Electoral Finance Bill changes welcomed

• all_your_base
• 16 years ago
• Categories: election funding
• Tags: election funding

Stuff reports that “Key non-political critics have welcomed changes to the Government’s electoral finance reforms.”

Both the Human Rights Commission and Coalition for Open Government are pleased with the revisions to the Electoral Finance Bill.

Coalition spokesman Steven Price said the changes were a great improvement especially measures to open up anonymous donations…

“This bill is not about trammelling people’s right to free speech,” Mr Price said. “The revised bill clearly supports democracy by requiring greater transparency of donors and levelling the playing field so that groups like the Exclusive Brethren can’t use their big chequebooks to swing elections.”

Now if only the media would start calling a spade a spade.

“The Free Speech Coalition spokesman David Farrar, who also runs a right wing website, said the bill would now cover megaphones as well as other materials such as placards which were always covered.”

A little disingenuous to refer to DPF as someone who runs a right wing website. David is the mouthpiece of the National Party – he works in their Headquarters for God’s sake – he’s on the payroll and he’s actively campaigning for the Nats (at left is a photo from his 40th birthday bash). I’m all for presenting dissenting minority points of view – even from people as biased as David – but the NZPA owe it to their readers to be absolutely straight about his political stripes.