Kiwiblog

John Boscawen has just announced he is effectively retiring from Parliament at the election. He will continue as candidate for Tamaki but has pulled out of the party list.

John was the only current caucus member standing again for election. His retirement means that the post-election caucus will be 100% turnover – a first I suspect for a political party.

He is citing wanting to spend more time with his family:

“It was an incredibly hard decision not to seek re-election because I believe it is vital for the future of New Zealand that ACT is successful on election day.  However, being a Member of Parliament can be extremely demanding and time-consuming, and I haven’t been able to give my family as much time as they deserve.

“After much consideration, I’ve decided that my family must come first.  However, I will continue to stand as ACT’s candidate in the Tamaki electorate to do everything I can to help ACT win as many party votes as possible.”

There will obviously be speculation on whether anything specifically occurred that led to this decision. Boscawen was one of the few people not involved in the factional politics, and has been a very solid MP. His departure is a blow for them, but is good news for Don Nicolson and David Seymour whose chances of coming in as a List MP are enhanced.

If Cactus Kate had ended up No 3 on the ACT List, this would have made her No 2 and arguably in line to be Deputy Leader

Don Brash has just announced that John Boscawen will be ACT’s parliamentary leader. This is a rapid promotion for a first term MP. Presumably he remains Deputy Leader and will stay on in that role after the election, if re-elected.

Congratulations to John for his promotion.

UPDATE: Rodney Hide is remaining Local Government Minister, on the grounds he is steering important legislation through Parliament. I suspect the real reason is that if Rodney was forced onto the backbench, then he would have no incentive to play nice. Rodney has confirmed he will retire at the election.

Boscawen is surrendering his portfolios. Not sure if they will be picked up by a current Minister or a new Minister. And Hilary Calvert has become the party whip. So Heather is the only one missing out. So what salary changes are there:

• Rodney remains on $209,100
• John Boscawen goes from $209,100 to $155,780 (the party leader rate)
• Hilary Calvert goes from $134,800 to $148,500
• Sir Roger and Heather remain on $134,800

The Herald reports:

Labour MP David Shearer, who ran against Boscawen in Mt Albert, said he had a reputation for “relentless, single-minded determination”.

“He’s a genuinely straight up guy, a hard worker, and he’s bloody relentless and stays on message.

“He has a slight eccentric side to him, not in a bad way.”

Labour’s Lianne Dalziel, who sits with him on the commerce select committee, said he was a good fit for his new roles as Consumer Affairs Minister and Associate Commerce Minister.

“He will put his heart and soul into it, and doesn’t kowtow to the party line on a lot of issues. He knows we need regulation in financial circles to protect people, so he is not [an Act] purist.

“He’s been a tireless advocate for consumers who has really championed causes around victims of finance company failures.”

Good on David and Lianne for being willing to praise an opponent.

No Right Turn decides to lie and smear:

In September 2008, John Boscawen donated $100,000 to the ACT Party. In exchange, he got a high list ranking, leading to an MP’s salary of $131,000 a year plus expenses. And now with the overthrow of Deputy Leader Heather Roy, he looks likely to turn that into a Ministerial position paying $204,300.

Looks like Boscawen made a pretty good investment.

What a disgusting post, which he won’t even allow comments on.

First of all, it is well known that John Boscawen has had a successful career in business. His dad was a school teacher and he went to Otahuhu College, so we are not talking inherited wealth. But John is now a multi-millionaire, and to suggest he entered politics to gain a salary of $131,000 or even $204,000 a year is ridicolous – I doubt that is even close to the interest he makes on his investments. Actually it is just a nasty malicious smear.

Secondly John’s donation was made on 26 September 2008. The ACT party list was announced on 20 August 2008, so Idiot/Savant is just telling lies to support his smear when he claims he got his high list ranking in exchange for his donation.

The reality is that Idiot/Savant reveals more about himself, than John Boscawen, with his blog post.He can’t imagine someone not motivated by money – which reflects on him more than he realises. In his world, you can’t donate a large amount of money to something just because you believe in a cause.

Rodney Hide has a press conference scheduled for 1.15 pm. Will update as news is known.

UPDATE: John Boscawen has replaced Heather Roy as Deputy Leader. John Key yet to make an announcement on portfolios.

