Kiwiblog

Bryce Edwards blogs:

Not only is the Destiny Church facing all sorts of internal ructions relating to its financial affairs and control, but the Christian political party that is an outgrowth of Brian Tamaki’s church – the Family Party – has just applied to cancel its registration with the Electoral Commission, and hence dissolve itself. The Family Party – one of three Christian-based parties that sought the party vote in the 2008 election – originally went under the name of ‘Destiny New Zealand’, until a major reconfiguration occurred prior to the 2008 general election.

Yay. The last thing I want is a party linked to a cult being in Parliament.

The Family Party in 2008 got only 0.35% of the vote and in 2005 Destiny itself got 0.62%.

Hopefully this means Arch-Bishop Brian has given up on ruling the country, and will leave most of us alone, and just go back to (financially) preying on his victims parishioners.

John Armstrong writes:

Axe the tax? Labour would if it could. But it can’t. So maybe the tax will stay. Maybe it won’t. Who knows.

Labour isn’t saying. And it won’t be saying for quite a while yet. …

National’s overall tax package will leave Labour nursing a big political headache – how to make up the $2 billion shortfall in revenue if Labour pledges to restore the rate of GST back to 12.5 per cent.

Labour won’t say how. But it can hardly talk of raising income tax rates which National will have just lowered.

No party – not least one coming from such a long way behind its rival – can afford to saddle itself with that kind of platform.

I would welcome Labour giving New Zealanders a clear choice, and campaigning on increasing personal income tax rates.

But that is one thing Labour will definitely not be doing. It is not going to be trapped into declaring a position which it might later regret.

Goff has been around long enough to remember National’s very own GST-induced political disaster.

When Labour introduced GST in 1986, National felt obliged to come up with an alternative – the long-forgotten “Extax”.

With Labour determining no items would be exempted from GST, National saw a gap in the political market. Extax allowed exemptions for basic foods, doctors’ fees, local authority rates and some charities. The tax was universally panned as an administrative nightmare.

The ridicule prompted senior National MPs to lose faith in the policy, resulting in mixed messages as to where National really stood on a broad-based consumption tax.

Not just National MPs. I was an office holder in National in 1987 and I actually voted for the Labour Party, partly because of National’s ridicolous Extax policy.

Meanwhile Bryce Edwards looks at the Axe the Tax campaign. He looks at whether or not is is electioneering regardless of the rules devised by MPs on what is legal:

The Labour Party obviously hasn’t learned much from the severe public ignomany suffered when it was revealed that the party had been paying for its electioneering Pledge Card with public funds while in government. Their latest rort – running a heavily branded bus campaign around the country – is no less electioneering, yet Labour has once again used taxpayer funds to pay for this political advertising. This blog post looks at whether such electioneering can really be called ‘legitimate’, even if the exercise is made to fit into the dodgy Parliamentary Service rules. Regardless of the expenditure’s legal status, few voters will appreciate having to pay for such overt political advertising.

Bryce goes on to distinguish between whether something is “legal” and “legitimate”

I attended on Wednesday night the launch of “Key to Victory” which is the normal post election campaign review book edited by Stephen Levine and Nigel Roberts.

I find these books so fascinating, I was even reading it during the speeches!

Bryce Edwards has reviewed (h/t iPredict Blog) a chapter by Shaun McGirr and Rob Salmond on what sources of information best predicted the election outcome. Was it an individual poll, the iPredict markets or the polls of polls.

The amount invested in iPredict was considerable:

• $64,500 was traded over the likely nature of ‘the Maori Party’s post-election relationship with National’
• $25,800 was traded over the Wellington Central battle between Grant Robertson and Stephen Franks
• $132,100 was traded over whether ‘there will be a National prime minister after the 2008 election’
• $413,000 in total was invested in election-related predictions

And how did iPredict do”

So, how accurate was iPredict in 2008? McGirr and Salmond conclude that although iPredict overestimated the eventual support for both Labour and National, it was more accurate any individual polling company.

