ODT on the Electoral Finance Bill
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7:39 pm, December 12th, 2007 - 81 comments
Categories: election funding -
Tags: election funding
Here’s an article from the ODT. It’s by Simon Cunliffe, “a senior Otago Daily Times journalist”.
I’m loathe to reprint it in full but the ODT doesn’t provide full online access to articles. Perhaps the best I can do is to encourage you to subscribe to their digital edition if you enjoy the read.
Electoral Finance Bill is the price of undeclared interests
LISTEN up. Suppress that yawn. This week will decide the fate of the Electoral Finance Bill. It comes with serious historical baggage and a radical payload of forward freight.
This is an argument about how elections are financed. But it is also, in the end, a presentation on the nature of our democracy.
There has been much bitterness in the debate. It derives from the baggage. The Left saw developments at the last election that, if allowed to become commonplace, could render it electorally irrelevant. Equally, the Right, elements of which have steadfastly refused to come to terms with MMP, sees next year’s election as its last best chance to unseat Labour and its centre-Left coalition partners as the natural parties of Government.
In 2005, knowing an election was imminent, but with a war chest that exceeded its electioneering allowance, the National Party embarked on an expensive billboard campaign. This was entirely legal, but coming in such close proximity to the three-month election period, it was possible for opponents to construe it as electioneering.
Second, as it was to emerge through Nicky Hager, author of The Hollow Men, National’s new leader Dr Don Brash owed his position — and possibly his allegiances — to the influences of big money, in particular the Act New Zealand Party and the Business Roundtable.
Third, sophisticated offshore techniques were deployed in Dr Brash’s election strategy and campaign.
Fourth, the campaign itself saw the intervention of third party pamphlet advertising, spending up to $1 million attacking the policies of Labour and the Greens.
It added up to a seismic shift in the New Zealand political landscape — irreversible and not especially attractive. The genie was out of the bottle.
For its part, Labour, spent about $800,000 on a pledge card using funds that had been set aside for that purpose in at least two previous elections without reproof, but which was now seen by the Opposition, the Auditor-general and much of the electorate as at best inappropriate. Legal minds were divided but in the court of public opinion Labour and most of the other parties took a hiding.
So much for the baggage.
The forward freight is the recasting of the electoral financing laws. For normally sure-footed Labour, the initial drafting of the new Bill was shoddy. Allowing itself to be blindsided by the Human Rights Commission in its submissions to select committee was uncharacteristic — even accepting this is where a great deal of the shaping and horse trading of democracy routinely occurs.
Outside Parliament, opposition to the Bill has been led by John Boscowen, who discovered the existence of the Human Rights Commission with all the fervour and glee of a true convert. He has made great play of the Commission’s submissions dating back to mid-October, even though many of these have now been addressed. He continues to insist the Bill will severely curtail democracy. If you are an individual, it won’t, unless you plan to spend more than $120,000 on a politically-directed campaign.
As much as we like to imagine that freedom of speech is an absolute, it isn’t. There are several laws that proscribe it. Mr Boscowen’s ideal democracy is one in which money is free to talk whenever, and however loud, it likes. The suggestion there might be times — during election year, for instance — when it should be constrained to a whisper, seems gravely to offend him.
Mr Boscowen is a multi-millionaire. Good on him. He’s been a fund-raiser and office holder for Act. No problem. He is also an associate member of the Business Roundtable. His privilege. And he’s articulate, but possibly a little shy in his appreciation of irony.
He has spent $140,000, and rising, fighting the Bill. That money has bought newspaper and radio advertisements denouncing it, printed placards, marshalled involvement in protest marches, and paid — everybody still comfortable? — for a Canadian call centre to telephone 82,000 Auckland homes to drum up support for the last protest.
So much for the spontaneous outpouring of opposition to this dastardly anti-democratic Government’s election finance Bill. The truth is, Mr Boscowen has bags of money and no hesitation in using any amount of it to try to influence the course of our future democracy.
Some might say he is the perfect illustration of why the new laws, imperfect though they might be, are necessary. And there’s no small irony in that.
