What Winston might mean by No

Right now, the media are experiencing something very much like what the average New Zealand First voter must feel, as the party’s conference approaches this weekend. Everyone is searching to find ways to believe party leader Winston Peters.

Since Saturday. Peters has strongly denied allegations his party received money from eccentric political bankroller Owen Glenn; despite the NZ Herald printing excerpted lines from emails suggesting that at the very least Glenn believes he did.

Peters was just as vehement – but perhaps less vituperative – earlier in the year when he answered most questions relating to Glenn’s alleged donation with a large “NO” sign as a prop.

Union leader and former Alliance president Matt McCarten told TV3’s Sunrise program that journalists were asking the wrong questions: that Peters could be believed when he assured them New Zealand First had never received a donation from Glenn.

That still left open the possibility, McCarten suggested, that Peters had a “leader’s fund” operating separately from his party and its accounts.

How does that work? It’s just a different place for money to go that the leader will use for campaigning.

A leader’s fund is nothing particularly sophisticated or technical in itself. It could mean a trust is set up to handle deposits from donors – or cake stalls – or these days it may mean just an additional cheque suffix on a politician’s online banking account. Or it could be handled by a close confidante or employee of the leader, who would probably not hold an official position in the party.

And the existence of “leaders’ funds” is treated as so banal by seasoned political insiders that it’s like the 19th century idea of ether – an invisible substance that’s nonetheless all around us. But in the same way, if it’s existence could be proved to the world at large it would be a sensation.

There could be a number of motivations for establishing such a fund – for either the leader of a party, a high profile politician or an office holder. The primary one would be in order to keep control of finances with the leader, rather than with the party itself.

Tension between party structures and their Parliamentary leaders is hardly unknown. And sometimes parties are at war. Within the Labour party in the 1987 election there was a liberal government intent on deregulating the economy and an old-school left party apparatus. Some government MPs came to see alternative funding structures as a necessity.

In this case, individual MPs keep their own war chests to avoid being held to ransom by unelected officials who lack a mandate from the wider electorate.

The leader can then release funds to the party as he or she sees fit, rather than the other way around.

Because a “leader’s fund” is by definition an “off-balance sheet” asset, such an account could theoretically be used to circumvent election laws in the same way that an anonymous trust could be used to do so. The fund could purchase goods and services for the campaign, or it could purport to supply donations as an aggregate of smaller gifts that did not need to be declared.

So the possible existence of a New Zealand First leader’s fund is one explanation for why Glenn seems sure he donated money to New Zealand First, but why Peters denies it.

New Zealand First’s president Dail Jones was corrected by Peters in February about where some cash – “closer to $100,000 than $10,000” – had come from last year in the party’s accounts.

Jones was elected President as something of an “outsider” candidate – he was not Peters’ choice for the job.

According to its returns filed with the Electoral Commission, in the three years leading up to the 2005 election, New Zealand First received only two donations over $10,000 (both from Contact Energy) totaling $20,000. The party’s spending on its national campaign that year was somewhere north of $400,000.

Peters says his membership (he won’t disclose numbers) gives small and mainly anonymous donations, he says because of suspicions about their political donations being traced by the establishment parties in government.

The question of whether Glenn donated to the party directly (if at all) is not a trivial one. In its 2007 donations returns to the Electoral Commission the party did not disclose any donations over $10,000.

It’s possible that Peters isn’t aware of any donations by Glenn. That’s often regarded as best-practice for Parliamentary leaders dealing with donors. But if a donation over $10,000 was received anonymously, and New Zealand First didn’t disclose that to the Electoral Commission, then it breached the Electoral Act (that act still covers donations disclosures for the 2007 year). That’s an offence punishable by a $100,000 fine.

If a donation was knowingly received by the party from Glenn, or a number of donations were made by openly made by Glenn which during the year totaled over $10,000, then New Zealand First would have had to have disclosed that to the Electoral Commission.

New Zealand First claimed it could not file its donations return while the leader, Peters, was out of the country. Yet the return disclosed no donations over $10,000 – that is, it was empty. That would seem to be a fairly straightforward document to sign off and one that could be accounted for without consultation with Peters.

Moreover, the Parliamentary party leader has no official standing: that’s the secretary’s job, or the president’s. The party, in other words, wasn’t waiting for a signature. The Electoral Commission has not made a decision on New Zealand First’s late return.

It’s a murky position. And the public and media’s best efforts to trust Peters are not helped by his lack of disclosure around the role Tauranga man Tommy Gear plays with New Zealand First.

Gear first came to public notice after Peters dubbed him an “overenthusiastic supporter” when he was found to have erected unauthorized electoral advertisements.

Peters refuses to confirm Gear works for him, but reports say that Parliamentary Services has paid him since 1998.

He was later found to be a member of Peters’ office, although not in the Parliamentary phone directory. He also shares the same address as Peters on the electoral roll.

Peters should not feel afraid to tell all. In the murky political world, we want to believe.