And the individual polls:

In reality in 2008, McGirr and Salmond found this to be the case – with Colmar Brunton and DigiPoll exaggerating public support for National, and Roy Morgan exaggerating support for Labour (p.264).

So which polling companies were most accurate and inaccurate? McGirr and Salmond say that TV3’s TNS poll was the best (as it was in 2005 as well), and Fairfax’s Neilson pool was the poorest.

The TV3 poll is the one that currently shows a 27% gap! Mind you they are now with Reid Research, so there may be a different methodology used now.

Then they look at the polls of polls published by three outlets – NZPA, Rob (at 08 Wire) and myself (at curiablog).

In addition to the five opinion polls, some observers attempted to average out the idiosyncratic errors of the individual polls by aggregating them into a “poll-of-polls” using different methods. The New Zealand Press Association simply took the average of the estimates of the six most recent polls, while The New Zealand Herald took the average of the last four polls. Two blog-based polls-of-polls – one run by David Farrar of New Zealand’s premier political blog Kiwiblog, and one hosted at a smaller blog [run by author Rob Salmond] called 08wire – weighted more recent polls with larger sample sizes more heavily (p.257).

And how did the poll of polls do?

McGirr and Salmond say that ‘Poll-of-polls consistently performed well during the 2008 campaign, outperforming most of the opinion polls and the prediction markets’ (p.270). They therefore advocate that both the media and public should pay much more attention to this highly accurate source of political information.

Tis has prompted me to update the poll of polls widget, which is below.

Salmond ranks the different outlets for their accuracy to the final result. In order they were:

1. NZ Herald poll of polls 6.1 (error from result)
2. NZPA poll of polls 6.8
3. Curiablog poll of polls 8.1
4. TV3/TNS poll 9.6
5. 08 wire poll of polls 13.6
6. iPredict 15.7
7. TVNZ/Colmar Brunton poll 16.8
8. NZ Herald/Digipoll poll 19.8
9. Roy Morgan poll 20.8
10. Fairfax/Neilsen poll 29.6
11. NZ Political Stockmarket 109.5

The NZ Political Stockmarket used virtual money, so it shows what a difference real money can make.

The authors conclude that media outlets should not just report the individual poll results when they commission a poll, but also publish regular info on a poll of polls and on iPredict.

Incidentally I will probably review and tweak the curiablog methodology a bit when I have some spare time.

Liberation has some extracts from a radio interview with Sue Bradford on the Greens:

Sue Bradford: That tension is always there in our Green Party, as it is in green parties around the world… I think that some of the people on the more blue-green, or conservative side of the Green Party will be feeling probably quite relieved that I won’t be a Green MP anymore.

Yet Green party supporters on this blog attacked me when I suggested Sue’s departure pointed to some splits in the party. They insisted it was just about her not winning the co-leadership.

Julian Robbins: Is the Green Party losing its radical edge?…. Is it coming into a sort of comfortable middle age, a professional phase where it tries to be less risk-taking?

Sue Bradford: I think that’s absolutely true…. We did have a real radical cutting edge [in 1999]… I think that we have, to some extent we have begun to lose a little bit of that differentiation with the other parties in Parliament – in terms of being a little less willing to take risks; a little less willing to be radical and “out there”; and the sense that too many political parties – including perhaps our own – are focused on winning the middle ground voters and not seeing the voters out to the sides – in our case, out to the left, and to the environmental left, as being as important as the voters that are in the middle and to the right.

Not exactly a vote of confidence in the leadership.

Julian Robbins: Is the party really ‘fine’? I would have thought that at a time when the Labour Party is at a lower ebb and climate change as an issue as an item is at the top of the agenda, that the Green Party should perhaps be doing much better than it is. Why isn’t it doing much better?
Sue Bradford: …I’ve just given some of the ideas that I have about that. I think that part of the reason for that [lack of political success is] is that we’ve lost the radical edge and we’ve lost some of the points of differentiation with the other parties…

Bradford’s valedictory speech could be interesting.

