaya Sparke use Dr Simon Chapple, director of the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies in the School of Government at Victoria University of Wellington, as arguing in a Newsroom story about Electoral Law reform that 'it seems appropriate that total values and numbers of named and anonymous donations under $1500 for local and national level candidates should also be publicly disclosed”.

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