UPDATE: It’s come to our attention that the author of this article was formerly employed as a Labour Party press sec. While his opinions are no less valid because of this we are putting it on the record in the interests of disclosure.
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- Chris Hipkins’ apology statement to state and faith-based care survivors
...2 weeks ago
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Kua hinga te manawa kairākau o Te Rua Tekau Ma Waru Tiwhatiwha te po! Kakarauru i te po! Ka rapuhia kei hea koe kua riro! Haere e te Ika a Whiro ki o tini hoa kua ngaro atu ki te Pō ...2 weeks ago
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Ka nui te mihi kia koutou. Ka mihi ki te mana whenua ko Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei. Kia ora and good morning everyone. Thank you Fran and Simon for inviting me here today, and importantly your leadership of this forum over several years now. I want to acknowledge David Gehrenbeck, Deputy ...14 hours ago
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The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.
It can’t be a coincidence that the ODT is NZ’s last privately owned daily. (It still is, isn’t it?)
Not only does Mr. Boscowan attempt to intercede in our democracy, he is shipping jobs offshore while doing it…
And annoying us by getting telemarketers to call us at dinner time, in order to consult us about lies.
Maybe people should call Mr. Boscowan continously from 6-9pm, rattling on about how he is a threat to democracy?
PP – great idea. Got a spare $9,000? No? Neither do I. Great thing this free speech for the rich.
Congratulations on finally finding a journalist that partially supports your warped worldview, base.I guess you didn’t enjoy the other 99% of editorial and journalistic comment trashing the EFB?
From http://www.stuff.co.nz/blogs/politics/2007/12/11/she-said-we-were-too-young/
I wonder why you didn’t highlight this other blog entry which also discussed John Boscawen?
http://www.stuff.co.nz/blogs/politics/2007/12/05/spending-up-large-for-democracy/
Was it because he said unfavourable things like this?
Double
Actually, most newspapers have come out in favour of the legislation. Most of them just thought some of the details needed adjusting.
Shock! horror! An openly left-wing site published an article that supports their position! It’s almost like they’re finding articles they agree with and distributing them to a wider audience. Double Standard, go inform the party. You’re onto a scandal with this one.
just goes to show the intelligence
of the right wing dumb arses
“Most of them just thought some of the details needed adjusting.”
What, more than the 150 amendments that Teh Party put forward?
It must be pretty tiring swimming against the tide of public opinion on this one.
Actually I’m disappointed, why haven’t we mentioned this?
New Roy Morgan New Zealand Government Confidence Indicator at 110 for Mid-November
http://www.roymorgan.com/news/polls/2007/4254/
Lampie – maybe because Rudd gets 144.5 on the same kind of rating?
http://www.roymorgan.com/news/polls/2007/4255/
Double
I was just making the point that not many commentators are arguing against the intent of the bill, simply it’s execution. When the election gets underway in a few months, and no-one gets arrested for holding unlicensed placards but certain right-wing stirrers try to take the issue to court, I suspect public opinion will swing behind Labour. No-one likes monied-up stirrers with an inflated sense of entitlement.
“It can’t be a coincidence that the ODT is NZ’s last privately owned daily. (It still is, isn’t it?)”
indeed, and yes it is.
pisses all over the transnational conglomerate-owned papers.
it even experiments with concepts like ‘balance’.
Yeah, the Herald is starting to look ridiculous. It’s campaign against the EFB seems to have turned into a vendetta against Labour, and tomorrow’s front page isn’t going to assuage those perceptions. If I were their overseas masters I’d start to be getting worried about now. The Herald’s editorial staff are starting to smell like they’re in the grip of some form of mania, and that can only turn off regular readers. (Kiwi’s don’t like continually reading about how much better Aussies are than us.)
i guess if those overseas owners were less concerned about extracting double digit profits from the Herald year after year, and more concerned with maintaining quality to ensure long-term circulation, they would take your advice.
of course issues of journalistic integrity and ethics don’t enter the equation.