Bryce Edwards blogs a summary of the Maori Party’s 2008 campaign.

Bryce Edwards reviews ACT’s 2008 election campaign.

Bryce Edwards continues his excellent summaries of chapters on the 2008 election campaign, with one on NZ First.

Also people will be interested in a draft of an article on how the Electoral Finance Act impacted on third parties last year.

Bryce Edwards has blogged summaries of party’s 2008 campaigns he wrote for a book on the 2008 election. They really are required reading for political junkies, and I really enjoy accompanying graphics.

So far we have:

• Green’s 2008 campaign
• Labour’s 2008 campaign
• National’s 2008 campaign

I’m tempted to quip Bryce likes to drink liberally when my credit card is on the table, but this is about his address to the Dunedin gathering of Drinking Liberally.

His topic was “What’s left in 2009 in New Zealand?”. It is too long to try and paraphrase but I found it very interesting. Bryce is a big fan of Bruce Jesson and quotes him often.

Well the silence from most left blogs on the shame of Taito Philip Field has been illuminating. Public Address just did a one line post on their discussion board announcing the verdict. Red Alert remains strangely silent. The various Labour Party members blogs have said nothing much. Of course this is similiar to their comments at the time. Nowhere did they call out for their party to do the right thing and stop defending Field as a man of integrity whose only crime was to work too hard.

There was one notable exception. No Right Turn has, not surprisingly, covered Field in detail from the very first allegations, and decried both Field and his apologists.He was the first to suggest Field’s action represented criminal offending – back in Sep 2005.

Some extracts from what he said back then:

On 8 August 2006:

It’s official: the Labour Party supports corruption. That’s the only conclusion that can be drawn from Helen Clark’s refusal to consider internally censuring corrupt MP Taito Philip Field. …

I expect all political parties in New Zealand to take a hard line against corruption, and when this sort of case comes up, to condemn it and any member involved. Labour’s refusal to do so sends a clear message: that they will turn a blind eye to corruption in order to retain power. This is simply unacceptable, and such a party is not worthy of anyone’s vote.

And on 15 August 2006:

As for the argument that a by-election would threaten the government’s majority, what of it? There are some things more important than being in government – and maintaining the integrity of our political system against corruption is one of them. If Labour can’t stay in power except by looking the other way on this sort of thing, then arguably it shouldn’t be in power at all.

Also of interest in a post from Bryce Edwards, who quotes David Lange in 1997 highlighting dodgy electoral spending and donations returns from Field in 1996. Even back then people were raising issues.

UPDATE: Another honourable exception to the silence was Jeremy Greenbrook-Held. He said in July 2006:

I’m embarrassed that I’m a member of the same political party as this man, and, for the record, would love to see a full privilages committee inquiry into his conduct as an MP. It is not worth loosing Margaret Wilson as speaker to cover this up.

Another must read from Bryce Edwards:

How well were electronic forms of politics utilised in last year’s general election? How effectively did the political parties and electorate candidates use websites, email, social networking in their campaigning? What about bloggers and the mainstream media? These questions are addressed in a chapter by Peter John Chen about ‘the role, use and impact of online media in New Zealand’s 2008 election’, published in Informing Voters? Politics, Media and the New Zealand Election 2008 (edited by Chris Rudd, Janine Hayward and Geoff Craig of the University of Otago Politics department). This blog post is the fourth of a series of explorations of the chapters from the new book (which I also have a chapter in).

Most of the focus is on how parties and candidates used online media, rather than the role of blogs by non candidates. Still very interesting. Labour gets caned for their 2008 e-campaign. No surprise as they had three different websites running.

They also reveal Labour spent around 10% of its advertising budget online and National spent zero.

Bryce Edwards does another of his fantastic summaries of a chapter of a book reviewing the 2008 election. This post is on how the newspapers covered the election.

