I’ve certainly never heard of a chicken ranch, but plenty of chicken farms.

I think you mean Alaska.

Winston Peters (NZ First leader) is a total alcohol, tobacco, and racing (horse, greyhound, whatever) industry shill. I doubt he exactly needed to be bought, but this is certainly part of his price for being part of the coalition government.

ACT (secular libertarian free market folk) probably mildly supported it, and National (general centre right; largest party) is probably much the same.

The Westminster system is supposed to separate government/crown/state funds from royal/privy purse funds.

The royalty should not have the power to point at something and say ‘I declare that mine’.

It usually goes into the state slush fund like tax revenue, AKA the crown.

In this case, it’s claimed that it was ‘donated to charity’.

In this case, it was being spent on upkeep/repairs/renovations on properties that are rented out, with the rent going to the ‘privy purse’ - the king’s personal funds, not the state’s funds. Spending the money to improve the properties directly increases the rent that can be charged, and offsets upkeep costs that would otherwise come out of the rent.

Money laundering.

Sounds like textbook money laundering/diversion of charity funds to me.

Don’t give the money to the privy purse directly - spend it on upkeep/repairs/renovation of private property that the king can ‘legitimately’ collect rent on.

“Spotify already pays nearly 70% of every dollar it generates from music to the record labels and publishers

Sounds like the issue might be with the record labels…