Herald misses return ship home
Like the Japanese soldiers who apocryphally continued guarding their post long after World War 2 had finished the Herald continues steadfastly in its campaign to prove the Electoral Finance Act is an attack on democracy.
First it has Bill English demonstrating for logic students, with this statement, the exact opposite of a tautology:
“The worst of it is that is has had a freezing effect on the expression of political opinion in election year.”
It then has a short list of 12 electoral finance act issues that the police, courts or Electoral Commission have had to consider so far, seven of which are currently unresolved or decision pending. So it’s hard to read much into that one way or the other except that people taking their time thinking about things.
Then John Armstrong highlights the many ways Labour has tangled itself upon its own law before making the astute point that:
Other more personally relevant issues - fuel prices and murders - are crowding out the act and stopping it getting the attention it was accorded last year. The debate is increasingly restricted to the Wellington “beltway”.
Well the Wellington beltway, on the whole, are also bored with the issue, by comparison with the Herald headline writers, but fair point.
The Herald editorial closes its pompous case by declaring against the evidence of widespread political hubbub in the public that the act is ‘silencing independent voices’:
Political participation should never have been restricted in this way. After six ludicrous months it is possible to look forward in reasonable confidence, whoever forms the government, that this discredited act will not stain our liberties forever.
The Herald continues to confuse restrictions on the right to make large financial contributions to a political parties or their campaigns, with the right to campaign on an issue, which has not been affected in any way.
The loss of political consensus around how to campaign has determinedly been blown out of the water not just by the Electoral Finance Act, but also the behaviour of parties during the 2005 campaign. Rebuilding that consensus is certainly taking time. The best way to do that is through a non-partisan forum like a citizens’ assembly.
June 18th, 2008 at 10:16 am
Hiroo Onoda was not apocryphal, but quite real. I’ve read the book and it’s a fascinating and detailed read.
June 18th, 2008 at 10:38 am
Yes, you are right John Carter. I probably should not have linked to his story but one of the other similar stories that were not quite so verifiable.
June 18th, 2008 at 11:17 am
>>except that people taking their time thinking about things.
Which is more than the Greens and Labour appeared to do before passing the turkey. Are you still at your post defending the EFA? The same bill that is proving to be the farce we all said it would be?
We haven’t even got into election season yet, which is when the real lawyer on lawyer action begins….
June 18th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
I agree Frog, the EFA was designed to stop the press speaking out.
I know, lets report them to the police for breaching the EFA act, given that they are not Labour or the Greens the police might even decide that they should prosecute them.
We just cannot afford the people having the right of free speech.
June 18th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
When will you guys realise that no amount of money spent will get any party into government; we banned direct bribery of voters at some point in the 19th Century. Spending money on fancy advertising will make no difference to people’s votes if they don’t like the policy, now will it not?
All the Electoral Finance Act was designed to do was make it much easier for the Labour Party to get themselves re-elected by stiffling opposition, as National has always relied on the big backers, while Labour has had the grass roots union support (which is of course much cheaper).
June 18th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
But will the Parliamentary Labour Party Leader’s Office register as a separate party to legitimise the brochure that Bill English so convincingly delivered to Parliament, which the Leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister have declared as not authorised by them?
June 18th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
“we banned direct bribery of voters at some point in the 19th Century.”
Shame, it made things much simpler and was at least money in the hand, rather than promises that you’ll be rewarded with somebody else’s money later.
June 18th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Frog, Far from the Herald being confused I would suggest that you are.
Towards the end of your commentary you say that the Herald confuses the right to make large financial contributions to political parties with the right to campaign on an issue.
Firstly the issue with the restrictions in the Electoral Finance Act relate to the ability of people and organisations to participate in the electoral process by encouraging or persuading someone to vote or not to vote for a political party or candidate. One of our most basic rights in a democracy is the ability to participate in the electoral process and to seek to influence the outcome of an election. The EFA restricts our right to do so and not only that it restricts it in a way far beyond what the Human Rights Commission considered reasonable.
As you are aware the HRC made it very clear that their first choice was that the bill should be withdrawn and the politicians should start again. Failing that they identified changes in four major areas that they wanted.
Firstly they argued that the EFA should only apply to the three months immediately prior to the election. They were overruled and Parliament voted for restrictions from 1 January. Secondly, they wanted the regime over third party speech to be far less draconian and argued that the cap on third party speech should be $250-300,000. They were overruled on this issue too and the cap was set at $120,000.