Bryce Edwards has an excellent post highlighting the huge advantage parliamentary parties have – specifically with the Mt Albert by-election:

Therefore it has to be asked, are all the non-Auckland MPs that are currently flooding into the Mt Albert electorate, doing so via taxpayer funding? Is the Green candidate, and Wellington-based MP, Russel Norman really paying his own way to Auckland and finding his own accommodation during his campaigning?

Good questions.

In Mt Albert there are currently a large number of MPs flooding into the electorate to campaign on behalf of their respective candidates. So far, many of these have been non-Auckland MPs, and therefore likely to be using Parliamentary Service funds to be there.

The one particular non-Auckland MP that appears to have been there the most has been Wellington-based MP Russel Norman – in fact Norman is the only non-Auckland MP running in the electorate. While there is nothing particularly wrong with carpetbagging per se – a ‘term is sometimes used derisively to refer to a politician who runs for public office in an area in which he or she is not originally from and/or has only lived for a very short time’ – most people would in fact have a problem with such carpetbagging being funded by taxpayers. It is therefore Norman that should be the most upfront about who’s paying his way.

There’s another reason that Russel Norman should be called to account for his election spending. More than any other politician – other than perhaps Winston Peters – Norman has been the most populist campaigner on issues of ‘money in politics’. He probably pushed harder than any other for the Electoral Finance Act – even though it proved to be a spectacular ‘own goal’ – and has continued to be the most sanctimonious MP (since Peters) about transparency. He’s probably made more allegations against other MPs and parties than anyone (again, except Winston Peters).

Thus this stone-thrower needs to show that he doesn’t also live in a glass house. Therefore Norman should declare whether he has used any taxpayer funds on his campaign, including travel expenses and accommodation claims for his many, many trips to Mt Albert since Helen Clark announced her departure from Parliament. Anything less than this would make his various campaigns against ‘corruption’ seem rather hollow.

Will the Greens practice what they preach?

Likewise, the other parliamentary parties need to be more upfront about their use of backdoor state funding and MP expenses in their campaigns. Labour needs to show that it has learnt its lessons over the EFA and its pledge card. What about Trevor Mallard, who was recently blogging about his experience on the campaign trail? There seem to be a lot of non-Auckland MPs in Mt Albert recently. Unless they are paying their own way, or legitimately and genuinely in Auckland on other business, their use of tax-payer funding to campaign could be classified as ‘corrupt’. And National and the other parties should also declare how they are paying to send MPs into the electorate to campaign.

I recommend people read the full post – it has mounds of historical infoformation also.

Bryce Edwards has some analysis of the candidate expenses and donations.

• Total candidate expenditure is $2.26m
• Total disclosed donations to candidates is $1.26m
• Average spent for a winning candidate is $12,836
• In only 38 out of 70 (54%) electorates, did the candidate spending the most money win!!
• The top five spending candidates all lost – Russell Fairbrother, Paul Adams, Nicky Wagner, Ron Mark and Stephen Franks
• Only 2 of the top ten winning candidates won their seats, and only seven of the top 20.

Bryce also has calculated the average spending per candidate for each party.

The amount spent by candidates on Internet advertising was interesting for me. The top spenders:

1. Charles Chauvel $5,551
2. Jills Angus Burney $2,658
3. Brendon Burns $2,250
4. Pita Sharples $,2000
5. Aaron Gilmore $1,318

What did Charles spend $5,551 on?

A bad-tempered e-mail forwarded to me reveals that Green Party co-leader Russel Norman has written to political scientists Nigel Roberts and Stephen Levine to try to stop them publishing the research of an academic opponent of the Electoral Finance Act. Levine and Roberts are currently editing their traditional post-election book due out soon, and the book contains a chapter written by University of Otago political scientist Bryce Edwards who is evaluating the impact that the EFA had on last years’ election campaign. Norman has emailed them to essentially say that they shouldn’t be publishing it and that Edwards shouldn’t be researching in this area.

