Electoral Finance Act Archive

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  Brownlee’s EFA Bungle Says It All

  
  
  
  There’s something symbolic about Gerry Brownlee’s procedural mistakes holding up the EFA repeal reading last week. There was a bungled urgency motion followed by a fumbled adjournment motion and a reversal by the Speaker. The end result is that, after an objection by the Greens, the EFA’s second reading was delayed until today. Where to start [...] read more
  February 17, 2009 7:37 am - 37 Comments
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  Time to name the donors

  
  
  
  Brian Rudman in the Herald seems fairly impressed with the Greens’ Open Government policy.  He suggests that the Electoral Finance Act seems anecdotally to be having the effect of reducing the impact of big secret donor funded advertising during the campaign. On Monday, the Greens called for even tougher funding rules as part of its open [...] read more
  November 5, 2008 11:04 am - 9 Comments
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  Show me the money

  
  
  
  It’s time for another quick update on the electoral donation declarations.  It’s now just 11 days to the election and Labour, United Future, the Maori Party, New Zealand First and the Progressive Party are still yet to declare any donations of $20,000 or greater. National has declared only $60,000 so far while Act and the [...] read more
  October 28, 2008 3:07 pm - 23 Comments
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  The donations scandal

  
  
  
  No I’m not talking about not Ian Wishart’s one. The fact the both major parties are currently so lacking in major donors seems a scandal. It’s now only three weeks to the election and yet, as of ten days ago, Labour hasn’t declared a single received donation over $20,000 this year to help fund its [...] read more
  October 18, 2008 11:05 pm - 19 Comments
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  Car Free Day’s antithesis – the Road Transport Forum

  
  
  
  If the public wonders why we seem to consistently get crazy things like this situation Russel was talking about on Thursday: A new report, released today, says there will be a 75 percent increase in freight over the next 25 years but predicts little – if any – difference in the way freight is moved [...] read more
  September 20, 2008 8:10 am - 18 Comments
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  Citizens’ Assemblies

  
  
  
  Ping pong and George Darroch both drew to my attention this article about citizen’s assemblies earlier this week and it’s one worth sharing because this is the model that the Greens propose for sorting out the Electoral Finance Act. And it’s the model that Labour has only reluctantly agreed to and National wants to throw [...] read more
  September 11, 2008 9:42 pm - 11 Comments
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  Winston and electoral funding law

  
  
  
  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 [...] read more
  September 9, 2008 12:10 pm - 7 Comments
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  Outrageous impositions

  
  
  
   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 [...] read more
  July 10, 2008 10:36 pm - 29 Comments
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  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 [...] read more
  July 1, 2008 2:35 pm - 18 Comments
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  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 [...] read more
  June 18, 2008 8:55 am - 20 Comments