{"id":478800,"date":"2026-06-15T18:44:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T18:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/478800\/"},"modified":"2026-06-15T18:44:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T18:44:07","slug":"labour-receives-biggest-election-year-donation-so-far-but-trails-govt-parties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/478800\/","title":{"rendered":"Labour receives biggest election year donation so far but trails Govt parties"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was given to Labour by the estate of Murray Jones, an Otago mountain climber who died last December. <\/p>\n

It takes Labour\u2019s total for the year to $401,511. <\/p>\n

But the party is well behind others. <\/p>\n

Act is in front, with $1.35m in declared donations, with its six largest individual donations worth $100,000. <\/p>\n

Among those six donors are Zuru co-founder Nick Mowbray, Van Den Brink Karaka, and GMP Environmental, a subsidiary of Greymouth Petroleum. <\/p>\n

National is in second place, with $727,000 in declared donations. <\/p>\n

National\u2019s largest donors include Stewart Capital Partners Ltd, GMP Environmental Ltd and Michael Sullivan, who all donated $100,000. <\/p>\n

Other donors include Christchurch property developer Williams Corporation, which donated $58,000. <\/p>\n

The firm is co-owned by Matthew Horncastle, who paid $10,000 to share a table with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon<\/a> at a National fundraiser in April. <\/p>\n

New Zealand First is sitting at $500,000 in declared donations. <\/p>\n

The party has pocketed significant cash from people connected to the racing industry, including thoroughbred breeder Sir Peta Vela and Sistema Plastics founders Sir Brendan and Lady Jo Lindsay.<\/p>\n

Vela donated $150,000, while the Lindsays donated $100,000.<\/p>\n

The party also received $100,000 from GMP Environmental, a $25,000 donation from Windsor Park Stud and $25,000 from Shaw\u2019s Wire Ropes. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, on the left, the largest single donor was Philip Mills, director of the Les Mills gym empire. <\/p>\n

Mills has given Labour $100,000 and both the Greens and The Opportunity Party $50,000. <\/p>\n

Labour\u2019s largest donors, other than Mills and Jones\u2019 estate, are Claudia Elliott and Mary O\u2019Brien. <\/p>\n

Elliott, an Auckland lawyer, donated $60,000 in April. <\/p>\n

O\u2019Brien donated $22,333 in January. She died in March aged 93, according to a notice in the Herald. <\/p>\n

The Greens have received $143,000 in major donations this year \u2013 including $50,000 from Nelson businessman Michael Lookman, and the party\u2019s own MP Francisco Hernandez, who donated $43,000. <\/p>\n

The Opportunity Party received $100,000 from tech entrepreneur Brian Cartmell. <\/p>\n

For Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori, their only donation came from party president John Tamihere in February, worth $40,000. <\/p>\n

Ethan Griffiths is a political reporter with Newstalk ZB, based in the Parliamentary Press Gallery. He joined NZME as a print journalist in 2020, previously working as an Open Justice reporter in the Bay of Plenty and Wellington, and as a general reporter in Whanganui.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was given to Labour by the estate of Murray Jones, an Otago mountain climber who died last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4057,6326,3013,26325,33489,5903,528,266,24912,6721,19136,111,43,139,69,2954,7234,75083,14901,58218,17509,6100,1529,3940,55404,379],"class_list":["post-478800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-behind","tag-biggest","tag-but","tag-donation","tag-donations","tag-election","tag-far","tag-government","tag-govt","tag-labour","tag-largest","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-parties","tag-partys","tag-pocketed","tag-receives","tag-single","tag-so","tag-still","tag-three","tag-total","tag-trails","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478800","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=478800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}