The email from Norman, which was sent to Edwards, and which he kindly forwarded to me, is rather extraordinary, and gives an interesting insight into how thin skinned the Greens (or Norman anyway) is of dissenting views. Despite having a PhD himself, Norman is clearly he’s no fan of academic freedom. Edwards has been widely published and reported on in the area of political finance, yet according to Norman, Edwards, “lacks academic credibility in this area”. Could it be that Norman still can’t handle having the EFA criticized? It seems that Norman and the Greens have dug themselves into a hole on the EFA, and while everyone other former fan of the now-repealed legislation has given up trying to defend the indefensible, the Greens are tying themselves up in knots over it all. They are in a political bunker on the EFA and the idea of an opponent of the EFA researching the effect of the legislation is just too much for them.

Worse than that – in Russel Norman’s view – Edwards has said some critical things about the Greens on his blog! Oh dear. Norman says in his email to Edwards, which Norman also creepily sent to the book editors, ‘you have demonstrated a long history of bias against the Green Party, and you have consistently made untrue statements about the Green Party’. Geez, is Norman turning into Winston Peters?! Norman says: ‘Your previous writing leads me to the view that you are simply unable to give a dispassionate academic account of the EFA’s impact on political parties due both to your virulent opposition to the EFA and to your one-sided and inaccurate commentary on the EFA and the Green Party’. Norman or his staff seemingly went through two and a half years of writings by Edwards to compile their dossier on him.

In fact Norman’s email tirade reads like something Rob Muldoon might have said when he was at his worst. The National Party gets requests from lefty academics all the time, but I doubt that the party then sends out hostile replies that question the academic’s integrity because they might be politically biased! I thought that everyone now accepts that academics have their own biases and that for them to pretend otherwise is just a sham.

Put it like this. Jane Kelsey has well known views on free trade. Think how much outrage there would be if the leader of the National Party fired off an e-mail to senior academics saying Kelsey should not be allowed to publish academic reseaerch on free trade, because she doesn’t support it, and she is biased against parties that do support it? There would be an avalanche of outrage – the Association of University Staff would leap in to defend academic freedom etc. Luckily most National MPs have better things to do than try and get academics prevented from publishing academic research.

And funnily enough, Russel Norman’s nasty little email was actually in response to Edwards kindly inviting Norman to have an input into his research. Considering the Green Party had problems obeying the EFA, I would have thought they would have wanted to detail these problems so a replacement law can avoid the mistakes of the EFA.

Had a great night out on the town in Dunedin last night. Started the socialisation at the University staff club around 3 pm having caught up for an old mate, Ross Blanch, for the first time in around 19 years. Ross was elected OUSA President in 1986 in a by-election when the then President quit to join the Labour Research Unit. Ross was actually declared the loser by one vote on the day voting ended (which prompted much alcohol to drown sorrows), but then the next day in the recount they found one vote had been placed in the wrong pile, and he then won by one vote (which prompted much alcohol to celebrate).

Nowadays he is very respectable managing the Clubs and Socs Centre, and is filling in for a year as the General Manager of OUSA. After drinks at the staff club with Ross and Andrew Geddis, I headed to the Cook to meet bloggers Bryce Edwards and Geoffrey Miller. Geoffrey does the ACT Watch blog “From Douglas to Dancing” and is just visiting Dunedin from Germany where he normally resides. Also in the group was a young Austrian socialist, who is here as part of her “masculinity studies” academic research. What a great research topic I thought – so she gets to study Kiwi males out on the town

After a few drinks at the Captain Cook we went to Mou Very – the self titled Smallest Bar in the Universe.

