by frog
From my perspective, Russell Brown managed to get right to the nub of the Winston Peters affair this morning.
[T]he perfectly legal means by which, according to Audrey Young’s Herald story, $80,000, probably from the Vela family, was split into eight chunks and channelled through linked companies to avoid declaration, does demonstrate quite what could be got away with under the old electoral law. You can easily enough make the case that the Electoral Finance Act is a mess, but the old way of doing thing was indefensible.
And also this question.
And with the revelations of The Hollow Men, and now this, it seems reasonable to ask whether the racing industry has anything else it would like to tell us. Because the big money that swings around there seems like a malign influence on the body politic.
No matter what the findings of the three Peters’ inquiries, we’ve seen the negative influence that big private money can have on our democratic system. The Electoral Finance Act tried to address this but it is struggling, not least because of repeated attacks from parties that are deliberately misinterpreting it to help it fail. That’s fine, and it’s the job of some opposition parties. But I don’t get why those same parties are rejecting out of hand the Greens’ non partisan citizens’ assembly proposal to sort this all out. Clearly politicians all have too much perceived bias to make fair electoral funding law. The decision needs to be made by an independent group like the citizens’ assembly.
Image Credit: Chris Slane
Published in Justice & Democracy by frog on Tue, September 9th, 2008
Tags: citizens' assembly, Electoral Finance Act, jury, political donations, russell brown, winston peters
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
“repeated attacks from parties that are deliberately misinterpreting it to help it fail”
Parties like the electoral commission? The human rights commission?
The old way of doing things was flawed, but it could be defended, if only on the grounds that the alternative posed by the EFA is far worse.
The EFA is indefensible — a messy, bad law passed in a hurry. That Green MP’s voted for this is a blemish on their reputations.
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But I don’t get why those same parties are rejecting out of hand the Greens’ non partisan citizens’ assembly proposal to sort this all out.
Because ordinary people are the last people they want deciding on electoral law.
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As I pointed out in response to Russell Brown’s post, yes – the various Glenngate and NZ First political finance scandals show how inadequate the Electoral Act 1993 was in achieving the putative transparancy expected by politicians. But it’s far from clear that the Electoral Finance Act 2007 does this either. There are incredibly loopholes in the EFA. And these aren’t easy ones to fix up. As for increased state funding – there’s no evidence that such a ‘solution’ would fix the problems we’re looking at here. The lessons from other countries with generous direct state funding is that it either fixes nothing or exacerbates the political finance scandals. By giving politicians even more money doesn’t do anything to make them less corrupt.
The citizen’s forum is actually also a bit of a con. The Greens strategy on political finance reform has entirely backfired, and the party has had to face up to the public derision – especially because the Greens were party to such an appalling and anti-democratic process. The forum is a cynical attempt to avoid apologizing for the damage done.
Bryce
http://www.liberation.org.nz
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Bryce:
Why?
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Because academics don’t want to leave decision’s to average Joe on the streets any more than the politicians do…
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Good article about citizen’s assemblies in Canada here.
The take-home point seems to be that citizens can reach an almost consensus (90%) on electoral issues “achieved by a thorough understanding of the options and respectful discussion with the stated goal of seeking the best solution that would be in accord with the commonly recognized values of the people”. However, when the results of their deliberations were presented as referenda, only one of the three initiatives passed with the necessary 60% support.
The author points out that “referendums (sic) are dependent on expensive media campaigns and commercial news coverage with often trivial, controversy seeking, and superficial rhetoric. Without a complete overhaul of the media system, like public opinion polls, referendums are not appropriate mechanisms for wise policy decisions.”
Like him, I’d take a well-informed citizen’s assembly any day.
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“Because ordinary people are the last people they want deciding on electoral law”
Ordinary people (which presumably includes us) are the last people you want deciding anything. Thats how you get things like the reinstatement of capital punishment.
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