UPDATE2: The Hon John Boscawen has been appointed Minister of Consumer Affairs and Associate Minister of Commerce. Rodney Hide loses Associate Commerce and picks up Associate Education, and the role of Associate Defence Minister lapses.

Commerce is a natural fit for Boscawen. Rodney taking Associate Education could be interesting – I suspect he will push for a more aggressive policy programme there.

Somewhat sad to see Heather’s career end this abruptly, but that is the nature of politics, and it was somewhat inevitable after what happened last year.

The Herald reports:

Act minister Heather Roy is facing the axe from John Key’s Administration today, after she is dumped by her parliamentary colleagues as deputy leader of Act.

First-term Act MP John Boscawen is expected to take her jobs as deputy leader and a minister.

Mrs Roy is said to again have been trying to rally party opinion against Rodney Hide.

It was sadly inevitable that this would happen at some stage, after the relationship between Rodney and Heather deteriorated last year. ACT would not be in Parliament without Rodney Hide, and they need a team going forward that can work together. This is the first stage of a rejuvenation.

In the past I hoped that one day Heather might be a natural successor to Rodney. She has always voted classically liberal, and on a personal level I have found her very engaging. The fallout between her and Rodney meant that this scenario became impossible, and I reached the conclusion that if Heather can’t be a loyal deputy to Rodney, then at some stage change would be inevitable. It looks like that change is today.

If Heather does lose her roles as Deputy Leader, and a Minister, then it is possible she will not choose to remain in Parliament, which would see Hilary Calvert of Dunedin become an MP.

John Boscawen should be a solid Minister. He has taken very well to parliamentary life, and has earned some respect on all sides for his work on finance company failures etc. What remains to be seen is if he will automatically take Heather’s portfolios, or if the PM may do a mini-reshuffle.

ACT MP John Boscawen is holding a public meeting in Mt Roskill on Monday to put pressure on MPs to back his bill (based on the Borrows amendments) amending the anti-smacking law. This is the first in what will be a series of public meetings.

John has pointed out than in 56 of the 70 seats (including Mt Roskill), more people voted No in the referenendum than voted for the electorate MP.

The Mt Roskill meeting will be addressed by Emeritus Professor of Law Jim Evans. It starts at 7.30 pm, Mon 7 September at Hay Park School, 670 Richardson Road, Mt Roskill.

I have had confirmed that the bill drawn from the ballot is John Boscawen’s bill to amend Section 59 in line with the Borrows amendment.

I would hope that both Labour and National would vote for this bill to go to select committee. The public have shown they are not happy with the current law, and the Boscawen/Borrows bill/amendment is a pragmatic option that would rule out the problems of the old law, but remove the rather silly differentiation between “correction” and “good parenting” and “preventing disruptive behaviour”.

The Government did not want this as an issue while it concentrates on the recession and economic issues, but private members bills are not subject to Government timetable, and the House has just two options at first reading- to vote it down despite the referendum result, or to vote for it to go to select committee and let the select committee consider how well the current law is working, and whether the Boscawen bill would be an improvement.

ACT are having a run of good luck with the VSM Bill and now this Bill. Good on them.

As I said, I hope Labour will back the bill to select committee also. That would not be turning their backs on the law they voted for. It is not about going back to the old law. It is about whether the amendments in the Boscawen bill are worth considering – and they are.

A copy of the Bill is here in word format.

UPDATE: To my surprise National will not even be supporting the bill at first reading. I thing this is a pretty huge mistake, and one they may regret over time.

Amazing what a by-election can do, as Russel Norman and John Boscawen have revealed some of their expenses:

The Green Party co-leader Russel Norman pays $340 a week to rent a house in the Wellington suburb of Hataitai. He lives there with his partner Katya Paquin, who is also employed full-time by the Greens in Parliament.

It is against the rules to hire your partner (or other family members) as your executive secretary or electorate agent, but it is okay to have them work for other MPs in the party, or in the Leader’s Office.

Because Wellington is home, he is not entitled to claim expenses of up to $24,000 for accommodation in the capital.

Not doing a Bunkle/Hobbs – good.

Paquin sometimes accompanies Norman on out-of-town trips. Norman says the two ran up $15,828 in publicly-funded air travel in the first four months of this year.