It was here that the Austrian gained the impression that I am a famous person. As we squeezed through the alleyway, a guy in the alleyway looked at me and asked if I was David Farrar. Then as we went outside, I had a brief chat with the owner (who I had done some polling for in 2007 when he stood for Mayor). Then we sat down on the pavement seats and were engaged in an animated discussion when a gentleman walking past stopped and asked the group if one of us was David Farrar, as he had heard me on National Radio but did not know what I looked like. God – I know my voice can be distinctive but that is weird to be recognised on voice alone. The gentleman was actually visiting from Timaru. Then finally a few minutes after that a IT tech and his girlfriend passed by and greeted me.

We then headed further south to the Octagon and went to Pequeno, where the stag party had been the night before. The waitress of course greeted me by name, further cementing the impression everyone in Dunedin knows me. We then took a corner booth and had several rounds of cocktails.  Pequeno is a gorgeous hidden away bar, and I recommend it thoroughly to anyone else visiting NZ.  The booths even have curtains around them so you can have total privacy. Mind you the staff were a bit alarmed, when we pulled the curtains so we could take a photo of our Austrian colleague’s tatoo!

I am technically half Austrian, so was interesting to talk to about Vienna, as I am planning to visit there next year.

Finally got home on Saturday morning. Partying in Dunedin is proving to be very tiring, and I may need a holiday to recover from it!

Academic Bryce Edwards has a very well researched post on the axed Labour/Greens electoral review. Edwards is no National supporter, having worked for the hard left Alliance for several years – which makes his research and conclusions all the more powerful. I urge people to read the post in full, as it is too long to do justice here – plus he has many apt cartoons to illustrate it. But some key points:

This blog post examines what was behind the review, and why the exercise was always going to be more about window dressing than democracy. Although expert panels and citizens’ forums are not without merit, when compared to similar exercises carried out elsewhere, the planned Labour-Green model for New Zealand was designed to be incredibly weak and undemocratic. What’s more the process by which it was brought about was just as poor as the one that produced the EFA.

Labour and the Greens called its a citizens’ forum – but as you will see it was merely a means to an end – more taxpayer funding.

The Greens strategy on political finance reform entirely backfired in 2007, and the party has had to face up to the public derision – especially because the Greens were complicit in such an appalling and anti-democratic process. For the Greens their advocacy of the review was a cynical attempt to avoid apologizing for the damage done. But worse, the whole Citizens’ Forum was actually also quite a con.

And they still hold out the EFA to be better that its predeccesor!

Second, rather than having any teeth or real power, the review was designed to be purely advisory. For example, the Citizens’ Forum was merely given the task to produce a report for the Expert Panel to read. Such a report ‘may’ then have helped inform the report that the Expert Panel was going to write. And even then, this final report was also merely advisory, and the terms of reference stated that the Minister was then able to choose to accept any elements of it or reject it entirely. (And as we saw with other expert advice tendered to Labour and Greens – such as the Human Rights Commission, Law Commission on the EFA – if it’s not ‘the right advice’ it can be easily brushed aside.)

This part is quite crucial, and I did not even realise it until I read Bryce’s post. The Citizens’ Forum had no power. The main power lay with the hand picked Expert Panel.

Compare this to the British Columbia example where a citizens’ forum was established to look at the voting system. In this case, the established rules of the citizen forum said that ‘If the Assembly recommended a system different from the current system, its recommendation would be placed on the ballot at the next provincial election as a referendum item’ (Snider, 2008). The widely-referred to Ontario citizens’ forum had similar powers.

The Greens kept referring to the Canadian experiences, but as Bryce has detailed what the tried to implement in NZ was a sham with no actual powers at all – it was just political cover.

Essentially, the Citizens’ Forum was to have no role in making recommendations to either the public or the Government. Instead, any outcomes from the Citizens’ Forum would be filtered through the Expert Panel. The official terms of reference made it very clear that it was the Expert Panel body that was to come up with the proposals and options for any change, then educate the Citizens’ Forum on these, and then merely ‘consider the report of the Citizens’ Forum’ while making their own decisions.

I’m kicking myself for not realising how the Greens and Labour had structured this. The lesson for the future is to ignore any names or terms they use, and look at the fine print.

