I am pleased you acknowlege that you would have personally prefered higher limits. I would have to. Had the limits been set at $300,000 and three months as recommended by the HRC I would not have continued my campign. While I would still have believed the Act should have been repealed I would not have gone to the trouble and expense I have this year opposing it. However by imposing such oppressive limits in the way they have it is clear for all to see that the EFA was nothing but a blatant attempt by the government ( aided and abetted by the Greens, Jim Anderton and NZ First ) to restrict people speaking out and opposing it. Why else would you want to stop Family First, a group known to oppose the “smacking ” bill and strong on other conservative issues, from putting a brochure in every letterbox in the country?

On point 3 above once again I believe you are mistaken. You say a party with a lot of funding from anonymous donations below $1000 will be subject to quite some scrutiny. How will you know? NZF is hardly going to publically announce it had received over $100,000 in anonymous donations all of which were delivered in envelopes containing 10, $100 bills is it?

David Farrar did an excellant post a few weeks ago where he calculated the “disclosed” income of each of the political parties as a percentage of expenditure. Labour and National’s incomes were around 80% , Act 35% and NZF was 5%. So NZF had virtually no income. We now know that in the past they have had non disclosed income in $10,000 multiple instalments from separate, but related Vela parties . $150,000 apparently. We also know that the Spencer Trust received at least $25,000 ( probbaly much more) and that tihs was apparently given to NZF, although we do not know how . A legal way would be 3 anonymous bank cheques for $10,000 or less. ( or just cash)

My point is that there could just as easily be a big discrepancy between income and expenditure this year for NZF and the other parties and you will never know how it got there. Consider 3 legitmate ways to explain a $200,000 ” discrepancy”. Someone might have given the National Party anonymously $200,000 in 200 separate envelopes of $1000 each, 2 donors each with 10 separate NZ companies under their control could have arranged for those ten companies to each give $10,000 of their own money, or 20 separate Iindividuals might have given $10,000 each, or finally 100 people might give National $2000 each. The National Party would not need to disclose any of the above.

The “discrepancy’ will presumably be much bigger this year from the National Party because I guess they will not be announcing that the Waitemeta Trust gave $1 million plus. It will be undisclosed.

You will never know what censorship the EFA will impose. That is the point. You wil never see the brochures that family First want to distribute to every household in the ountry, because they are not going to be distributed, or if they are they will need to be altered to ensure they ar enot an election advertisement. The same things goes for my ad. Thta is why the idea that th eEFA only affects a few people is rubbish.

1. Your choice I guess. But it does undermine your “CENSORED” claim somewhat, when we can’t assess what, if anything, can’t be said.
2. That’s one way of looking at it. Personally I would have included higher limits on 3rd parties but I’m not convinced that these limits are necessarily unreasonable. You might say the spending limit of one 4rd party is only 2.5% of the spending limit of one large party. The other way of looking at it is that it might take 40 3rd party spending limits to be equivalent to one large party. Perhaps not unreasonable in that light.
3. We’ll see. A party which gains a lot of fudnign from anonymous donation under $1k will be subject to quite some scrunity. As I said, there may still be some avenues. But much harder to achieve and I’m judging that unlikely to result.
4. I’d welcome, though, efforts to strengthen the donations regime. What I’m really not convinced by though is that it the EFA operates to impose (undue) “election year censorship” – I’m yet to see any evidence of that.

4.

Yes I can most definitely say that $120,000 is clearly unreasonable. It does not even allow an organisation to put one letter in every letterbox in the country. How can that be reasonable? The Electoral Commisison said the Labour and National parties and their candidates will each have $4.8 million to spend ( or $9.6 million in total). How can limiting an organisation to $120k, when each of the majors can spend $4.8 million. That is just 2.5%. The Brethren reputedly spent $1.2 million, and parliament voted to restrict everyone else to just $120,000 or 10% of that sum. The government orginally proposed $60,000.

How do you know they won’t? You have no way of knowing this whatsoever. And you will never know if it happens this eelction because the EFA has been deliberately drafted so this type of behaviour can continue. Take Bob Jones Spencer Trust donation etc. Let’s for the moment assume as Winston Peters assures us that everything is legal. The Spencer Trust passed $25k to NZF without NZF declaring it. There is a perfectly logical explanation for this. All the ST needed to do was to get at least 3 bank cheques, each for $10k or less and pass them to NZF. No disclosure required form NZF at the time.

The year NZF will need to get 25, $1000 cheques, or easier still $25,000 in cash…..and put $1000 amounts in separate envelopes and pass it anonomously to NZF.

If NZF are prepared to pass the $25K through in this way to avoid disclosure in previous years, why wouldn’t they be prepared to do exactly the same this year?

