Frog smells a rat
A few weeks ago a wannabe Act Party Candidate and fellow blogger, Blair Mulholland, took a complaint against the Greens under the Electoral Finance Act. He alleged that he found a collection of Green Party posters without authorisation statements on them.
The photos Mulholland submitted all had the promoter statement removed or covered over, and were not in the original state in which they were printed and published.
The posters were then quickly removed shortly thereafter, before any Green Party members could get to Morningside in Auckland where the posters in question were.
So, let’s track the sequence of events:
Either:
The Greens print a first series of A0 posters with authorisation statements and a series a few centimetres shorter than the standard A0 size without authorisation statements – thus more than doubling their printing cost.
Or:
The Greens print a single series of posters and then cut the authorisation statement off a few of the posters, like just for giggles.
Or:
After the Greens had printed the posters someone wanders by and tidily cuts off the bottom few centimetres of the posters. This person isn’t just a Greenophobe. He or she is obviously well enough informed about electoral law to know that tidily cutting off a few centimetres is more damaging than the traditional ripping down of the entire poster. Of course it is only damaging if someone should lodge a complaint with the Electoral Commission. Then Blair Mulholland happens to wander around Morningside, with his camera and take a few snap shots. Then someone comes back later to take down the posters.
All this would have worked out conveniently for the secret vandal except that the Electoral Commission, which must now have plenty of practice at spotting a ruse, accepted that the posters displayed in Mulholland’s photographs did not appear in the form authorised by the Green Party Financial Agent. As a result, the Green Party financial agent did not wilfully publish, or cause or permit to be published, an election advertisement in contravention of section 63 or 65 of the Electoral Finance Act.
No surprise there. What is a surprise is, that after that sequence of events, TV3 last night allowed Mulholland to accuse the Greens of being liars.
July 1st, 2008 at 2:53 pm
You guys voted for this law.
It was blindingly obvious people were going to run such interference campaigns. Kiwiblog was discussing this very probability, but was ignored.
Whatever next. I’m guessing people will run entire campaigns seemingly in support of party X, but actually run by supporters of party Y.
July 1st, 2008 at 3:45 pm
Hmmm…very hard to tell from that photo, but the poster next to it appears to cut off at the exact same point. Is that the bottom of the wall to which the poster is glued?
If so, then is it possible that whoever hung the poster may have cut off the excess as the poster was too big for the board?
July 1st, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Mulholland was being deceitful, barefaced. He didn’t chance upon those posters, did he.
July 1st, 2008 at 4:43 pm
But both posters appear to be cut off at the exact same level?
July 1st, 2008 at 5:56 pm
I have no idea who is guilty in this instance, and don’t really care. But whoever is at fault, the outcome has serious consequences.
Now, based on this judicial ruling, anyone can put up posters for any party without an authorisation statement (or, technically, do any advertising without an authorisation statement). Provided no-one finds out who did it, the party is NOT AT FAULT.
So any party can spend as much as they like on their campaigning, provided they don’t authorise it and claim no knowledge…
Doesn’t this ruling completely undermine the entire purpose of the law in the first place?
July 1st, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Might I suggest a defamation proceeding, frog, or if Mr Field isn’t litigiously-inclined, a broadcasting standards complaint.
July 1st, 2008 at 6:59 pm
>>Provided no-one finds out who did it, the party is NOT AT FAULT.
More humour brought to you by the increasingly ludicrous EFA…..
Who voted for it again? Who told us *we* were wrong at the march on parliament?
July 1st, 2008 at 8:33 pm
BP
You know who it was who did this don’t you…..
Thats right, those nasty and evil Exclusive Brethren
July 1st, 2008 at 8:38 pm
The problem may be with the law rather than the action. I know you guys probably don’t have a lot of time for David Farar, but he spent megabytes talking about exactly these sorts of problems with the law.
I can see why it would rankle that Mr Mulholland would choose the language he did, and that 3 news would broadcast it. However, I’ve seen enough of the comments on here about Act to know that there is no love lost between the two parties. Why get upset to find that the disrespect is mutual?