This situation was clearly quite some distance from what the Greens’ Metiria Turei presented it as, when she said in Parliament that the Expert Panel ‘would do a great deal of work preparing information and support systems for the Citizens’ Assembly’.

Much of the Government’s propaganda also tried to obscure the neutered nature of the Citizens’ Forum. The Labour blog ‘08 Wire’ attempted to sell the exercise by incorrectly describing the subservience around the wrong way: ‘the expert panel’s role is basically to do a lot of the (very important) donkey work for the Citizens’ Forum, while the Citizens’ Forum makes all the big decisions’.

But the terms of reference were very clear, and Panel Chair Assoc Prof Andrew Geddis was very unambiguous, saying that the Expert Panel would set the work programme for the Citizens’ Forum. And the Minister, Annette King said the Expert Panel and Citizens’ Forum would only provide an independent, non-political ‘perspective’ on the reform options.

And if either of these groups came up with anything disagreeable, well the public would never get a vote on them.

My concern about the Citizens’ Assembly is that it may be an expensive piece of window dressing, yet another one of those carefully guided sham consultations with the great unwashed public to simply avoid the charge that the public haven’t been consulted.

Indeed, it was to allow Labour and Greens to vote themselves increased taxpayer funding, and claim the public have been consulted on it.

Clearly, since 2005 the Labour and Green parties have taken the vital issue of political finance and electoral law and tried to politicize it for partisan advantage. By arrogantly assuming that they possessed the moral high ground, these parties claimed the right to change the electoral rules. This is fine – essentially it’s ‘victor’s law’ – the baubles of power. But they shouldn’t have turned around and pretended otherwise. And they shouldn’t have pretended that this is a basis on which to build enduring and robust policy and law.

Labour at least appear to have recognised the danger of continuing down this road.

It was therefore not surprising that the Greens tried to fast track the review process to start and be set up before the election, so that National wouldn’t be able to influence it. It was reported that ‘Russel Norman said the party wanted the [Citizens’ Forum] assembly running before the election so it was harder to derail if there was a change of government’ (Trevett, 5 June 2008).

Oh yes, can’t let an election change anything.

In appointing the so-called Expert Panel, the Government and Greens showed that they learnt nothing from the awful EFA process. Obviously, the question of ‘Who gets to appoint the independent panel and set the terms of reference’ would be vital, yet it was stitched up behind closed doors. There were no calls for nominations from the public, and no discussions with other political parties (although the Greens had a strong backroom role in determining who to appoint).

I made this point at the time – it was vital all parties be consulted over the composition of the panel. But again – all done in a private deal.

There should be no doubt that the selection of Associate Professor Andrew Geddis as the chair of the Expert Panel was a very sensible one. Geddis is the number one expert in electoral law. But there also shouldn’t be any doubt that they chose someone with a bias in favour of direct state funding – Geddis had often written supportively of state funding.

Indeed. You would be stupid not to have Geddis on the panel, as he is an expert in this area. But the panel should have been balanced with one or more people who are more sceptical of state funding.

In fact one of the biggest cons of the sham process was the fine print in the terms of reference, which specifically excluded the Citizens’ Forum from examining the current parliamentary funding of political parties. This is, of course, exactly the area of political finance in New Zealand that is most obscured, most influential on the parties, and most negative for the party system. Yet it is precisely this area that Labour and the Greens don’t want the public (or even the experts) sticking their noses into.

Indeed. The advantages of being an incumbent party is huge. Only the ACT Party has managed (since MMP) to enter Parliament without already having an incumbent MP or MPs.

Idiot/Savant looks at what would happen if the Foreshore and Seabed Act was repealed. I tend to favour repeal of the Act, but also would like the Court of Appeal ruling to have been tested by appeal to the Privy Council or the Supreme Court. Maybe one can repeal the Act, legislate to allow the Supreme Court to hear an appeal from the Court of Appeal ruling, and then whatever the Supreme Court decides, forms the basis of negotiations between Crown and Iwi.