$ is $ sprout. I still reckon the drum they’re banging is going to turn people off. People expect news in newspapers, not the same op-ed on the front page for what seems the 17th time.
I figure the ratio has to be
75Z% don’t care
20% are interested, but not THAT much
5% are ACT voters
5% ACT voters? that many?
“I figure the ratio has to be
75Z% don’t care”
The price of apathy is to be ruled by evil [wo]men – Plato
I am locked up in a red round cell 24/7 !!
i’d say your analysis of audience interest is about right gruela.
prisoner burns, i’d say that’d be the right place for you
“The price of apathy is to be ruled by evil [wo]men – Plato”
It’s deja moo all over again. (As in, we’ve heard this bullshit before).
“The price of stupidity is to be ruled by Hollow Men” – Sprout
The price of apathy is to be ruled by evil [wo]men – Plato
sHIPLEY RETURNS?
Ah, The Generals[Bloggers? Politicians?]! they are numerous but not good for much. – Aristophenes
Back on topic:
It’s taken them months, but the penny has finally dropped. Yes, even the NZ Herald has woken up, and worked out what National are up to:
“Surely, when the issues at stake are as profound as who is allowed to spend money and how much they can spend on public issues advocacy in the best part of an election year, National needed to put its own money where its mouth is. To offer the public a concession that, while potentially hampering itself, would also get to the heart of the most basic concern: the secrecy of some donors and advertisers. Where was National’s grand amendment to this ill-conceived and anti-democratic law? It could have proposed a ban on all secret donations, eliminating trust payments like those from its clandestine Waitemata Trust million-dollar donor and making funding upfront and transparent to the public. … But is it too much to ask that even one party put the public ahead of its own interests? Probably.”
(today’s editorial)
the Herald’s owners must be getting the jitters about what their campaign for the rights of the wealthy to manipulate elections is doing to their circulation
I hear its circulation is down to 200,000 nationwide, and sliding. It’s the paper that fewer than one in seven Aucklanders bother reading.
If 200,000 is the correct circulation figure, then I hardly see need for concern. Per head of population, it works out at roughly the same sales as the Press and Dom-Post.
This editorial appears to have gone unnoticed on Kiwiblog. For once there’s no Herald post n’ link, in the guise of commentary. Wonder why?
I’m sure we’re all EFB-ed out, but it’s a pretty big deal when the whole flimsy facade of National’s opposition is torn to shreds by its best buddy.
So who’s fighting for democracy – the Nats or the Herald?
Lee C, can you help?
ah but Phil, enough is never enough for APN. they’ve long since stripped all the fat and muscle the Herald could afford to lose, now there’s only sales.
“who’s fighting for democracy – the Nats or the Herald”
gs, that would be a tough call.
Maybe Simon Cunliffe is one of these people who will excuse ANYTHING that gets us on the way to the great egalitarian utopia? Like he will excuse the jailing of John Boscawen or the like next year, and like he never had any difficulty over Andrei Sakharov or Vaclav Havel either, probably. That goes for Tane, Sam Dixon, Sonic, Roger Nome, Nicky Hager, John Minto…….. fine upstanding specimens of the milk of kindness of the brotherhood of humanity all.
Maybe Simon Cunliffe won’t have any problem with Our Dear Leader regulating media commentary either – the next stage if she gets away with this. Simon Cunliffe’s colleagues might end up out of their jobs/ jailed. Who cares? John Minto and Nicky Hager and the Aro Valley fellow-travellers can fill in for them all.
Thought of the day for you all: What happened to Trostky? Bukharin? Beria? Kirov? Zinoviev? et al, et al, et al,……..
“Maybe Simon Cunliffe is one of these people who will excuse ANYTHING that gets us on the way to the great egalitarian utopia? Like he will excuse the jailing of John Boscawen or the like next year, and like he never had any difficulty over Andrei Sakharov or Vaclav Havel either, probably. That goes for Tane, Sam Dixon, Sonic, Roger Nome, Nicky Hager, John Minto…. fine upstanding specimens of the milk of kindness of the brotherhood of humanity all.”