While your explanation sounds highly plausible to me, I think your hinted-at conspiracy theory is a bit much.
If it’s such a bad and inconvenient law, why didn’t the greens vote against it? Perhaps a clear statement that you want it repealed would be a smart move.
July 1st, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Or, maybe the Greens used environmentally friendly ink that simple washed off in the first rain fall?
July 1st, 2008 at 9:13 pm
mullholland is an act candidate..so obviously has ‘issues’..
(didyaknow his nickname is gimlet-eyes..?..)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
July 1st, 2008 at 11:42 pm
BP- fact remains they weren’t the version as authorised by the Party, and there’s no good proof that they were knowingly displayed that way by the people who put up the posters. Generally we don’t hold people accountable for a crime unless there’s proof that they were actually responsible in some sense, and I don’t see how this is different.
Frankly, the implementation of the law has actually been very smooth compared to my expectations.
The Optimist- I don’t see anyone who seems to be supporting either this law or the Party in this post saying that the EFA is bad or inconvenient. As for why the Party didn’t vote against it- because although it doesn’t go far enough in some senses, uses an incredibly brute-force approach, requires a large amount of effort for parties to comply with, and favours Labour over National, the reforms were necessary for an open, fair, and accountable electoral process.
Phil- Those sorts of personal attacks are petty and unnecessary. Why bother with how he looks when what he says is distasteful enough already?
July 2nd, 2008 at 7:19 pm
The whole thing seems like an excellent argument for not passing crap laws in the first place…
July 2nd, 2008 at 7:43 pm
BP and The Optimist and psycho_milt and Mr Dennis:
What on earth are you talking about? You all suggest this is evidence that the law isn’t working.
But… this is a case where the law worked! Some prat tried to make it look like someone was offending when they weren’t, the appropriate process given in the law went into action and determined that there was no actual offending occuring! So this case doesn’t validate Farrar’s scaremongering at all: precisely the opposite.
Nor does this ruling mean that anyone can now get away with anything (as Mr Dennis claims) - one well-deserved ruling of “innocent” does not mean that no-one can now be found guilty.
July 2nd, 2008 at 9:18 pm
icehawk:
“Nor does this ruling mean that anyone can now get away with anything (as Mr Dennis claims) - one well-deserved ruling of “innocentâ€? does not mean that no-one can now be found guilty.”
No, but it shows that it can be done. Others may also feel it is worth the risk to try…
July 2nd, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Er, yes, in retrospect I can’t think of a better use of my taxes than having a bunch of highly-paid civil servants investigating whether a couple of centimeters missing from the bottom of a poster is an offence or not. What a fool I’ve been!
July 16th, 2008 at 12:03 am
Or Scenario D:
The greens printed off a load of posters and only found out afterwards that they needed to be authorised.
Recalled all the unauthorised posters and had new ones made, but missed these ones.
As Blair noted on his blog, the bottom of the posters line up with the bottom of the other posters, and the ratio of the height and width of the posters is consistent with standard paper sizes so it hasn’t been cut off at the bottom.
Its not like it wouldn’t be the first time it took the greens 6 months to realise they needed to authorise something… the green website, this blog, your big billboards, the ‘i only date x who vote green’ stickers (funny how they were authorised during re-orientation but not during orientation at the start of the year eh…)
July 16th, 2008 at 7:02 am
peter, the ‘i only date boys/girls who vote green’ stickers were produced by a group of five campus green groups, each of which payed for them with their own funds, each of which is an unregistered third party, not a part of the party body itself. and they as such do not require an authorisation line, although they have had since origionally printed an authorisation line, though it is the old cambridge street one.
Furthermore, right from the start the PDF files that were circulated to detirmine the content of the posters have had the authorisation line on them and the posters were printed with them, to the best of my knowledge there was not a pilot run from which these ‘blank’ ones could have come.