Keeps ‘em insecure and attentive to doing their jobs properly.

respectfully
BJ

If someone does a critical analysis of actual Green Policy and accurately quotes the policy in question, I have no problem with it. There are some Green policies that have what I regard as problems, usually with wording rather than intent, but problems nonetheless. Criticism is fine if it is something we’ve actually advocated or said.

If someone caricatures Green Policy and criticizes the words they put in our mouths without our speaking them, as has been done in the Dom Post a while back, in the Herald almost constantly and elsewhere (the EB pamphlets are only one of many examples)…. in other words… making up sh!t about us…. what has been going on in this country since Moby Dick was a Minnow…. then I should hope to have a law in place to provide them appropriate levels of legal entertainment.

DaveC - What I said was that of the Greens on this forum the support was unanimous. I didn’t say we all agreed entirely with everything. Just that we were unanimous in support of the rewritten bill. If there is a Green on this forum who isn’t, please speak up. No? Then it is unanimous. The Forum does not provide for polls… yet… (and how IS that coming Frog?) but the degree to which we agree is not related to the fact that we all do actually agree. So yes, I can claim unanimity on this forum. Which represents the entire party quite poorly but at least gives your position no support whatsoever. You still do not know what the entirety of the Green party thinks.

I’m not going to spend a lot of time on “better than nothing” arguments… I don’t have that kind of time these days… maybe during the holidays, but most of the arguments have already been made on this forum if not in this thread. First off, we have to define whether “nothing” is open-slather money can do as it pleases or the idea of leaving the existing law unchanged. I expect that the latter is the target for “nothing” as in “nothing changed from the previous situation”.

Under the previous law, without recourse and almost without being able to identify the perpetrators, the Green Party was “swift-boated”. When people lie about you, slander your good name and drag it through the mud do you forgive them? We may be against violence but we are still human… it will be a long time before we forget or forgive that abuse, and we are I think, happy to see it limited now. Better than nothing. Thanks.

I will come back again and see if I can go through an entire list of what we wanted and how well what we got approaches each goal.. I am more familiar with what I did NOT get out of this process that I wanted because I too am human. I have to consider each point and look at what the PARTY wanted, not what I wanted. That’s a list I have to find and ask about… unless others will fill in the gaps in my knowledge.

I reckon there are several here who can make the list of what we wanted from the top of their heads… but I am not one of them. I am perhaps one of the LEAST enthusiastic of the Green supporters of this bill, but I am quite firmly in support of it. It isn’t as simple or as draconian as I would have had it, and it is longer than I would like it, but I prefer it to the previous system.

You see, my preferred 3rd party spending cap for the election campaign period is zero. The spending cap for the parties is reduced from what is shown as well. The period is 60 days and the election starts 90 days after the date is randomly chosen. I didn’t get any of that. No incumbent wants to have to be on their best pre-election behaviour through their entire 1-4 years in office. I don’t want them feeling safe. Even if through divine intervention a Green was elected PM… I don’t want him or her to feel so secure as to be careless but the incumbents are the ones making this law. They LIKE that security …. you betcha.

respectfully
BJ

Thanks for that clarification.

“…..informing, enlightening, or entertaining” That is where to court cases are going to happen.

If Tim Shadbolt is “informing and enlightening” his rate payers that voting for labour will see a reducting in funding for the Southland Technical Institute, he would technically not be breaking the law?

What is was about, and what it actually does are different things. Which is why Metiria’s speech is so pointless. It’s nice to say “Lets level the playing field” but if the solution is to kill a dolphin, the Green’s would be the first to point out that the stated aims do not align with the action.

I’ve never held the position that opponents of this law are “paranoid”; my position remains that the opponents are using the spectre of free speech limitation as a tool to garner public support and to paint the proponents of the bill as oppressors. But the bill never was about free speech, it was about the power to make ones self heard, which is a very different thing. Of course, the bill can never succeed in very realistic way, as those with the money will find ways to use it creatively. But its a start.

I’m not a lawyer, but do take the time and trouble to read stuff carefully, as we know that the devil is in the detail.

I do share Evan’s perspective, but would remind him that our so called “secret” ballots are anything but; the identity of every vote is traceable, watch carefully at the polling station next time you cast a vote. Of course, I have no idea if the references are actually collated, but they could be…

Sam’s point is an interesting one, and one that (prior to this Mallard nonsense) would never have occurred to me. Perhaps the lawyers are in for an exciting and profitable time…

Great, so not only can the police fish around and check me out to ensure I’m not spending more than $12,000 on a political campaign, I have to worry about my political opponents taking a case against me as well. Given some activist groups are good at running things on the smell of an oily rag, any large campaign runs the risk of being dragged through the courts on the basis that they appear to have spent more than the limit.

“Your members did not want you to vote for this bill. You didn`t listen to them.”

The Green Party’s negotiating position was based on responses to a discussion paper the policy committee circulated around the membership earlier this year. And it wasn’t one of those discussion papers that gives you one option and asks you to say yes or no to it. It sought to give multiple sides to every issue, and asked lots of open-ended questions. Of course Russel didn’t manage to get everything that consultation shows the party members wanted (which wouldn’t have been unanimous anyway, cos its very hard to get consensus from an open-ended discussion paper), but I have no reason to doubt that he tried his best.

So basically, the Green caucus did do what we wanted them to do.

The MPs who voted for it knew what they were voting on and had copies in front of them. I am not an MP, just a Green Party member, so I had to cobble it together from what was reported back from the Committee of the Whole.

No Act is formally published until it receives the Royal Assent.