by frog
A member spotted this ad in a Hamilton newspaper to attend a lunch with Rodney Hide and Roger Douglas :
The authorisation statement looks like a clever, if somewhat grumpy little dig by Act. But the reality was that Act had to authorise electoral advertisements even before the Electoral Finance Act passed this year. Not much change to free speech there that I can see.
(The other outrageous claim the ad makes is that Rodney and Roger are ‘two of New Zealand’s greatest speakers’. Bwah ha ha!)
Published in Campaign | Justice & Democracy by frog on Thu, July 10th, 2008
Tags: , Act, Electoral Finance Act, rodney hide, roger douglas
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
The weirdest thing is that they claim United Future voted for the Electoral Finance Act, which they didn’t, so it is factually inaccurate in that regard too.
Not sure is factual accuracy is a ground for complaint, but, given that it is United Future who might be aggrieved, I don’t really care.
So off to the ACT rally, and we’ll all get Rogered – again!
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Toad- if they end up in government this year they may well end up ‘two of New Zealand’s greatest speakers’
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Move along,move along nothing to see here.
I understand from sources the Green Party is regretting it’s support of the EFA ?
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Bryan, I understand your source is that well-known authority on the Green Party, Kiwiblog.
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Frog: This may surprise but from time to time I do socialise with paid up members of the Green Party ( one of the down sides of having been a new age crystal wearing, sweat lodge chanting spinner in a previous lifestyle & living in Ponsonby doesn’t help either) and the couple concerned were expressing concerns about damage it had done to the party’s brand. Apparently these are concerns a number of your cohorts are having.
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The person who authorised it lives just up the road from me. LOL!
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Bryan: Any chance the couple you refer to may have been politely responding to some conversational “pull-polling”?
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Patrick Starr – Roger Douglas as speaker? – presumably because he is well known for his concern for due process and giving all sides of the debate a chance to be heard?
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“But the reality was that Act had to authorise electoral advertisements even before the Electoral Finance Act passed this year. ”
Thats what I thought…
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Bryan, I don’t think anyone is the Green Party is regretting backing the principle the EFA is based upon – that elections should be decided by a contest of policy, rather than a contest of money.
I, for one, do regret some of the poor drafting and silly detail though – like the requirement that financial agents have their residential, rather than business, address in election advertising authorisations and the wording of the definition of “election advertisement” that is so sloppy the Electoral Commission can’t decide whether Party logos fall under it or not.
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Outinfront: “Conversational push polling” ? No, but now that you have suggested it I’ll have to use it as a technique. Would work well when I get harrassed by pushy Green Peace salesbots at the Three Lamps shops. Then again as they are motivated by commission not ideology they may be hard to “turn” to the dark side
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toad: so are you saying that there are regrets among the Greens ? I’ll have to do a Google site search on Kiwiblog and find the Farrar piece Frog referred to above. I haven’t seen it and it may be good material for “push polling” Green Peace salesbots.
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>>that elections should be decided by a contest of policy, rather than a contest of money.
But the EFA doesn’t address this principle at all. It just hands more taxpayer money to incumbent politicians at the expense of challengers, doesn’t do away with hidden donations, and caps are geared towards Labours expected campaign fund levels.
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FYI: ( And yes it is linked from “the Evil Empire”
)
“To be completely frank at the outset, I must confess to feeling rather cheated. When I accepted the Law School’s invitation to speak on political freedom of expression and the Electoral Finance Act 2007 (“the EFA?), I was looking forward to regaling you with clever hypothetical examples, showing how ridiculous the EFA’s operation in practice could be. The intervening period, with a continuous stream of real absurdities, has completely stolen my thunder. ”
Dr Rodney Harrison QC
Full text here.
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On the EFA debate in parliment I remember watching Rodney Hide’s speech on it and I thought it was really good. As usual with parliment debate none of the loosers were there to listen.
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Bryan Spondre said toad: so are you saying that there are regrets among the Greens ?
Well, I’m a Green and I have expressed a couple of my own regrets above, so I suppose there are. I think the Greens are publicly on record as expressing concern re the financial agent residential address requirement, and have definitely expressed concerns that the anonymous donations restrictions have too many loopholes.
I actually agree with a lot of what Dr Rodney Harrison says, including this, in relation to the provisions in the purpose clause of the Act:
These are all laudable aims, in theory capable of justifying reasonable limitations on political free speech in the context of a periodic election campaign.
The difficulty, as Dr Harrison states, is when we get into the detail. The Greens had considerable reservations about many aspects of the detail of the Act.
When no more concessions from the Government were able to be negotiated, it came down to a choice for the Greens as to which was the lesser of two evils – support the Bill into law, knowing it was flawed in a number of regards, or pull the plug on it and allow the law that was blatantly abused by the Exclusive Brethren and the National Party at the 2005 election to remain in place.
The Greens chose the former, and I think they were correct to do so. The situation where unlimited anonymous proxy advertising on behalf of political parties was lawful could not be permitted to continue, as it was a total affront to democracy.
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the efa is “a total affront to democracy’/freedom of speech..
..and is a total ‘dogs’ breakfast’ piece of legislation..
and your incrementalist arguments defending the indefensible don’t ‘wash’/stand..