Just to nip your right-wing paranoia in the bud, the ODT is no friend of Labour. I know: I work for them. It’s just that the ODT (unlike certain other papers I could mention) very rarely gets hysterical about issues like this: they’re a very crusty “Dunedin Establishment” paper, but like to maintain at least a veneer of non-partisanship on national issues.
PB – you’re hysterical. Get someone to slap you. Quick!
Robinson, what worries me was if that was hysterical – where was all the SHOUTING?
Let’s just hope it was satire 😉
Cap: booby human . Hmmmm….
Or Robespierre for that matter!
‘sod,
Are you going to make good on your threat to out IP? Or was it hollow? Should we now start taunting you in the manner you taunted Whaleoil?
Billy – I’m not going to out IP/DS unless I’m given good reason to. I figure it’s better to keep that info for a rainy day. I should also point out that it’s not a case of me having “taunted” Whale because I continue to do so for a long time yet.
DS, I know the ODT is a fine establishment paper and no friend of Labour’s and their efforts at providing balance content are to be applauded.
I still stand by what I am saying about the kind of people who are SUPPORTING the EFB. I am not being fanciful at all in saying that there are political activists on the left in NZ who have no moral difficulty about ANYTHING that will advance the arrival of their egalitarian utopia.
Presumably DS, you KNOW this Simon Cunliffe person. How deeply have you scratched his surface on where he stands re freedom vs socialist totalitarianism? The acid test is, does he hate totalitarianism more than he hates the inequality that is a consequence of freedom? Does he think that the media should be controlled, and that commentary like Roger Kerr’s column in the ODT should be banned (which it de facto is already in the Dom Post and probably all the other main dailies too) and a steady diet of Chris Trotter, Finlay MacDonald, John Minto and Nicky Hager (and himself of course) (and regular Chomsky excerpts) would be just the best thing for NZ?
Call me paranoid, but there is far too much of this sort of thinking in NZ today for comfort. 49% of Venezuelans thought that de facto Communism would have been OK by them. What would the % be in NZ? The result might shock you (and please Tane, roger nome and Co.)
And PhilBest, let’s not forget that the favourite mouthpiece of the left, Chris Trotter, has shamelessly advocated electoral corruption to keep the right out of power. No wonder so many feel uncomfortable about the EFB.
I still stand by what I am saying about the kind of people who are SUPPORTING the EFB.
The EFB is supported by an overwhelming majority of political parties (5 supporting, 2 opposed, with the Maori Party seemingly undecided).
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10481042&pnum=0
It is only opposed by those with a vested interest in buying elections.
Go people power – go MMP!
So, R0b, are you with Trotter that corruption is forgiveable if it keeps the right out of power? You see, when people like him say that sort of shit, people like us are likely to think that the EFB is a deliberate attempt to screw the scrum.
Billy – I’d like to read that, can you post a link?
I can’t find a link. But, having explained that there would be a revolution if the Nats took power (!!!), he said:
“Social peace for a paltry half-million dollars? Strikes me as the most courageous and forgivable kind of corruption.”
I don’t think he denies it. Mike Moore had him up on it a couple of months back on National Radio and he was quite unrepentant.
What did the half-million dollars refer to?
For its part, Labour, spent about $800,000 on a pledge card using funds that had been set aside for that purpose in at least two previous elections without reproof, but which was now seen by the Opposition, the Auditor-general and much of the electorate as at best inappropriate. Legal minds were divided but in the court of public opinion Labour and most of the other parties took a hiding.
Certainly there’s a range of reasonable opinion over whether the spending of Parliamentary Services Money on the pledge card was a proper use of that money.
Unfortunately, there is basically no legal debate over whether it had to be included as an election expense. It had to be included, and it pushed Labour over the spending limit.
The Auditor-General’s investigation over the money wasn’t a big deal for me. I was a little annoyed when Labour started attacking him personally, but the use of the money itself wasn’t a great concern. The deliberate over-spending was a big concern however, and it’s a great pity Labour weren’t called to account for it (as National should have been for it’s broadcasting act breach).