When the Herald states that: “Political participation should never have been restricted in this way,” they are simply reflecting the views of the HRC. I think it reflects badly on you, and the Green Party MPs who continue to ignore this issue.
Earlier this year I protested against the EFA on Waiheke Island on the occasion of Jeanette Fitzsimons State of the Planet Speech. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of support and sympathy I had from Green Party supporters on this issue. I was told that the issue of the EFA had divided Green Party members and supporters down the middle and I was delighted that there was still a large group within the Green Party who were prepared to stand up for the rights of ordinary individuals and organisations to participate in the electoral process. It is a pity that you, Frog, are not prepared to congratulate and acknowledge the very principled position the Herald has taken.
Turning now to the issue of large financial contributions to political parties and candidates. The Act is far more prescriptive over what must be disclosed and not disclosed. The reality however is that anyone or any organisation that wants to give a large donation to a political party or candidate can continue to do so without having it disclosed if they structure their donation in the right way. Prior to the final vote being taken on the Act I met with an MP who supported the Act and he openly referred to the loopholes that remain in the Act that allow large donations to be structured such that they do not need to be disclosed.
So far from the Herald being confused, I think you are. If you have a real and genuine interest in what the Act really achieves, or doesn’t (far beyond the spin of the politicians) I would be happy to meet and discuss it with you further.
June 18th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Frog, reading back over what I have just written I realise I omitted one point I wanted to make and that was simply to acknowledge your point that issue based advertising is not effected by the EFA. This of course allows Greenpeace to campaign against whaling in the southern oceans without restriction and will allow my organisation, the Freedom of Speech Trust to campaign for the repeal of the EFA without restriction.
Notwithstanding the Herald’s comments that the Act will surely change after the election I believe it should change before the election. At the very least I believe Parliament should reduce the regulatory period to three months. This will allow the spending limits of all MPs and candidates to be reset to zero at the commencement of the election campaign proper. I suspect that there are already MPs who have spent more than $20,000 on election advertisements since 1 January without even realising it. There must be a real chance if we don’t start again at zero there will be a rash of legal challenges following the election.
June 19th, 2008 at 11:42 am
John- attempting to persuade people to your point of view is in no way banned by the EFA. What it bans is shallow name exposure. You are still perfectly entitled to campaign on the issues as a third party without registering. “Vote Labour” doesn’t convince anyone of anything- it just gives voters who aren’t engaged in the election at all something to remember. If this sort of advertising had no effect, why would parties spend hundreds of thousands of dollars doing it?
As for the loopholes- I think if we find that there have been ridiculous amounts of $9,999 anonymous donations, that’ll be easy enough to close.
June 19th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Ari, one of our most basic rights in a democracy is the right to campaign for or against a government ( or any politcal party) and to replace that government. Government’s serve at the pleasure of the people. What this law restricts is the ability of people to “encourage or persuade people to vote , or not to vote for a party or candiate”. It restricts them in one of their most basic democratic rights. The Human Rights Commission does not disagree this is unreasonable. In fact they would probably argue that if a politcal party or candiate is to be restrcited as to what they spend, it is only logical to restrict “third parties” in the same way. The question becomes what are reasonable restrictions. The HRC beleived it was a cap of $300,000 for the last three months of th eeelction campaign. The simple fact is that parliament ignored their recommendation and voted to impose restrictions that were over 8 times more severe. ( 3.5 times longer and less than half as much).
Yes people can still be involved in issue based campaign, but they can not seek to be involved in the democratic process by encouraging someone to vote or not vote for any particular party etc.
With regard to donations of $10,000 or less to a particular political party you will never know. That is my point.
A corporate with 20 separate subsidaries could give give $200,000 to New Zealand First ( or the Greens) by making separate donations of $10,000 ( one form each subsidary) and the public of New Zealand need never know. The EFA does not stop this. What is dishonest about this legislation is that MPs who support have argued that there will be greater disclosure, when there need not. That is misleading.
The only person who need know is the financial agent of NZF and he has no duty to disclose. So how will you find out?
June 19th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
John
Great (and highly informative) post, sadly you are wasting your time here, the Greens are not interested in facts.
For some reason they are against free speech.