That is a hell of a lot of flights – especially for a Wellington based MP. The vast majority of the travel will be to Green party events. Now I’m not saying this is bad – just that one should be upfront about recognising the benefits parties get from having MPs who can travel at no cost to the party.

There is potentially a small conflict over Paquin accompanying Norman. I have no problems with modest travel for spouses, but because Paquin is also a staffer it does raise some issues. You see normally if a staffer travels with an MP, the cost is charged to that party’s parliamentary budget, which is limited.

But if a spouse travels with an MP, that is a general cost to Parliament, and means the party’s parliamentary budget is not impacted.

Norman also spent $3794 on taxis and hire cars, but emphasised that he had not been claiming any taxi and accommodation expenses in the Mt Albert campaign.

That’s $250 a week on taxis – guess the buses do not come enough.

“When in Wellington, I generally catch the bus to work at Parliament. I often get a taxi home when the buses have stopped,”

At $250 a week, I’d say the taxis are more than just going home at night.

Norman says his travel expenses may be higher than many other MPs, because as co-leader of the Greens he is required to attend events and meetings around the country.

Yep, and many of these will be Green Party events. I don’t think it is practical to try and differentiate these from other events MPs travel to, but it is worth remembering that when the Greens call for further taxpayer funding of parties, that parties already receive considerable benefits from parliamentary funding.

Boscawen:

The Auckland-based MP pays $160 a night to stay in the Bolton St Hotel, three minutes’ walk from Parliament.

He ran up $3500 in hotel expenses in the first five months after the election. he expects to claim up to $6000 on Wellington accommodation expenses this financial year, which ends next month.

Sounds like John only comes to Wellington when the House is sitting.

Boscawen estimated his domestic air travel will have cost the taxpayer up to $13,000. That included regular travel between Auckland and Wellington, and two trips to Christchurch.

He was also claiming for two return trips to Wellington made by his partner Jane, one for the opening of Parliament and the other for his maiden speech. “She is entitled to have travelled far more frequently, but works five days a week,” he says.

Boscawen also flew business class to Vietnam and Japan last month as a member of the Speaker’s Tour, at an estimated public cost of $10,000.

Act MPs are opening an Auckland office, but Boscawen did not know how many items costing more than $500 he would buy. As for alcohol bought for Parliamentary business? “I do not drink alcohol,” he says.

No scandal there.

We are seeing the nasty side of certain people come out in the by-election at student hosted meetings. The Herald reports on the Unitec meeting:

Act candidate John Boscawen was accosted with a chocolate and cream lamington as a Mt Albert byelection debate yesterday descended into farce.

Malcolm France, a candidate for People Before Profit, attacked Mr Boscawen with the cake as a protest against the Super City.

That’s just pathethic – and even more so that it was done by another candidate. France should be banned from all future MTC meetings.

The blunder-prone National candidate Melissa Lee also came under fire. She faced questions over an email in which she was alleged to have said she wanted “a big diamond ring … to knock some sense into the media (although a gun is tempting)”.

The email was a response to a question posed by a magazine, which asked: “Which accessory would you choose: a gun, a fur coat, a big diamond ring or a grill?” Ms Lee said the email was written by a volunteer staff member who wanted to add some humour.

How that made the TV news last night, I don’t know.

In response to a question about what she would do if she wasn’t in politics, the mainly Polynesian group shouted that she would be “on a plane back to Korea” and she could “become the racist relations commissioner”.

I think this shows very clearly who the true racists are.

Phil Goff, making a virtue out of necessity, has adopted the bloggers line of warning that as the other parties are putting up List MPs, someone on their list will enter Parliament if they win. And with the story that ACT will probably put up John Boscawen, this is very true.

So who will enter Parliament, if various List MPs contest and win the seat?

If National’s Melissa Lee is the candidate, then Cam Calder, No 58 on National’s list, becomes an MP. How it works is Melissa resigns as a List MP once she is the MT for Mt Albert, and this creates a list vacancy for National. Cam was an MP for a few days after the 2008 election but lost his seat when specials changed the final allocation. Calder stood for Manurewa and was a dental surgeon, but now is the clinicial director of a medical and sporting equipment company. Also Cam is a mad keen petanque player and actually sit on the executive committee of its global governing body.

