Fairer electoral funding

• all_your_base
• 17 years ago
• Categories: election funding
• Tags: election funding, Electoral Finance Act, electoral law, exclusive brethren, hollow men

Today in the Dom: Tracy Watkins gets National Party blogger David Farrar to coauthor share his views in an article on the Electoral Finance Bill.

The Nats are campaigning hard against changes to the Act. You would too if you had as much to lose. The loopholes in it nearly allowed them to buy the last election, helped in part by covert third party campaigns and huge anonymous trusts.

Thanks to The Hollow Men it’s no longer a secret that the National Party were the main beneficiaries of campaigns like those run by the Exclusive Brethren and the Fair Tax group seeking tax relief for the racing industry. The intention of the Bill is to insulate our democracy from manipulation by these kinds of groups.

You’ll probably hear Bill English complaining that the $60,000 spending limit for third parties is too small. He would say that wouldn’t he. The Brethren were the only group to spend more than that in the 2005 campaign.