I completely agree with Graeme’s post.
Why is the window so narrow for prosecution, if that was what the problem was?
“So, R0b, are you with Trotter that corruption is forgiveable if it keeps the right out of power”
If that is what Trotter actually said (can I see the original quote please?) – then no of course I don’t agree. The principles of democracy are more important than the party that happens to be in power at any given time.
I may have seen more governments than many here. They come and go. But if the system gets broken, as it is for example in America, then it’s game over.
I’m down with that rOb.
Trotter rarely speaks for me in any case. And the US just makes me cry these days.
Well it would if I wasn’t such a triple hard bastard, he says, stroking his beard and sipping the chardonnay.
So in reality, what this ranting all comes down to is:
Conclusion – New Zealand is threatened by a quasi-Bolshevik Left that will stop at nothing to gain and keep power, trampling all over our basic rights in the process, and warrants comparison with Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Nazis, blah blah blah …
And the damning evidence is (drum roll) …
– a snippet of one quote on one occasion by one columnist, who holds no position of authority in the government, the Labour party, or any other party, or any affiliated organisation, and who has been cited approvingly by the National leader (Orewa).
Yep, paranoid sounds about right.
No, gobsmacked. No-one has said that. Stop making shit up.
Billy – it does seem kinda like that (though I think gobsmacked was using hyperbole for effect).
You put the quote together with the Bill, and it is not inconceivable to be concerned. Nothing more than that.
Go on, defend him.
I read Fran O’Sullivan talking about letting the sick and the old die rather than become a financial burden, Billy, you put that together with Key’s policy of “go down the road” in healthcare and it’s not inconceivable to be concerned about National’s hidden eugenic agenda. Are you?
Billy
Read Phil Best’s comments on this thread. Read the various international comparisons, past or present.
More importantly, listen to the rhetoric of the anti-EFB campaign – the leaders, not the fringe – urging us to “Fight Fascism”.
That is “making shit up”.
My point exactly ‘sod. You have put those two together and are concerned. Yet somehow it is not legitimate for me to do the same.
Bro, I might have some serious misgivings about National but I don’t think they are eugenicists. Jesus, how crazy do you think I am?
‘sod
1. I thought we had agreed it was “bro'”.
2. See, gobsmacked was not using hyperbole.
3. I have no idea how crazy you are.
So Billy, do you believe (as John Boscawen does) that the EFB is fascist?
Billy – it’s hard to believe that you are constructing a genuine fear of an evil left wing conspiracy out of a random comment by Trotter. If you are – please – for heaven’s sake – let it go. The point of robinsod’s example was not to reinforce your fears, but to illustrate what insubstantial foundations they are based on.
Most people on the left and most people on the right want the same thing – peace and prosperity. They just disagree about the methods. (Oh – and the right are wrong!).
gobsmacked,
I am worried that it is a partisan attempt by the government of the day to remove the tactical advantages that its opponent has (the government having its own, but different advantages).
I am not so simple-minded to believe that National’s objection is out of a concern for democracy.
I have a genuine concern that some on the left have been smoking so much of their own weed that they genuinely believe that a little bit of corruption is OK because a right wing government would be such an unpalatable prospect.
Fascism is in the eye of the beholder, it appears. I do not consider that it is bandied about with such abandon that it is pretty much meaningless.
remove the “do not”
I am worried that it is a partisan attempt by the government of the day to remove the tactical advantages that its opponent has (the government having its own, but different advantages).
The government’s advantage is exactly that. The advantage of the incumbent. It’s impossible to avoid (unless you want to forbid the government communicating with citizens). And it applies equally (over time) to National or Labour.
The advantage that National has from covert funding is exactly that, an advantage for National (and only National). Now – if you believe that it’s OK for covert money to buy elections, then you’re fine with that. But if you believe in a level playing field democracy, you have to try and fix the problems so starkly highlighted by the 2005 election.
So the EFB is designed to level the playing field. For everyone. (Put aside the advantage of the incumbent government – that is NOT a systemic Labour advantage. And the balancing advantage for the opposition, if you like, is that people tend to get sick of governments and fancy change for the sake of it).
