Democracy Briefing: The NBR Rich List and the political donations of the very wealthy

This is the second part of a series on the 2026 NBR Rich List. Part one, “The $129 billion political class”, looked at the Rich List as a map of power.

---

The NBR Rich List tells us who has accumulated wealth. The donation returns tell us which of those people use some of that wealth politically. Unfortunately, much of this activity passes with very little scrutiny.

Therefore, I’ve cross-referenced the 2026 Rich List against three decades of declared donation records built up by the Democracy Project, which produces a clear and uncomfortable picture. At least 37 individuals and families on this year’s list have a traceable history of political donating. My preliminary results show that together they account for close to $9 million in declared donations to parties and electorate candidates since 1996. And that money flows overwhelmingly in one direction.

Roughly four in every five dollars went to the parties of the right. The current governing bloc of National, Act and New Zealand First has absorbed about $7.2m of the traceable total, against roughly $1.75m for Labour, the Greens, and Te Pāti Māori combined.

National alone has received about $3.7m from these Rich List donors over the period, and Act about $3.1m. For a minor party that rarely cracks double figures in the polls, Act’s haul from the country’s richest is striking, and, for a party built on tax cuts and deregulation, unsurprising.

The big donors

The single largest source in the records is the Gibbs family. Alan Gibbs and Dame Jenny Gibbs between them have given more than $1.4m, almost all of it to Act, in a relationship that stretches back to the party’s founding and continues into the 2025 returns.

After the Gibbs family comes a list that will be familiar to anyone who has followed National and Act fundraising over the last decade: Graeme Hart, Trevor Farmer, Brendan Lindsay, the Mowbrays, the Velas, Mark Wyborn, Chris and Michaela Meehan. This is not a random sample of rich New Zealand. It is a recurring donor class.

Graeme Hart, long one of the country’s richest man, and his holding company Rank Group have put more than $875,000 into Act, National and New Zealand First in the last four years alone.

The investor Trevor Farmer has given around $665,000 across the same three parties. Sir Brendan Lindsay, who built and sold Sistema, has spread more than $550,000 across the coalition. The Mowbrays, the Vela racing and fishing family, the property developer Mark Wyborn, and the Winton founders Chris and Michaela Meehan all appear repeatedly.

The rest of this column is for paid subscribers. That support makes this research possible — including the database work behind the charts and the cross-checking of Rich List names against three decades of donation returns. A paid sub will get you access to the second half, including the following sections: “Backing the whole stable”, “The other side of the ledger”, “Rising fast”, “What the donors say”, “What stays hidden”, and “A question of transparency”.