This piece by Jonathan Milne for Newsroom provides a perfect example of fossil fuel money polluting our democracy in plain sight.
It’s no exaggeration to say ASX-listed mining firm Bathurst Resources bought the West Coast election campaign.
In new disclosures published by the Electoral Commission: ASX-listed mining firm Bathurst Resources donated $32,600 to 29-year-old independent Patrick Phelps to fully fund his campaign for more mining on the West Coast.
Candidate spending limits were $32,600 at last year’s election. So Bathurst, unhappy with a Labour policy banning more mining of conservation land, funded Phelps’ entire campaign – every last dollar. It gave him a far bigger war chest than the more established candidates.
If you’re wondering what Phelps’ connection is to Bathurst, he is “manager of Minerals West Coast Trust, a Hokitika-based industry association funded by mining companies to the tune of $220,000 last year, and chaired by Bathurst’s Richard Tacon.”
Phelps didn’t win the seat, but he acted as a spoiler, drawing enough votes away from Labour’s Damien O’Connor that National’s Maureen Pugh won the seat.
Richard Tacon says the company’s man was never going to win – but he did pull enough votes away from O’Connor to hand the West Coast-Tasman seat to National’s Maureen Pugh.
If that wasn’t bad enough, at a stop-work meeting, 300 miners were told to vote for Phelps.
The “stop work meeting” at Stockton was called by mine boss Ian Harvey. Workers were told to cast their votes for Phelps – because O’Connor and Pugh would get in regardless, on the party list.
Usually fossil fuel interests are slightly more subtle in their attempts to subvert democracy to aid their business goals. In this case we can see their actions in plain sight, and it appears that no electoral laws were broken.
Read the whole piece by Jonathan Milne for Newsroom