Democracy Briefing: A Property developers’ government?

On 20 January 2026, Auckland construction and civil engineering businessman Michael Grant Sullivan donated $200,000 to New Zealand politics. Rather than backing a single party, he covered the entire coalition: $100,000 to National, $50,000 to Act, and $50,000 to NZ First. All three deposits were made the same day.

Sullivan declined to comment when Interest.co.nz asked why. He didn’t need to explain. The logic is self-evident to anyone who understands what a large property and construction company needs from the state: planning law, consenting decisions, and the speed at which councils process applications.

It captures the current state of New Zealand political finance. This column looks closer at that pattern, following on from Friday’s column introducing a series of pieces about the latest donation disclosures – see: Following the money in 2026.

The dominant bloc

The 2025 annual returns released last week confirm what my previous year’s Following the Money in 2025 audit report established: the property, construction and infrastructure sector is the single most powerful donor bloc in New Zealand politics. Donors with clearly identifiable interests in this sector gave at least $497,000 in declared donations across 2025. Almost all of it went to the Coalition Government. The Opposition parties received negligible contributions from this sector. This imbalance isn’t necessarily because developers are ideological conservatives, but because the parties in power hold the planning levers.

This isn’t new. RNZ’s data journalist Farah Hancock, whose investigative mapping of donor patterns has become the essential public record on this subject, has documented more than $2.5 million from property-sector donors to the coalition parties since 2021. Approximately 97% of all property-sector political money has flowed to National, Act, and NZ First across this period.

What the latest disclosures from the Electoral Commission show is that the developer sector’s political investment is growing in scale and sophistication, not retreating. Four property and construction donors gave $50,000 or more in 2025 alone. The cast list is long — Carter Group, Mansons TCLM, James Speedy, Atlas Concrete, Williams Corporation, Buildcorp, Cook Brothers, 3EYES Construction, dozens of smaller firms making deposits in the $5,000–$15,000 range. The long tail of sub-threshold construction companies donating to National in 2025 is striking in its own right: not a single large developer but an entire industry sector, systematically, year after year.

Why property is different

There’s an important distinction that often gets lost in coverage of political donations. Unlike tech firms or banks, property developers depend overwhelmingly on the state: on zoning, consenting speed, capital gains rules, and foreign-investment settings. In other words, property wealth is not merely shaped by politician decisions. It is created by them.

The economist George Stigler’s 1971 formulation of “regulatory capture” — that “as a rule, regulation is acquired by the industry and is designed and operated primarily for its benefit” — was written with American utilities in mind. The same dynamic applies in New Zealand. The planning system is being rewritten by the same parties whose campaigns are bankrolled by the industries the planning system was designed to constrain.

The cast list

The Carter Group is the most revealing case in the 2025 returns. Christchurch-based Carter Group is one of New Zealand’s most significant property companies. Its major projects include the Crossing retail precinct in the CBD, Avonhead Mall, the Crowne Plaza Queenstown, the IPort business park in Rolleston, plus shareholdings in Williams Corporation, Willis Bond, and construction company Southbase.

In 2025, Carter Group donated $81,608 to the National Party — the largest single declared donation to any party from an identifiable property company in that year’s returns. Philip Carter, who leads the group, also donated $59,500 personally to National in 2023. His brother, incidentally, is Sir David Carter, former National Cabinet Minister and Speaker of the House.

This family has three projects approved for consideration under the Fast-Track Approvals Act 2024: residential developments in Rolleston and Ōhoka (a combined 5,000+ residential units), and a 55-hectare industrial development near Christchurch airport. The Ōhoka project was rejected by Waimakariri District Council; the Carter Group appealed to the Environment Court in September 2025. The fast-track route, if successful, provides a ministerial override outside the standard process.

Mansons TCLM is New Zealand’s largest privately held commercial property and construction company. It has more than 40 buildings, and $5 billion in delivered projects across the Auckland skyline. The company gave $42,026 to National in 2025, nearly tripling its 2024 corporate contribution of $15,000.

When Prime Minister Christopher Luxon opened Mansons’ $650 million Fifty Albert development in October 2024, it was a striking display of how close the government sits to its donors. The company’s commercial model — building large commercial assets and selling them to overseas institutional investors, recently including a Singaporean vehicle backed by Asia-Pacific firm PAG — also means it has direct interest in the coalition’s liberalisation of foreign investment settings for property.

In the 2025 New Year Honours Ted Manson received a knighthood. His son Culum had donated $70,000 personally to National in a previous year. The family’s political relationship with the governing party spans well over a decade. The family also runs a foundation that receives state funding for social housing. Commercial interests and government policy sit very close together here.

James Speedy gave $106,331 to National in 2025. This was the third-largest single gift to the party that year, after a deceased donor’s estate and Brian Cartmell’s extraordinary three-party distributions. Speedy is listed at the Companies Office as a director or shareholder of more than seventy entities across hotel, marina, property and aged-care interests. And he has donated over $100,000 to National before.

The Greenlees brothers, Whakamarama-based kiwifruit and avocado industry figures with property interests through Buildcorp Management, escalated their combined declared giving from $20,000 in 2024 to nearly $258,000 in 2025 across Act and National.

The smaller donors arguably tell the bigger story. Breeze Construction, Cypress Construction, Counties Construction, 3EYES Construction, Atlas Concrete, Cook Brothers, Williams Corporation — the list of construction companies writing $5,000–$36,000 cheques to National and Act in 2025 runs to dozens of firms. None individually changes the fundraising picture. Cumulatively, they constitute an industry sector that has decided that putting money into the governing parties is a sensible business decision.

This pattern doesn’t stop at central government. Newsroom’s reporting last December on Auckland mayor Wayne Brown’s donor list found a near-identical cast of names: Williams Corporation, Southside Group, Van Den Brink, Oyster Capital, Bayleys, Precinct. The same firms that bankroll the parties writing the planning law also bankroll the council leadership delivering the consents.

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