Written By: - Date published: 12:27 pm, November 26th, 2007 - 90 comments
Categories: activism, election funding -
Tags: activism, election funding
Just came across this video on YouTube from last week’s rally in Wellington against the Electoral Finance Bill. This clip has one of the counter-protesters giving an impressive off-the-cuff speech on why the Bill is needed.
Given the anti-EFB crowd’s only line of attack was “you’re from Young Labour” and “reveal your identity” they were kind of on the back foot from the first sentence. The squirming Tory MPs in the background are also good for a laugh. Anyone else thinking ‘ramshackle PR fiasco‘?
Links to other speeches from the rally are available over here.
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Gruela
Are you Winston?
You really aren’t up with the play, Tane. Jill Ovens has joined the Labour Party. http://workersparty.org.nz/thespark/aug17-06/Alliance leader joins Labour.htm
r0b: you claimed that right wing protesters in Wellington were rowdy and uncivilised, and wouldn’t let opponents speak. You also claimed that left wing protesters at the Labour Party conference were civilised and respectful. Jill Ovens’ press release clearly states the opposite.
burt:
Damn! you rumbled me.
All kidding aside, I think I would probably be more likely to vote for the Man-Goat Love Association party than I would be to vote for NZ First.
As to the EFB protest, I wasn’t there. I don’t know what happened. I will say, however, that a general guideline that has seen me well over thirty years is: In any argument there are two sides and the truth usually lies somewhere in the middle.
IP, when you say, “left-wing protesters at the Labour Party conference”, do you mean those who came to protest the anti-terror raids, or those members present at the Labour Conference? Because those anti-terror protesters were far more in numbers than those few members who decided to speak.
Whaleoil has a great post which is on the same topic as this thread:
In 35 Days this will be NZ
Having just spent three hours tonight with my head down over the pieces it’s great to head something about such a master.
IP – “you claimed that right wing protesters in Wellington were rowdy and uncivilised, and wouldn’t let opponents speak.”
What? Eh? There was a group of people protesting against the police raids. I don’t think it’s easy to characterise them politically, but “right wing” is a pretty unlikely label. Let’s just call them the protesters.
IP – “You also claimed that left wing protesters at the Labour Party conference were civilised and respectful.”
I said no such thing. I said that the Labour Party members / delegates were civilised and respectful (except for one idiot with a megaphone).
“Jill Ovens’ press release clearly states the opposite.”
Tell me how?
“Man-Goat Love Association party”
- Have you been paying extra attention to Owen Newitt on the ‘Vicar of Dibley‘?
I’ve never seen the Vicar of Dibley, but I’ll tell you, it gets cold in these parts some nights.
Also, burt, I’m disappointed in you. Finding any relevance in a comparison between the Russian and New Zealand political situations doesn’t really expand on a reasonable debate about the benefits and drawbacks of the EFB.
No-one’s claiming the legislation is perfect, but to claim that protesters will be dragged to the cells if the don’t put their names and addresses on their placards isn’t justified.
Gruela, if you’re newish to the local political blogs, here’s a simple guideline that will save you a lot of time. Whale runs a hate site, you won’t find anything of value there.
Prick – I didn’t say Jill hadn’t joined the Labour Party. My point is that she’s only a recent (and by all accounts reluctant) convert and hardly the big player you were making her out to be. But I guess that lack of background knowledge is to be expected from an insolent punter like yourself.
IP – I see that I got confused about what you said, just as you got confused about what I said. At this time of the morning I’m not going to unravel it all in detail. Whatever. Goodnight.
“…hardly the big player…”
Yet she was allowed to host a conference on poverty with members (most of whom were top unionists) at the Labour Party Conference.
She may not be as ‘big’, but she certainly isn’t ‘small’.
rOb
Thanks, I’ve just been there. He certainly has an interesting outlook on things, doesn’t he?
It’s always struck me as a kind of sad marker of human nature that there seem to be such angry people in New Zealand. I think maybe we should all get out into the fresh air more often, and maybe have a bit of a sing and a dance.
redbus, her ‘conference’ was an impromptu meeting in a small room and wasn’t listed on the agenda. She’s got the influence one would expect from a regional secretary of an affiliate union, but her power extends no further than that and she’s by no means a power-broker in the party. She’s certainly no “Labour Party luminary” as Prick suggested.
“It’s always struck me as a kind of sad marker of human nature that there seem to be such angry people in New Zealand.”
It’s far from an NZ problem of course. The anger in American politics scares the bejazus out of me.