June 19th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
The Electoral Finance Act was an uncharacteristic miscalculation by Prime Minister Helen Clark - perhaps provoked by moral outrage at the actions of the Exclusive Brethren in 2005 which blinded her to the political consequences of a head-on confrontation with APN and Fairfax media empires. The fundamental reality is that in the twenty first century, when mass parties are a thing of the past and the mass media holds the power to influence, or even determine, the outcome of general elections, no democratic party can afford to be offside with the fourth estate. By moving to control political advertising the Labour-led government managed to antagonise the media without, however, significantly limiting its ability to influence the electoral process.
APN and Fairfax don’t need access to second or third party advertising copy in order to shape the outcome of an election. The can do so using editorials, regular political columnists, specially commissioned opinion pieces and selective political reporting. That is the reality of the democratic process. Democratic political parties need the support or acquiescence of the mass media if they are to have any hope of gaining and holding state power. (Winston Peters has been able to retain a political toehold for New Zealand First by confronting the media, but that strategy has never been able to deliver him anything like a majority of the popular vote. And there is certainly no room on that narrow ledge for both Winston Peters and Helen Clark.). Winston Peters aside, any modern democratic political party that attempts to take on the media may as well be driven by a death wish.
The Greens won’t necessarily go down to defeat alongside Labour, partly because the Green parliamentarians have adopted what the media consider to be a more responsible attitude in the current parliament, and partly because APN’s political strategists recognise that launching an offensive against a small party like the Greens would not be a good look. To do so would create the impression of a bunch of right-wing bullies engaged in a general vendetta against the left. And perhaps more importantly, the media don’t want to bring about a situation in which the radical left stands entirely outside of the parliamentary tent. But post-election, in the event of electoral success for the National Party, the Greens will still be left in the uncomfortable position of having to decide whether to follow Labour into the political wilderness, or to do a deal with a triumphant right-wing coalition.
It is naive to assume that the Electoral Finance Act heralds a return to a mythical “level playing field� in New Zealand politics. In practical terms, all it is likely to achieve is the ousting of the fifth Labour government. And it does nothing to address the real problem for democratic politicians, the elephant in the room which is the power of the APN-Fairfax media duopoly. The good news is that the more that APN (publishers of the New Zealand Herald and New Zealand Listener) try to dominate the political process in New Zealand, the more fragile their position becomes. (See “Democracy under threat� at http://www.republican.co.nz )
June 19th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
No Geoff, it was a shambolic exercise in Government policy and legislative drafting, I would agree.
And I also agree that the Greens should have been tougher with it in negotiations with Labour.
But, in principle, it is sound. Vested interests should not be able to buy votes because they have more money to do so than anyone else, and donations to political parties should be publicly transparent to ensure voters know who may be buying the support of a particular party in their personal or corporate interests.
Unfortunately, the Act we ended up with is extraordinarily bureaucratic, and has loopholes (that maybe Labour wanted).
But at least it is better than having over $1m of hidden proxy advertising for a particular political party courtesy of a particularly nutty right wing fundie Christian fringe group who are waiting (impatiently) for the rapture.
That Key and Brash colluded with that bunch of fundie nutcases for over $1m proxy Nat advertising in 2005 is an absolute disgrace.
It’s a bit like if McCain accepted proxy funding from the KKK (oops, sorry John McC, you might have. The US laws are even worse, so you would not necessarily know anyway).
June 20th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Toad has missed the point I was trying to make, which is that, regardless of the rights or wrongs of the EFA, Helen Clark uncharacteristically miscalculated the adverse political consequences of introducing the bill to Parliament. I believe that she, like many of the bill’s supporters, had become obsessed with the anti-Labour campaign waged by the Exclusive Brethren in the 2005 election and that this had the effect of clouding her usually astute judgement.
Judging by his references to the “nutty right wing fundie Christian fringe group� and “that bunch of fundie nutcases� it seems that Toad is also unable to bring a necessary element of dispassionate objectivity to the whole affair. The Exclusive Brethren are actually not such a problem to the political fortunes of the left. Few, if any committed Green or Labour supporters would have shifted allegiance on the basis of the Brethren propaganda. Probably the only effect, if any, of the Brethren leaflets and newspaper advertisements would have been to harden attitudes on both sides of the political divide.
I wonder whether Toad really understands the complex character of what he calls disparagingly calls “fundie� groups, and I wonder whether he understands that the real problem for those democratic parties following a “leftist� political line comes from APN, Fairfax and the other mass media organisations.
