Written By: - Date published: 6:53 pm, July 23rd, 2008 - 53 comments
Categories: business, election funding, workers' rights -
Tags: ema, kiwisaver
The Employers and Manufacturers Association’s advertising campaign to defend the ability of employers to make workers pay their own Kiwisaver employer contribution while pocketing the taxpayer subsidy is the most hamfisted and transparently cynical piece of PR I’ve seen in some time.
It’s outragous that the EMA should claim it’s standing up for workers’ rights when it is really just trying to protect bad employers. But it’s not surprising. This is, after all, an organisation that has opposed every single gain made by working people in the last nine years and has an industrial arm that helps employers dismiss their workers and cut their pay.
It’s, therefore, no surprise that the EMA has had to resort to running an expensive advertising campaign (they can’t actually mobilise any workers in favour of their cause) and the media have seen it for the blatantly cynical PR move it is.
What’s more, this whole embarrassing exercise may be in breach of the Electoral Finance Act. I’ve just had a tip-off from a reader who has laid a complaint with the Electoral Commission this afternoon.
It turns out the EMA has failed to register as a third party, which means it has an election spending limit of $12,000. Today’s ad was a half page full colour in the Herald, putting it at around $15,000 according to a recent rate card and pushing the EMA well over their legal spending limit. The ad also entangles the New Zealand Herald, which is in breach for publishing it.
Judging by the text at the bottom of the advertisement it appears the EMA knew this would be the case all along but thought they could get around the law by passing it off as issues advertising, which is exempt under the Act. A quick look at section 5 of the Act shows this is not the case. It’s expected the same ad will appear in the Dominion Post tomorrow morning, at a cost of around $8,500. This ad will also be in breach of the EFA, as will the Dominion Post.
Deliberate attempts to breach electoral law and a cynical attack on workers – is this the best the EMA can do? Crappy ad design too.
[On a related note, if you haven't heard it already Alasdair Thompson lost the plot up against Trevor Mallard today on Morning Report. I never thought I'd see dear old Geoff have to turn someone's mic off before, but Alasdair's behaviour sure warranted it.]
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If this is an election ad than that is going to pose problems for all those groups that do letter writing and petition based campaigns on specific laws and use advertising to promote them. What about GP campaigns on climate change? The current campaigns on the immigration bill.
I think I/S is dead right in his analysis. Looks like DPF could be right again…
The first thing I noted when I read it was that it attacked Mallard. Hell, after the first read the only thing I understood about it was that it was attacking Mallard. This, IMO, allows it to cross the line into political advertising (but only just) because it could turn people off voting for him or his party.
insider,
1) If a group’s letter writing campaign and associated advertising was considered election advertising then either they spend less than the unregistered cap or they register as a third party and stick with those rules. No fuss
2) There is a huge difference between a campaign to, for example, get more free access to Herceptin (issues advertising – no EFA control) and one which says “Cunliffe kills women! He is a bad bad man!!” (looks more election-ish to me, if so, controlled).
The EMA standing up for workers’ rights?!? Isn’t that a bit like Brian Tamaki saying he stands for queer rights?
If this was really an ‘issues’ ad. There would only be say a story about a young apprentice who is saving for a car, or a single mum with 2 kids looked after by her mother while she works at two jobs and paying into kiwisaver cuts into her income.
You know, a narrative that draws people into a story in terms they could understand.
The way they have stated it their ‘issue’ is stopping mallard. ( who knows why?)
And the way to stop him ? 4 months out from an election?
maybe the EMA is going to register as a political party but they want to breach the limit by getting this out of the way before they register!
Q t R – gold? Ha, tinny tin tin.
If the equivalent ad was run by Forest and Bird as “Stop Key’s Attacks on National Parks’ with a list of party leaders to ring, would it count as an election ad?
Nope, any more than the CAFCA postcards did. If it tells people outright to lobby politicians, doesn’t mention voting
Would it make a difference if the election was closer? If the EMA were to run this ad three weeks before the election (ignoring, for a moment, the fact amendment will be passed by then), would it be more election ad-ish then?
A reasonable person might think so. However, again I’ll stress that the law must be interpreted through the lens of the BORA, which combined with the clear parliamentary intent to provide wide scope for issue advertising and agenda-setting, means that the bar is probably quite high.
if you want a definitive ruling, complain. But I seriously don’t think the EC will agree with you, and it is a complete foot-bullet politically.
I see I/S is misreprenting our position over on his blog. Unfortunately comments are not allowed so I’ll have to respond here.
Some facts:
The Standard has not laid a complaint against the EMA. SP was simply sent a tip-off from a reader and laid out the facts. The tone of the post was not “Ha ha let’s fuck the EMA”, it was “what a bunch of incompetent clowns.”
No one here is against issues advertising. No one here thought the CAFCA postcards should count election advertising.
No one is trying to stop the EMA from expressing themselves or buying advertising. But it’s fair to point out if they are pretty blatantly breaching electoral law for no apparent reason.
And that’s the point. It’s not the EFA stopping the EMA advertising. It’s the fact they’ve chosen not to follow the rules.
Personally I’d encourage the EMA to register as a third party and properly authorise their advertisements. It’s as basic as that.