“I think maybe we should all get out into the fresh air more often, and maybe have a bit of a sing and a dance”
Agreed on that one, though there are some who would say that my dancing does not contribute anything much to world peace…
Tane, I didn’t agree with the assertion that Jill is a “luminary” within the party. But the fact that she can call an impromptu meeting with the Labour faithful and actually draw a crowd speaks volumes to me. She isn’t a huge player, but she can not be talked down by saying, ‘she’s new, so don’t think she’s that important within Labour’.
Hi there Burt and Nih,
My stat of ‘one in five kiwi children…’ came from the National Partys ‘Policy Summary – National Education Standards’ that was delivered in my letterbox last week. Sorry if this was not made clear in my previous posts.
Personally after working in secondary schools in NZ (one decile 4 school and one decile 8 school) I have serious doubts over this stat myself and how they are measuring this…. but anyway my orginal posts were more about discussing how their policy summary was ‘hollow’
“Having just spent three hours tonight with my head down over the pieces it’s great to head something about such a master.”
Burt!
You never struck me as being the intellectual chess playing type…
This is pathetic. A contest of ideas? So why is the Left so jealous of its control over teaching institutions and journalism? A contest of IDEAS? In NEW ZEALAND? Bah.
Furthermore, this guy spends most of his time mouthing on about “secret trusts” funding political parties. So why is this bill about EVERYTHING BUT transparency? Does Helen know she’s got a few million coming from George Soros, or Ted Turner, or Richard Branson or the like one day?
This is the speech by Dr Eric Crampton at todays rally in Christchurch.
“It takes a lot to drag an academic economist out of his office to a political rally downtown. If this were simply a protest over bad legislation, I’d have stayed in Ilam: bad legislation, unfortunately, isn’t all that uncommon.
And, this is very bad legislation – so bad that, even after amendment,the New Zealand Law Society wants it scrapped. This is amazing. When law is badly drafted, it’s the lawyers that profit by the resulting court battles. Lawyers from Chapman Tripp warn that the courts may well decide the next election – they expect court action. Legislation has to be shockingly bad before we’d expect lawyers to say it should be scrapped entirely, but that’s what they’ve done. Even the Electoral Commission, who has to give advice on compliance with the legislation, is reported to have thrown up its hands: it can’t make heads or tails of the legislation either, and so can’t provide advice.
Even worse, the legislation seems pointless.
The best social science evidence shows that donations to political parties don’t buy the donor a whole lot in terms of changes in policy. And, when sitting politicians spend money on election campaigns, the spending doesn’t have a very big effect on vote share. Spending can matter a lot for challengers, who have to work very hard to get their names known. But, spending doesn’t matter much for incumbent politicians.
Further tightening up of campaign spending rules, and especially changes like the ones now proposed that allow political parties to use Parliamentary budgets for electioneering, protect sitting MPs against challenges by newcomers. It’s an incumbent protection racket plain and simple. New parties and new ideas will be frozen out, and the same old hacks are guaranteed job security.
As bad as all of that is, it’s not the main reason I’m here.
This isn’t just bad law. It’s a bad law that affects how we make laws, and threatens the legitimacy of government itself. Constitutional rules stand apart from other bits of legislation. They affect fundamental rights and freedoms, and they set out how all the other rules will be written. The Electoral Finance Bill directly affects our freedom of speech. Once it’s passed, we’ll only have freedom of speech 2 years in 3. And, it sets out the rules for how an election is conducted – how legislation for the subsequent three years will be formed. These have constitutional implications.
Constitutional rules aren’t like other rules. They really require broad agreement across society. I studied under James Buchanan, who won the Nobel Prize in economics for his work in this area. He likened it to setting out the rules for a poker game: you get everybody to agree to the rules before you deal the cards. If everybody’s agreed to the rules before the cards are dealt, the outcome of the game is fair and legitimate. What Labour and its support parties here have done is dealt the cards, taken a peek at their hands, and then declared deuces wild. This violates constitutional justice and threatens the legitimacy of any government that is elected under the new rules.
Electoral rules – constitutional rules – require broad agreement if the government that’s formed under them is to have legitimacy. We’re here today to say that we don’t give that assent. If Labour rams this bill through Parliament, shuts up anyone who opposes it during the 2008 election, then squeeks through a tight coalition win after a lot of litigation, will that government have any legitimacy?
That’s why this Bill must be stopped and that’s why I’m here. The Bill violates the spirit of our constitutional foundations. It throws freedom of speech out the window. And it rigs the election to protect the politicians who pass it. Helen Clark, Annette King, throw out this Bill!”