I have spent the last day looking at the promoters electoral returns that have recently been released by the Electoral Commission.
There were some interesting features.
Top spending was a brand new promoter called Vote for Better.
Radio New Zealand said this about it:
If you’ve been on YouTube, Facebook or Instagram and heard a robot-like voice talking about election issues, it may have come from a group called Vote for Better.
The group, which is new to politics, has spent between $80,800 and $118,800 on ads about the election campaign on Facebook and Instagram alone in recent weeks.
Vote for Better hasn’t pushed for any particular party but its advertising is focused on critiquing the current government’s performance. Some of its video ads are narrated with an American-accented artificial intelligence (AI) voiceover.
A typical ad claims that tax paid per New Zealander has increased 40 percent between 2017 and 2023 while wages have increased by 28 percent in the same period. The figures are based on tax paid by all people, including non-New Zealanders.
NZ Initiative chief economist Eric Crampton said there were better ways of calculating the tax burden. The claim was accurate though because it specified “per” New Zealander rather than “by”.
Tim Barry, who fronts the campaign, would not be interviewed. In an email, he said Vote for Better was a non-partisan campaign.
“I am not doing any interviews, I’d prefer to let the data speak for itself,” he said.
His company Vote for Better Limited was registered just in time for the election but then spent an impressive $386,514.99 on the campaign, just short of the maximum amount of $391,000.
Barry is the director and part owner with his wife of this Advertising Agency which claims expertise in digital marketing.
There is nothing to suggest that he is a well heeled individual who is deeply upset with the direction of the last Government and the thought struck me what if he was paid by someone to do all of this? What if he was instructed by a Fisheries Company or an Oil Company or a fundamentalist American Christian Church or the Atlas Network for that purpose to do his best to undermine confidence in the left during the election campaign?
The problem with the promoter rules is there is no obligation for them to say who they were paid by. And it can be an overseas person or corporation. The restrictions on donations from overseas persons only applies to candidate and party donations.
This is a gap that needs to be filled.
The other third party that I was interested in was the Taxpayers Union. This entity, which is not a real union, declared that it had spent $371,565.05 in attributable expenses on the campaign.
There were some interesting features to its return. It was spending more than $3,000 a month on Nationbuilder which meant that it was doing some sophisticated data analysis with a large number of people.
It declared expenses for five of its election meetings hosted by Martyn Bradbury and Damien Grant. Bomber should be ashamed of his collusion with the Taxpayers Union. But there was no sign of expenses relating to the Tamaki or Finance meetings. There is also no allowance for travel and I recall seeing Williams at various locations through the country during the campaign.
It spent $89 thousand on its Debt Clock campaign and $68 thousand on its Robbos Removals Truck campaign. It also spent $59 thousand on its anti Government spending video.
The return raises more questions than it answers. Like how much did the Taxpayer’s Union receive last year? The figure for the year before, which was not an election year, was $2.826 million.
And what happened to its almost $1 million in reserves that it had at the beginning of the year?
Other right wing aligned organisations who spent over the threshold included Groundswell, Hobson’s Pledge and Family First. Access to their accounts is limited and delayed and in the case of Vote for Better because it is a company there is none.
The biggest left wing spender was the CTU.
There has been some push back from the right at suggestions that Mihirangi Forbes and others who are concerned about the Atlas Network. Including this piece from former lefty Chris Trotter. In it he says:
David Seymour’s links to the Atlas Network do not make him a villain. Working for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy is not the same as working for Hamas. Morally speaking, is taking money from oil companies really all that distinguishable from giving money to oil companies every time we fill up our petrol tank? Getting from A to B; winning the battle of ideas; the Devil clips our tickets either way.
The Left’s election defeat is not the work of the Atlas Network. It is not even the work of David Seymour and Act. It is the work of ordinary citizens who liked the Right’s stories better than they liked the Left’s. If the Right’s stories were made more convincing by a sympathetic think tank, then the Left should not be getting mad at their opponent’s effective apparatus, it should be getting mad at itself for not having one of its own.
Trotter completely misses the point. There are two aspects that he completely ignores. Firstly the organisations on the right have much greater resourcing. And secondly their funders and backers are hidden. We do not know where the money is coming from. And there is a lot.
And what is happening here has been happening overseas for some time.
The latest example is in Australia where the conservative organisation Advance is spending large amounts of money trying to upset Labor’s prospects in the Dunkley by election. The Guardian calls this unprecedented. If it succeeds you can imagine a number of similar campaigns being run in future by elections and general elections.
Advance was the organisation that ran a vigorous campaign against the Voice referendum, including the use of racist tropes as well as the use of outright lies against its opponent’s campaign.
In 2022-23 its funding doubled but the source of half of its funds was unknown.
It pitches itself as a group representing Australian “battlers” against the “woke” elite. But many of its financial backers are wealthy investors and businessmen. And looking at the campaigns it is running reminds me strongly of New Zealand First.
And the difference between the left and the right is not only the funding. Organisations like Greenpeace or Etu are transparent in their funding and their goals. Organisations like the Taxpayers Union and Advance are not.
I don’t think it is so important that Atlas may be pouring huge amounts of money into campaigns to unseat progressive politicians in different countries. But I do think it is important that unknown wealthy donors with an agenda of maintaining their privilege are doing so.
At the very least there should be changes to the Electoral Law. So that we know who is funding groups like the Taxpayers Union and these other organisations comes from. And so we know what the motivation for doing so is. It may not involve the pursuit of the greatest good for the greatest number.
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