Tane – you often ping me for referring to The Standard as a collective, and point out all the authors are individuals who make up their own minds on what to post and say.
With that in mind, your statements such as “No one here is against issues advertising” seems to be guilty of what I do – assigning a collective voice.
Incidentally I do not think they are election advertisements.
Captcha: contract good-will – sounds like an employment policy
The ad is a picture of Mallard with bright red eyes and it says ‘stop Mallard’s attack on workers’. At best this is a borderline electoral advertisement. It looks like it’s trying to encourage people not to vote for Mallard or Labour to me.
Remember, all the EMA has to do is register as a third party and then stick to the third party spending limit, it’s not overly burdensome.
David, perhaps I should clarify. No one here has said anything against issues advertising, no one has said anything to indicate they have an issue with the EMA engaging in issues advertising, and posters here have come out in favour of issues advertising being exempt.
There may well be one or two posters who have different opinions they haven’t expressed, but that’s hardly relevant to I/S’s argument.
I, for one, agree with 08wire’s argument that y’all are best to just let this particular issue die, rather than giving it the oxygen of publicity.
L
The text of the act lists a number of conditions which make ‘material’ an election advertisement.
Encouraging people to vote or not for a candidate is only ONE of the conditions.
THis part seems specific to the EMAs ad.
..any editorial material, other than advertising material, in a periodical that is written by, or is selected by or with the authority of, the editor solely for the purpose of informing, enlightening, or entertaining readers:…
Any sort of advertisement seem to be excluded from the informing and enlightening category.
However looking for their next ad where they crticise Key for his attack on workers rights in taking out the compulsory 4 weeks annual leave… yeah right
ghostwhowalks,
Your quote is from one of the subparas of 5(2). To be an electoral advertisement it has to meet one of the criteria of 5(1) and not meet any of the criteria in 5(2).
I think everyone agrees that it doesn’t meet 5(2) (as you have shown), the question is whether it meets 5(1):
So whether it can reasonably regarded as encouraging or persuading voters to vote or not vote is the key test.
I/S,
I really struggle with this
In fact part of my submission on the EFB was that the EC needed to provide training and information to organisations about what was legal and effective issue advertising, cos the whole situation is confused.
If I were to spend $100k on full page ads in the week before polling saying “Stop Key cutting benefits and wages!!” in huge letters and then go on to rant for column or two about how bad Key’s policies are, but which don’t say “vote” anywhere and do include a list of political leaders phone numbers under the heading “Call” at the very end – I reckon that would have to be election advertising. Does that meet your criteria?
Where, between that and me running $100k of full page ads in January talking about how important ensuring benefits rise to keep in pace with inflation (which I think is not an election ad), does the line lie?
Tane,
I/S does not appear to be misrepresenting the position I see argued here at all.
Idiot says that folks at the Standard are “attacking an EMA campaign against the government’s KiwiSaver amendments as a breach of the EFA.”
Well, yeah. You are. When Mr Pierson says “This ad will also be in breach of the EFA” and when you describe the ads as “deliberate breaches of the law” and argue that the EMA should be “held up to scrutiny” for it, you are attacking an EMA campaign against the government’s KiwiSaver amendments as a breach of the EFA.
As for this being issues advertising: c’mon. They’re attacking Mallard over an issue, they’re doing it months out from the election, and they’re trying to get people to lobby the govt over it. It seems pretty cut-n-dried to me.
Idiot’s claim is that attacking people for breaching EFA when they are engaged in issues advertising is exactly what Farrar and associates predicted would happen. Now some here are arguing that in this case this issues advertising *is* electioneering and thus falls foul of the EFA. Yup, that’s exactly what Farrar et al said people would say: their prediction was that issues advertising would get caught in up in the EFAs net because you can’t separate it out from electioneering.And thus you are partaking in helping this prediction come true.
Fortunately, the EFA is actually a bit more sensible than people here are claiming, so it isn’t actually being breached, and so Mr Farrar et al’s more hysterical complaints will prove ill-founded.
Look this ad is clearly not an election advertisement. Therefore they don’t need to register as a third party if the ad is over the EFA limit.. Therefore the EMA can spend as much as they want to on ads.
So as this ad is clearly not an electin ad, it would be difficult for SP to state how it clearly is an election ad, given that it is Parliament’s express intention that ads like this should be able to be run without them being declared election advertisements.
Back to the drawing board for The Standard.
Partisan media have been known to give BIG discounts to the people they favour in order to help them stay under spending limits. Others simply editorialise at great length – even devoting entire sections to their favoured party / politicians – and use news copy as cover for campaigning.
People reading my comments and my blog will know that I refer to this as the “Overseas billionaries’ EFA exemption” (OBEE). You can I can’t, for example, buy an entire section in the Herald two weeks running to advance our political champion’s cause…..but a company like APN could do it if they wanted to.
I would have thought it was up to John Key to tell us who he is…..but that’s just me.
With the OBEE, you can campaign all and all night for your favoured party or candidate as long as you’re “Media”.
In Canada, where EFA-style laws have been in place for several years, the process of political elites capturing media outlets to by-pass campaign spending restrictions is well-advanced.