DPF is a bit hard on Labour on the anonymous donations they are an important safety valve in a close society like New Zealand when Governments can tend to get a bit bossy. There is almost a hysteria about this issue.

The current system with the Electoral Commission has deficiencies however one being that it isn’t actually anonymous in the sense that the donors are known to an agency of the State.

He is right to call Labour out on the disgraceful broadcasting allocation system – it will be interesting to see who in Parliament actually support it.

However Labour are right on the prosecutions issue –this should be left to the discretion of the NZ Police they are a branch of the Executive that is used to and set up for exercising this discretion. If there is a problem with the law being hard to enforce – clean up the drafting of the law. If there is a problem with the Police understanding the law – up the training.

The danger with a specialist prosecutor is that to justify its budget and existence we will get more prosecutions – that is the last thing we need – they will add to cycle of even more regulation. And having the prosecution decision with the Electoral Commission incentivises the Commission to be over zealous especially if they get DPF’s rule making powers.

We need to get a grip and keep things in proportion – pledge cards and pamphlet authorisations are hardly capital offences.

At any rate these is another obvious way to guard against decisions not to prosecute due to error of law and that is to allow a private prosecution with leave of a judge who is there to guard against over use.

I cannot understand why some on the right clamour to prosecute what are in most cases political offences which aren’t in the great scheme of things that important.

Over all Labour get a bare pass mark – no real new thinking. Thanks again to DPF for posting these.

[Liarbore] Election rules should not advantage one party over another, nor should they place inequitable barriers to the formation and entry of new parties into Parliament.

[DPF] Labour claim this, but the actual details of their submission do not match this. Current parliamentary parties have a huge advantage over those not in Parliament yet Labour proposes they be given even more additional state resources and further that parties not in Parliament be banned from purchasing broadcasting time.

Hence the first syllable in their party’s name: Liarbore. Strangely, even some of their own MPs still get confused by this. You’d think they knew what they were signing up to.

The problem with giving the Electoral Commission the job of prosecuting is that you would then have to set up within the Commission a team of dedicated investigators to do the job. (It simply isn’t true that “they already have all of the necessary evidence when they recommend prosecution to the Police” – they may have enough prima facie evidence to believe an offence may have been committed (which is what the present statutory test requires), but you and I well know that level of “evidence” is a long way short of gaining a conviction!) And once you set up a team of dedicated investigators, then they will need to justify their existence. And if there aren’t enough important (or “real”) offences to pursue, then they will have to justify their existence by hitting minor (or “fake”) offences. Which will result in a lot of court time and wasted resources spent chasing old Mrs Murgatroyd for giving $150 without declaring her identity (on DPF’s preferred rules), or the Secretary of the 99 MP Party ’cause on the party’s election expense return he incorrectly named the person the party used to print its pamphlets. Bottom line – set up a new hammer, and you’ll find it looking for a whole lot of nails.
As for the point that the Police don’t want the job – neither does the Commission! So that’s a wash.

If the Electoral Commission feels nervous about doing it themselves they can always instruct counsel. There are plenty of barristers who could do the job, or they could instruct the Crown Solicitor for the region where the charges need to be laid.

Why is it that these whingers always go on about not buying an election but then celebrate Obama winning in the US and Rudd winning in OZ when both spent megabucks more than their more conservative opponents?

They’re happy to index donations to annual inflation, but not for income tax thresholds to be linked similarly.

The greedy greedy greedy greedy little pigs!!!

The electoral finance act may yet come back from the dead. And I guess the free speech coalition should still exist in 2011 to make sure they stay in opposition until they change (or instead get0 some principles on this issue.

It really is a shame that New Zealand doesnt have some sort of physical, perhaps printed, medium of communication.

What principles do these people have? And this from the same party that rallied against big anonymous donations, trumpeted the Hagar book, and attacked national for being funded by secret donors.

The hypocrisy and lack of principle is utterly astounding.

The deaf, the blind and the dumb.

What decade are they in? How many people even watch TV ads now?

As a quick note on this, all TV election ads are subtitled by my excellent old posse at TVNZ Captioning, and it’s a prime source of interaction with elections for hearing-impaired NZers – which is a significant number.

[DPF: I suspect hearing impaired NZers also read newspapers and the Internet]