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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>>The Greens chose the former
s59
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Unfortunately as I have found, since learning some things about the NZ political process, much legislation here is very sloppily worded.
Does this mean:
1. Acts are often rushed through in a reactive fashion, pandering to the populist feeling at the time.
2. Drafters are poorly paid and trained and there are too FEW Lawyers in the House.
3. We lack an Upper House whose function partly is to review Legislation and rectify flaws as far as possible.
4. The quality of elected members, by and large, is poor, and they lack the foresight to pass good legislation.
5. Politicians don’t give a damn, and rely on the Courts to sort it all out
while they get on with making their fortune and becoming ‘the best
speakers in the land’. (joke)
6. All of these.
7. None of these. (please give alternatives)
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bigbluekiwi:
State Owned Enterprises Act 1986 “Nothing in this Act shall permit the Crown to act in a manner that is inconsistent with the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi”.
The labour government clap clap, lets put this line in an act and fail to define the principles and leave it to the courts to do the job of parliment.
This act is the worst piece of crap ever from the house of retards.
does parliment make the law or does the court??
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What do you mean, Turnip?
The principles of the treaty of waitangi are defined in five different acts of parliament. Admittedly, those five acts all define them differently, so it doesn’t really help.
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Yeah, let’s move on from the “principles” of te Tiriti o Waitangi, and concentrate on the Articles of Te Tiriti – what was actually signed, ans in Te Reo, which was the language of the version the vast majority of rangatira signed.
The “principles” is a cop-out, made up by Labour and National led Governments and the NZ Court of Appeal to avoid having to deal with what Te Tiriti o Waitangi actually agreed.
If you go back to the Articles, Turnip and Kahikatea, you may find you agree on a consistent interpretation.
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bigbluekiwi said: Unfortunately as I have found, since learning some things about the NZ political process, much legislation here is very sloppily worded.
Think I would agree. The Electoral Finance Act is a prime example. A laudable set of principles expressed in the purpose clause, but so poorly drafted that even the Electoral Commission can’t work out what parts of it mean. Hence the litigation.
I don’t often agree with philu, but I think he was right when he called it a “dog’s breakfast”.
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While the word principles is used in the 1975 act, it doesn’t define what the principles are.
again this is the same in 1986 act as well.
It isn’t till after the court case brought by maori against the sale of state owned enterprises that the labour government sees it has a problem.
The court was left to define the principles, something that should of been done by parliment.
Note it is wrong for the court to behave in this manor and the correct response from the court should be the principles are not defined and refer back to the parliment to do its job.
Often the court instead defines what is missing in the act and the parliment just passes it into law. This isn’t good politics as the courts are not there to create legislation.
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bigblukiwi,
6. All of these.
A good example is the Illegal Street Racing Act. It includes the offence of committing an exhibition of speed or acceleration. None of those terms are defined in that Act an only speeding offence is defined in transport law. So it was left to a District Court judge to determine what the offence meant. He used the dictionary meanings and concluded that the offence consists of exceeding a speed limit or increasing speed in a place where it might be veiwed by a member of the public. Thereby making it an offence to drive a car, and possibly a pushbike, I’m not sure if the offence relates to vehicles or motor-vehicles.
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We did have to authorise material before the EFA, but:
a) we didn’t have to authorise a simple pamphlet advertising a public meeting
b) we didn’t have to include the residential address of the promoter
Also, regarding UF. They supported the bill all the way up to the third reading. Without their support earlier on, it may not have got through to a third reading at all.
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If by “regretting” you mean acknowledging that it probably cost us some popularity but was ultimately the right thing to do, then yes, maybe.
Yeah, that’s one of the areas where I’d say the EFA doesn’t go far enough- incumbents should not get preferential treatment. Alas, good luck trying to pass that kind of legislation through Parliament- you’d need at least half the house to be retiring for it to work. I think state funding of campaigns is actually positive for democracy because it makes politicians more interested in votes and less interested in lobby groups that can fund them. People may dislike the idea of politicians “taking their money”, but if the alternative is essentially having all of your politicians rely on what amounts to bribes to win office, I think it looks much more attractive.
The EFA “officially” does away with hidden donations, and although there’s a loophole, actually using it would make people very suspicious. (Can you just imagine all the pundits yelling “Why is National/Labour getting so many $999 anonymous donations?”) In practice, anyone wanting to give large amount to a party can no longer be anonymous.
I personally think Labour set the caps on party spending a little too high, but yes, caps will disadvantage the most wealthy parties- otherwise there’s no point in having them. Sadly, any electoral law passed is going to favour the incumbent government. If you aren’t confident in a good election result when big parties are spending the same amount, then that’s your business. It doesn’t make the competition in any way unfair- quite the opposite.
Ideally, we’d have an independent authority that sets electoral law, MPs paychecks, etc… so that parliament can’t fudge around patting itself on the back and fudging the law to make things easier for itself. Sadly- not the case.
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>>The quality of elected members, by and large, is poor, and they lack the foresight to pass good legislation.
Yep. Too consumed by the idea of winning a three-yearly popularity contest.
There was no reason to rush the EFA, other than to stack the deck for the 2008 popularity contest.
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frog,
The philosophical problem with illegitimising speech – How can we hear what cannot be said? After making it illegitimate to widely publish, it comes across as smug to say “not much change to free speech that I can see”.
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