I am not so simple-minded to believe that National’s objection is out of a concern for democracy.
Good for you. Me neither.
I have a genuine concern that some on the left have been smoking so much of their own weed that they genuinely believe that a little bit of corruption is OK because a right wing government would be such an unpalatable prospect.
Probably, sure. “The Left” and “The Right” are big, diverse groups of fallible humans. Neither is perfect.
Billy
OK. The word then (for your first sentence) would be “gerrymander”. I do not agree that the EFB does this, but even in stable democracies that is something to guard against, and so it can be a legitimate criticism.
Whereas this kind of thing (printed placards for the anti-EFB campaign) is just silly:
http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/423466/1469545
But I suspect that when the dust settles, next year we will have free and fair elections, and NZ will remain one of the least corrupt democracies on earth. Even if National win.
gobsmacked – hear hear!
http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2007/12/disclosure-2.html#comments
Whoops.
Billy, you obviously missed my response on Kiwiblog:
Cunlffe wasn’t just formerly employed as a Labour Party press secretary – he was ” recently employed” ie he was employed within Labour when the EF bill was going through select committee.
Now hes popped out to write about it as a journo. Richard Long has long gone from National
Yes, and Dr Michael Bassett has been even longer gone from Labour – seemingly far enough to disagree with them….
Current laws place spending limits on personal and party advertising at both the local and central levels. They have stood the test of time. If applied, they would even have caught the Exclusive Brethren last time for failing to carry adequate authorization for their leaflets. It’s taxpayers’ funds spent on mood music that is a greater threat to the electoral process. No existing or proposed laws cover that. Our ministers, these days, thrive on double standards.
http://www.michaelbassett.co.nz/articleview.php?id=176
“It’s taxpayers’ funds spent on mood music that is a greater threat to the electoral process.”
TeDiouS – are you sure you want to be citing this sort of rubbish in your defence?
Does Michael Basset disclose that he lied about what was in those Brethren leaflets, or rather that he lied about whether or not those leaflets were truthful about Green party policy on capital gains tax?
Probably not. He seemed a little titchy about it when he lost his gig at the dompost.
I’m not talking about one political columnist. I’m talking about the EFB and the people who support it, even if very few newspaper columnists or editors do. The most public representation he people who support it, are people like Chris Trotter, Nicky Hager, John Minto, and bloggers like Tane, Roger Nome, Sonic, Sam Dixon, Robinsod, rOb, et al. One can take it that the whole Aro Valley mob, much of the VUWSA, and all that kind of ilk are included. And this lot ARE by by their own frequent admission part of a plot to undermine NZ society to advance their Marxist egalitarian “utopia”.
“Drum roll”, indeed. A stereotype grand martial-music fanfare a la Red Square march-past would be much more appropriate.
Forward the red army tank division to front line kiwi’s as they have a facade of a democracy .
Hi dad.
And this lot ARE by by their own frequent admission part of a plot to undermine NZ society to advance their Marxist egalitarian “utopia”
Shit that was a good laugh. Ok so the drink helped a little.
Mike – You got those SIS files for me?
Nah, bro I left them in Helen’s office. Or was it at communist party HQ ? Y’know I spend so much time moving between the two I’m always losing track of things…
You won’t believe this but the capture is “darn laundryman” – I guess this is a cue to discuss just why we need the EFB…
The most public representation he people who support it, are people like Chris Trotter, Nicky Hager, John Minto, and bloggers like Tane, Roger Nome, Sonic, Sam Dixon, Robinsod, rOb, et al.
You forgot:
Annette King (and the Labour Party)
Winston Peters (and NZ First)
Russel Norman (and the Greens)
Jim Anderton
Peter Dunne (and United Future)
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10481042&pnum=0
Speaking Of VUWSA, it may be a myth but I was told that the Monty Python club once organised a whole crowd of people to attend a meeting, and they managed to pass a motion or something that the VUWSA should invade Poland just as soon as the panzer divisions could be made ready. Watch out Phil!!