HONOURS FOR SALE?

Chris Parkin: A longtime supporter of the political right. 

Can the wealthy donate money to politicians to get a knighthood in New Zealand? We associate the idea of “Cash for Honours” with controversies in countries like Britain, where businesspeople were found to have given millions of dollars to political parties in power in exchange for knighthoods and other official titles. But does the same sort of corruption occur in New Zealand? Bryce Edwards takes a look.

TODAY, THE Government has announced its New Year Honours recipients, which includes knighthoods for two major political party donors: Sir Chris Parkin and Sir Rod Drury.

Parkin is a longtime supporter of the political right. For the most recent declaration of donations by the Electoral Commission (for 2024) he is recorded as giving $12,000 to the National Party. In the previous year (2023) he gave $10,000 to Act and $24,500 to the National Party. Between 2011–2016 he also gave $138,988 to National. Donations to individual politicians have included $1,750 to Nicola Willis, $2,000 to Greg O’Connor, $2,000 to Tory Whanau, and $2,500 to Andrew Little.

Drury gave $13,500 to the National Party in 2023, following on from $100,000 to the Act Party in 2022. He has also given money to National MP David MacLeod, New Zealand First’s Shane Jones, as well as $5,000 to the Green Party’s Julie Anne Genter in 2023. In 2025 he donated $10,000 to Queenstown Lakes District Mayor Glyn Lewers for his unsuccessful reelection campaign. Explaining his donations, Drury once said “Donations were made not looking to buy influence, but looking to be heard”, and noted an “expectation that once you’re successful, you contribute to the political system”.

These two examples of donors given major royal honours come on top of three royal honours given to party donors for Kings Birthday earlier in the year.

Sir Brendan Lindsay: The founder of Sistema Plastics, Sir Brendan donated a total of $453,392 to the three coalition parties (National, Act, and NZ First) across 2022, 2023 and 2024 (including a 2024 donation to National of $138,392.78). He does not appear to have made any declarable political donations prior to 2023. In the June 2025 King’s Birthday Honours, he was made a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for “services to business and philanthropy”. No media coverage of his knighthood mentioned his political giving.

Sir Ted Manson: A major Auckland property developer, Sir Ted’s family firm (Mansons TCLM) donated $15,000 to National in 2024, following a $70,000 donation from his son in 2023. Also, on September 26, 2024, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s official diary records a meeting described as “COFFEE: Ted Manson”. Then in the 2025 New Year’s Honours, Ted Manson was made a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for “services to business, philanthropy, and the community”. The sequence of a large donation and a personal meeting with the Prime Minister, followed by a prestigious national honour, creates a perception that the honour was linked to the financial support and the access it granted.

Richard Balcombe-Langridge MNZM donated $10,277.80 to the National Party in 2024, and received a King’s Birthday Honour for services to business in 2025.

These awards to donors were examined in my report published last week, Following The Money in 2025: The Democracy Project Annual Audit of Political Donations in New Zealand.

In this, I explained that these prominent businessmen were awarded knighthoods in 2025 following their families and companies making a combined total of over half a million dollars in donations to the governing parties over the preceding two years. I used this as a case study of the problems of political donations in the last year.

The perception that New Zealand’s highest national honours can be bought is not new. In a 2014 speech in Parliament, then-opposition MP Chris Hipkins listed several prominent National Party donors who had received knighthoods or other honours, directly accusing the government of a “cash-for-honours” system:

“Look, for example, at the number of National Party donors who have been given honours under this Government. Tony Astle — 60 grand to the National Party was enough to make him an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit. Chris Parkin gave $66,000 to the National Party, and that made him a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit. Sir Graeme Douglas — twenty-five grand gave him an insignia of the Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit. Sir William Gallagher — $42,000 got him a knighthood. Lady Diana Isaac — $20,000 made her an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit. [Interruption] Oh, there is old “Maestro”, Jonathan Coleman, piping up at the perfect time, of course, because we know that Garth Barfoot gave him $5,000 for his campaign and he got made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in exchange for that.” (Hansard 2014)

The events of 2025 suggest this issue remains a bipartisan concern. The proximity of very large political donations to the receipt of knighthoods has once again brought the integrity of the honours process into question.

This pattern mirrors the United Kingdom’s infamous “Cash-for-Honours” scandal, where large, undeclared loans to the Labour Party were linked to nominations for peerages (BBC News 2007). In that case, while no criminal charges were ultimately laid, the scandal did immense damage to public trust and the credibility of the honours system.

The issue is not whether the recipients are worthy philanthropists, but whether the system is perceived to be one where a very large donation is a prerequisite for consideration. This perception devalues the honour for all recipients and corrodes the principle of merit-based public recognition.

Parkin, Drury, Lindsay and Manson aren’t the only donors on the list who have received honours – they are only the latest to be made knights. Longtime National donor Sir Graeme Harrison (of ANZCO Foods) gave over $100k in recent years and sits on the National Party’s board, exemplifying how major donors often receive establishment recognition.

In the most recent Electoral Commission declarations, Labour also received $20k from retired food-industry entrepreneur Dick Hubbard ONZM. And Act received $10,000 from Sir Peter Vela and $21k from Dame Jenny Gibbs (bringing her total donations to Act to $741,989 to Act since 2014).

More research on the relationship between royal honours and donations is required. But the five examples this year of Sir Chris Parkin, Sir Rod Drury, Sir Brendan Lindsay, Sir Ted Manson, and Richard Balcombe-Langridge MNZM provide reason for scepticism about whether “money talks” when it comes to politicians deciding who to honour.

This article was first published by the Democracy Project. Dr Bryce Edwards is the Director of the Democracy Project.