It is not robust at all. It wasn’t intended to be robust. What it was intended to do was to impose a form of election year censorship in NZ. NZF voted for the Act knowing full well that the type of funding mechansims they has used in the pass could continue in 2008, even under the EFA.

1. But your advert is still permissible, even though political parties “have a view” on the issue?
2. What else would you have wanted to say that was prohibited? Vote out Labour because they passed the EFA? That might fall within the regulation, but with good cause?
3. On the spending limits, I think you’re looking for exactness when there isn’t any. At the end of the day it’s a judgement. I might have suggested a different limit, but can you fairly say the $120k is a clearly unreasonable one?
4. But they won’t. While there’s still some theoretical avenues for people to attempt to circumvent the controls (some others are prevented), it’s unlikely that that will result – meaning the regime is relatively robust on this point. Not perfect. But relatively robust and instrumental in changing behaviour.

I was careful in my ad not to refer to the policies of individual political parties. Could I have done that and still not produced an election advertisement? I believe I could have, but chose not to do so. There were other things I may also wish to have said that would clearly have been prohibited.

Such uncertainty is hardly conducive to encouraging people and interst groups to be invloved in the electoral process. The HRC strssed throughout that they were trying to encorage more people to participate, rather than less.

In terms of what the actual limits should be , many amounts were suggested but most were plucked from thin air ( DPF had $500,000). However the Electoral Commisison were the only ones to set out a formula for how they calculated an amount of $250-300,000 and then recommended the upper limit of $300,000 becasue of the uncertainty.

It is also worth mentioning that one of the reputed reasons for introducing the EFA was to ‘stop” the Brethren. Rosslyn Noonan mad eit very clear that the Act would not necessarily do this. There is nothing to stop 7 Brethren each spending $120,000 in the same way thee is nothing to stop the trustees of the Spencer Trust withdrawing $25,000 from th ebank in $100 bills and putting it 10 each in 25 evelopes and posting it to NZF one at a time.

1. I note the wording in your advert was carefully worded on the distinction between “issue adverts” and “election adverts”. However, many others are suggesting the EFA suppresses everyday advocacy (indeed, as DPF does in this post) and should therefore be repealed, when clearly it does not. Indeed, this is the major point of many campaigning against the EFA.

2. On the regulation of spending on election adverts, as you know, the merits of such regulation is something on which reasonable people can differ. And they argue that ensuring an even-playing field in terms of spending also aim to ensure fair elections. That’s a debate infused with philosphical perspectives that we will not solve.

d

What the EFA does is restrict prople speaking out for or against individual candidates or political parties.

My ad is not an “election advertisement”, in that it does not try to persuade someone to vote or not to vote for a particular party. I am campaigning for the repeal of the EFA and while I am not trying to persuade people how to vote in this ad, I beleive in a democracy we should all have the right to do so.

I am aware that Family First want to distribute a brochure throughout NZ, that could possibly be interpreted as trying to influence how people vote, and as it will cost more than $120,000 to do so, the Act will prevent them from doing so. How does that lead to an informed electorate and free and fair elections.

Had parliament followed the advice of the Electoral Commission and the Human Rights Commisison and allowed third parties to spend up to $300,000 Family First would have been able to distribute its brochure as it wants.

Instead parliament has voted to enforce a form of election censorship. it is a disgrace. i note the DominionPost again yesterday called on th egovernment to repeal the Act.

It should not happen after th eelection. it should happen now, so we can have free and fair elections this year.

DPF, you and the Nats are a disgrace if that is really what you stand for. ANY spending limit is a restriction on Freedom of Speech. It is Joe Stalin “Lite”. Why can’t you see that?

So what if someone spends 50 million pushing their viewpoint, if we know who they are? It is a typical ploy of totalitarian government, to allege to be “protecting” the people, who presumably lack the intelligence to judge in this situation.

Actually, there is NO medium of political ideology with anything like the potency of the news media. Years of steady party line “news” and opinion is far more damaging to “democracy” than explicit forays into the field of public influence by wealthy people. Would you agree that therefore, the media must be controlled and forced to provide balance? No?

So, back to our guy who wants to spend 50 million influencing the political process. Simple. Buy, or start, a newspaper or TV station. So your “spending limits” have the perverse effect of barring all wealthy people EXCEPT those who are SO WEALTHY that they can own media organs. Hmmmmmmmm, is that really a good idea?

If the EFA is actually a very watered down version of the original proposal.

What were the main stanchions of the original drafting?

Then what was it actually trying to achieve?

Had there been no fight or intervention, what would we have had to deal with?

Frick off Hulun and Huther.