The only way that the parliamentary Greens can address this problem is by moving sharply to the right, just as the European Green parties have, just as Jim Anderton’s Alliance did, and just as the Labour Party did way back in the early days of its parliamentary progress. When that happens the EFA will be seen as a mere aberration provoked by a political over-reaction to the rather ineffectual activities of a minor Christian sect.
June 20th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
With respect to John Boscawen’s reference to the “principled” position of the New Zealand Herald, I wonder how that fits with the efforts by an APN executive and three uniformed APN security men to prevent me from carrying a placard on the public footpath outside APN headquarters? Is “freedom of speech” the special perogative of Australian media moguls, and no one else? Or is it, as someone suggested to me, evidence of the Herald’s “breath taking hypocrisy”?
June 20th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
Geoff Fisher said: I wonder whether Toad really understands the complex character of what he calls disparagingly calls “fundie� groups, and I wonder whether he understands that the real problem for those democratic parties following a “leftist� political line comes from APN, Fairfax and the other mass media organisations.
I do indeed, Geoff, and the NZ Herald, in particular, has put up the challenge. All mainstream media is right wing. That is not surprising, because it is controlled by people who are vastly rich and don’t really want to share their wealth with us ordinary people.
The fundie Christians hate the Greens too, because we believe in tolerance and social justice, rather than bonding women in slavery, killing queers and an “eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”.
So there is an axis of interest between the mainstream media’ neo-conservative interests and those of the fundie Christian bigots - it is to “keep those bloody Greens out of Government because they potentially threaten our respective interests”.
Which we do. And will continue to do.
June 21st, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Toad’s reply has persuaded me that he does have some understanding of the decisive role of the mass media within the electoral system, but at the same time confirms that his opinion of religious fundamentalists is itself founded on ignorance, bigotry and prejudice. But since that issue is “off topic” I won’t try to debate it any further here.
As an aside, I don’t know whether anyone else has drawn attention to the fact that the media empires felt threatened by the EFA in ways which extended well beyond the province of parliamentary politics. The logic of the EFA could equally well apply in all areas of business. Why not cap the advertising budgets of hardware chains? Why should small hardware merchants offering good products and service be driven out of business by the advertising power of Mitre 10 and Bunnings, for instance? Just one more reason why large business corporations, and the media empires, were so solidly opposed to the EFA.
And I still cannot quite fathom why the Labour-led government decided to engage in a suicidal confrontation with APN, Fairfax et al over this issue. Again, the only explanation I have is that they were reacting irrationally to the involvment of a small group of people who they believe “bond women in slavery and kill queers”.
June 21st, 2008 at 12:59 pm
>>All mainstream media is right wing
Cough….splutter….
What?!?!?
Have you not seen TVNZ and TV3 News?
Fox is right wing….
June 23rd, 2008 at 10:57 am
I believe that it is unhelpful to characterise the mass media as “right-wing� or, for that matter, “left wing�. You wind up in a “yes it is - no it isn’t� type argument which goes nowhere. It is more helpful to analyse the structure and function of the mass media, and the role which it plays within the social, economic and political dynamics of a given regime. The mass media in New Zealand, and the western world generally) is liberal on issues such as women’s rights, gay rights, racial diversity and economic deregulation. Only the last of these is a typical “right wing� policy (and, ironically it is a “right wing� policy most actively pursued by the “left-wing� Labour Party).
The combination of all these policies means that the mass media is generally neo-imperialist, justifying the right of the “international community� (i.e. global capital, led by the United States of America and the United Kingdom) to indiscriminately impose a liberal agenda on non-conforming states - the good, the bad and the ugly.
None of this in itself amounts to a condemnation of the mass media. If liberal neo-imperialism is a good thing for humanity, then so is the dominance of the western mass media organisations. But if neo-imperialism is a bad thing, then we need to start looking at exactly what role the media plays in the regime, and how it chooses to play. Then we find that the western media has appallingly low standards of journalism, suppresses crucial information, promotes the cult of personality and all in all functions as nothing more than a crude propaganda arm of the regime. This may be a worry to those (like Toad perhaps) who hope to reform the regime from within. But looking longer term, and taking the wider view, one can see that the condition of the mass media in New Zealand is just one more sign that the regime as a whole is heading inexorably to collapse and destruction.