{"id":416081,"date":"2026-05-07T10:43:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T10:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/416081\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T10:43:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T10:43:09","slug":"political-donations-national-reports-more-than-6-million-act-overtakes-labour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/416081\/","title":{"rendered":"Political donations: National reports more than $6 million, Act overtakes Labour"},"content":{"rendered":"

The largest donor to National was the late Nelson philanthropist John Wares, who died in March last year. Wares gave $210,000 to the party in February 2025.<\/p>\n

The second largest donation came from Brian Cartmell, a Queenstown-based tech entrepreneur, who also made sizeable donations to other parties. Cartmell gave $201,993 to National in 2025.<\/p>\n

\"PrimePrime Minister Christopher Luxon’s National Party received the most donations in 2025. Photo \/ Alyse Wright <\/p>\n

Other big donors include Sistema founder Brendan Lindsay and former Xero boss Sir Rod Drury, who is currently facing allegations of unwanted advances towards women<\/a>, which he has denied.<\/p>\n

Several companies donated smaller amounts to National, including property company Mansons, Crimson Education, Gibbston Valley Wines and Chinese vocational education provider Oriental Wisdom. Several MPs also made donations.<\/p>\n

Labour <\/p>\n

The more than $6m in donations reported by the National Party dwarfs the $2,403,241 reported by Labour. Two of the larger donations to Labour were from or connected to Phillip Mills<\/a>, managing director of the Les Mills gym franchise and a regular political donor.<\/p>\n

The top donor, the Mills Family Trust, for which Phillip Mills is the trustee, donated $125,000. Mills himself donated another $38,200.<\/p>\n

Renowned artist Dick Frizzell<\/a> donated almost $20,000 and former Prime Minister Helen Clark is listed as donating just under $11,000.<\/p>\n

\"CelebratedCelebrated artist Dick Frizzell was a donor to Labour in 2025. Photo \/ Dean Purcell.<\/p>\n

Labour Party MPs also donated tens of thousands. Peeni Henare, who has since retired from politics, donated just under $14,000 and party leader Chris Hipkins gave just under $13,000.<\/p>\n

NZ First, Greens, TPM <\/p>\n

The Green Party reported $1,848,678 in donations, including $100,000 from Nelson businessman Michael Lookman and $50,000 from the Les Mills managing director.<\/p>\n

Green MPs donated tens of thousands to their party.<\/p>\n

New Zealand First reported $1,360,272 in donations for 2025. Cartmell topped the list with a $205,000 donation. Dorothy Jones, the partner of minister Shane Jones and a party board member, donated $131,318.<\/p>\n

The Opportunities Party received $179,401 in donations, more than double the amount it reported in 2024. Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori reported $141,986 in donations, including $60,000 from party president John Tamihere.<\/p>\n

Broadcasting allocations<\/p>\n

Earlier today, the Electoral Commission also announced the funding allocations for each political party to broadcast election advertising and programmes.<\/p>\n

The election will take place on November 7.<\/p>\n

Parliament determines these amounts each year based on several factors including how many people voted for the party in the last election, the number of MPs the party has and indications of public support such as via political polls.<\/p>\n

The amount available to distribute across the parties was $4,145,750.<\/p>\n

Julia Gabel is a Wellington-based political reporter. She joined the Herald in 2020 and has most recently focused on data journalism. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The largest donor to National was the late Nelson philanthropist John Wares, who died in March last year.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99429,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2325,4619,15408,33489,6721,685,1132,130,3556,111,43,139,69,47245,4762,18154,19764,766,131,379],"class_list":["post-416081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-2325","tag-act","tag-almost","tag-donations","tag-labour","tag-last","tag-million","tag-more","tag-national","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-overtakes","tag-party","tag-political","tag-received","tag-reports","tag-than","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}