Adam Smith at The Inquiring Mind links to an article in The Times on the huge number of subtitling mashups done of the bunker scene from Downfall. Over 150 mashups have been done, including three by Whale Oil. They are Winston’s Downfall, Helen’s Downfall and Judith’s Downfall.

Aaron Bhatnagar blogs on how Waiheke Island and Great Barrier Island residents will be polled on whetehr they want to remain part of Auckland City, or transfer to the Thames-Coromandel District Council. I don’t think many do want to change but as 10% o residents signed a petition, the Local Government Commission is obliged to run a poll.

Paul Walker retires from blogging. A real pity – I enjoy all the economist blogs, even though they are not high traffic. Maybe if they all combined together?

Bryce Edwards has done a series of posts on the party that shall not be named. They are a fascinating background read. One day he should publish them as children’s horror stories

Finally Adam Smith scans in and blogs every day a good Letter to the Editor. Have a look at this one from the Co-vice-president of the Maori Party responding to Chris Trotter.

Listen to John Key on Nine to Noon. Key rules Peters out even if cleared by the SFO and Privileges Committee because he says his credibility is still too damaged. It is not just about criminal behaviour but ethical standards.

David Cohen has a 20 point test on whether you are a journalist or a blogger. I got 13/20 which makes me a “mid-grade hack”

Frog Blog asks if Helen Clark may be regretting choosing go go with Winston instead of the Greens?

Idiot/Savant blogs on Day Two of the MMP Symposium. The panel session was interesting (in my rather conflicted opinion) and if things slow down I might try and do an extended post on it.

Bryce Edwards has an excellent piece of research on the funding of NZ First. It is not a scandal breaking story, but some detailed academic research, well referenced. We need more like this.

Steven Price blogs that the headlines regarding the Berrymans bear little resemblance to the reality of what the Judge ruled which was simply to say that the Coroner was wrong to say that the collapse was primarily the Berrymans’ fault but he effectively amended that to partly their fault.

Bryce Edwards blogs on how Matt McCarten deserves his rating by Metro as a “right bastard”.

Cactus Kate blogs that she has managed to restore Deborah Hill Cone.

Fairfacts Media points out the PM is being somewhat economical with the truth when she claims Telecom wrote National’s broadband policy. I guess she believes if you repeat a lie enough times, people may believe it.

Otago University Lecturer Bryce Edwards had an article on Political Finance published in the latest NZ Law Journal. Once can read a pdf of the article here.

He makes a number of interesting findings:

1. The US political finance system is one of the most regulated in the world
2. NZ has been shifting more towards a US style system
3. Countries where political finance is relatively unregulated tend to have relatively low levels of campaign spending
4. Greater regulation leads to greater loopholes, leading to even greater regulation and inevitably great complexity
5. In the US companies and trade unions are banned from donating to candidates and individuals can not donate more than $2,200, yet enormous “soft money” goes to political action committees instead.
6. In NZ a political party could set up a business unit which provides advice to businesses or unions, and could charge $1 million for such advice, and that would not be counted as a donation to be disclosed.
7. That rhetoric in NZ that only people with legitimate issues should be free to advocate is highly dangerous as the state gets to decide what and who is legitimate – a flashback to Muldoon in 1979 who mooted banning the Socialist Unity Party
8. The lesson from the US is clear – political finance regulation stifles political competion and favours the wealthy.
9. Poor people are deterred from participation in politics when the compliance costs get high.
10. Voters have a healthy scepticism against parties and candidates trying to “buy” their way into office and this can be the most effective safeguard.
11. Political finance regulations are always designed to benefit one party over another – it is very hard to get “neutral” regulations.
12. Democracy is enhanced by parties having sovereignty over their own affairs, and voters making the final decision on whether they approve of how a party conducts its affairs.

It is ironic that Labour, NZ First and the Greens were so insistent at foisting on NZ an American style political finance system.