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Greens mystified by massive donation

Author
Isaac Davison ,
Publish Date
Tue, 16 Aug 2016, 1:50PM
The Green Party has received its largest ever donation, and says it knows nothing about the donor (Getty Images)
The Green Party has received its largest ever donation, and says it knows nothing about the donor (Getty Images)

Greens mystified by massive donation

Author
Isaac Davison ,
Publish Date
Tue, 16 Aug 2016, 1:50PM

The Green Party has received its largest ever donation, and says it knows nothing about the donor.

The party declared a donation of $283,835 last week from the estate of Elizabeth Riddoch.

The party's general manager Sarah Helm said she believed it was the largest one-off donation in the Greens' 25-year history.

Riddoch, from Nelson, was not a party member and did not appear to have any formal connection to the Greens.

"She wasn't particularly known to the party at all - we haven't been able to determine any link," Helm said.

"She must have just been a quiet, latent supporter of ours."

It is also the largest donation to any political party since 2014, when former Conservative Party leader Colin Craig gave $355,000 to his party.

Helm said most of the Green Party's fundraising was based on small, regular payments.

"We do have a quite comprehensive fundraising programme but a large bequest like this is extremely unusual for us.

"We tend to get a lot of small and medium-sized donations from people who perhaps have some disposable income but aren't the very wealthy in society."

Other large donations to the Greens include a one-off payment of $60,000 by Les Mills International chief executive Philip Mills</a> in 2014.

The Greens raised $408,000 last year, of which $237,000 came from its own MPs under the party's tithing system.

That total was more than Labour, who raised just $279,134.

It was however significantly less than the National Party's fundraising, who declared donations of $1.4 million.

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