Greens enjoying their law of common sense

The Herald yesterday reported on how easy and clear the Greens were finding the Electoral Finance Act – the law they forced on New Zealand.

The Green Party is going to extraordinary lengths to ensure it does not break new election advertising rules – including encouraging the owners of old Green Party T-shirts to get iron-on transfers with a campaign authorisation statement.

Of course they have already broken the law by using home addresses earlier in the year, and got the benefit of the doubt for their late donations return.

She said there was a need for extra caution because the controversy over the new law had put its critics on full alert for any breaches.

Who us? 🙂

Ms Turei said much of the trouble arose because the law change broke the former consensus between parties as to what was covered by electoral advertising law.

“The mistake was that this law was passed so close to an election year. There has been no time to develop a political consensus about what is and is not acceptable.”

So why did you support it? Metira makes it sound like the mistakes were someone else’s. Why did the Greens not say they would not support a law which had not been through a public policy process? Why did they not say they won’t vote for a law which was passed so close to the election year? Why did the Greens not say anything about the fact it was a naked attempt by Labour to screw over and silence their political opponents and destroyed the constitutional conventions around the Electoral Act?

Talking of the Electoral Finance Act, the NZPA database now has a massive 510 articles in it that mention the EFA. So that is an average of 100 articles a month – and 99% of them basically negative. I doubt a law has ever been so discredited.