New Zealand has rules about who can give money to political parties and what the public gets to know about it. The rules are not all the same — some donations get reported straight away, some get reported once a year, and some stay hidden.

When donations have to be reported quickly

During an election year, if a single person or company gives more than $20,000 to a party, that party has to tell the Electoral Commission within 20 working days. The Electoral Commission then publishes that information on a public register so anyone can look it up.

Smaller donations — anything under $20,000 — don't have to be reported that quickly. Instead, parties report them once a year, in a summary. The Electoral Commission publishes those yearly totals so you can see how much money each party received across the calendar year.

The anonymous donation loophole

There is a legal way for people to give money to a party without the party — or the public — knowing who they are. If someone gives more than $1,500, they can funnel it through an intermediary, and the party doesn't have to ask who the real donor is or report it. The Electoral Commission publishes quarterly reports showing how much money went to each party this way, but not who gave it.

The idea behind this rule is to protect people's privacy. The downside is that if you want to know where a party actually gets its money from, this hidden funding creates a gap in the picture. The Commission can tell you the totals went up; it cannot tell you who wrote the cheques.

Foreign money gets tighter rules

Money from overseas is treated differently. Any donation from someone living outside New Zealand or a foreign company, no matter the size, has to be disclosed if it is more than $50. That is a much tighter threshold than the rules for domestic donors. The law assumes foreign funding of New Zealand politics needs closer watch.

Parties have to work out who counts as an overseas person — whether that is someone not living here or a company based overseas — and they have to either send that money back or report it to the Electoral Commission.

What you can actually see

The Electoral Commission keeps three different records. There is the live register of big donations over $20,000 (updated every 20 working days during an election year). There are the yearly summaries of all donations and loans. And there are the quarterly reports of anonymous donations.

Each one comes out at a different time and shows different levels of detail. If you are tracking the 2026 election, the live register is the one that moves in real time — you can see large gifts as they arrive. The yearly summaries and quarterly reports give you more of the full story, but they come later, which makes them less useful if you want to know what is happening right now.

The current rules are the result of trying to balance two things at once: letting the public see large donations, letting donors stay private for smaller gifts, and taking a hard line on foreign money. Whether that balance still makes sense if donation amounts keep growing is something electoral law specialists will probably revisit — but these are the rules parties are working with today.