Watch Philippa Yasbek discuss our latest report on Q + A with Jack Tame

Our latest report, Shining a Light: Improving transparency in New Zealand’s political and governance systems was released on Sunday. The report’s author, Philippa Yasbek, was on Q + A with Jack Tame to discuss the report. You can watch the video here.

Our Shining a Light report considers the growing perception of corruption in New Zealand’s political and governance systems in recent years and why this matters.

The research identifies five areas most vulnerable to corrupt practices: the practice of political lobbying; political donations and elections funding; access to official information; foreign bribery; and beneficial ownership of corporate entities.

We make a number of recommendations to make our political systems fairer, some of which have been put forward previously by reputable bodies, but so far current and previous governments have failed to implement them. These include:

• Regulating lobbying
• Limiting donations to political parties and improving disclosure of these donations
• Improving access to official information
• Strengthening laws against foreign bribery
• Establish a registry of beneficial ownership

You can read the report, Shining a Light, here.