If Russel Norman wins the seat for the Greens, then David Clendon, No 10 on the Greens list, becomes an MP. He actually lives in Mt Albert.

If John Boscawen wins the seat for ACT, then Hilary Calvert, No 6 on the ACT List, becomes an MP. Hilary lives in Dunedin and is a lawyer.

ACT MP John Boscawen has said:

ACT New Zealand MP John Boscawen today announced that he will introduce a Private Member’s Bill to amend the controversial Anti-Smacking law inflicted on New Zealanders by Labour and the Greens in 2007. …

“While addressing the concerns of those who felt that the original section 59 of the Crimes Act was too vague, my amendment to the law will protect from criminalisation those parents who use a light smack for the purpose of correction.

“The amendment will change the Act so that: it is no longer a crime for parents or guardians to use reasonable force to correct children; there are clear statutory limits on what constitutes reasonable force; parents and guardians have certainty about what the law permits; it is no longer reliant on police discretion for the law to be practical and workable.

I have not seen the bill and am interested in what the exact wording will be.

What I would do is base the bill on the Borrows amendment. This allows reasonable force for correction (in addition to the current grounds of preventing harm, preventing crime, prventing offensive or disruptive behaviour and performing normal daily task incidental to good parenting) but places severe limits on what is reasonable force compared to the previous law.

Specifically it excludes force if:

it causes or contributes materially to harm that is more than transitory or trifling; or any weapon, tool or other implement is used

Now National voted for the Borrows amendment at the committee of the whole stage. So if John Boscawen gets his bill selected from the ballot (which may never happen) I think they would feel obligated to vote for it.

And if you put aside the zealots who think they should tell every parent in NZ how to raise their family, most reasonable people would acknowledge that the Borrows amendment would deal with 99% of the cases which have caused concern (the horse whip case etc) without criminalising hundreds of thousands of parents.

Note Curia (which I own) conducted the poll for Family First (on our normal commercial terms) on this law which was released yesterday (and is covered at Curiablog). I had no idea that John was planning a private members bill on this issue, and only found out when I saw his press release.

UPDATE: Sue Bradford has attacked me for the poll, and says it does not align to other polls. Now the 80% opposition to the law has occurred in numerous polls by numerous organisations and I totally reject the suggestion the questions are slanted. In fact the question even goes so far as to mention the Police discretion in the law – yet the public still say they do not support it.

Bradford points to a UMR poll for the Children’s Commissioner which had 43% support the law change and only 28% opposition. But unlike the Curia poll which actually asked people about the specific law change, the UMR poll just asked people if they supported the law change without describing it to them, and further asked them after they had asked them “Should children be entitled to the same protection from assault as adults”. The order of questions is very important and in the poll Curia did we asked people about the law change before asking any other questions.

The question Curia asked was:

In 2007, Parliament passed a law that removes a defence of reasonable force for parents who smack a child to correct their behaviour, but states the Police have discretion not to prosecute if they consider the offence was inconsequential. What is your view of this law?

I am extremely confident that the number of New Zealanders who oppose this law is much greater than 28%.

The Court of Appeal is hearing today an appeal in the case John Boscawen has brought against the Attorney-General over whether the Electoral Finance Act is consistent with the Bill of Rights Act.

I blogged back in June the High Court decisions:

As I said earlier the protection of parliamentary privilege saw the challenge to the Electoral Finance Bill dismissed. The similar case against the Electoral Finance Act also was dismissed on the grounds it was asking the Court for an abstract ruling (ie just asking whether the EFA breached the Bill of Rights Act).

The hearing today is before Appeal Justices Glazebrook, O’Regan and Arnold. Originally it was to be heard by just one permament Court of Appeal Judge and two High Court Judges, but now all three Judges hearing it are permament members of the Court of Appeal – possibly an inidcation of the importance of the case?

A copy of the appellants submission is here: boscawen-submissions-ca.

What was sought:

In the High Court proceeding, the appellants sought declarations that provisions in the Electoral Finance Act 2007 (“EF Act”) were inconsistent with fundamental civil and political rights affirmed by the Bill of Rights Act. As the offending provisions in the EF Act germinated from the original Electoral Finance Bill (“EF Bill”), the appellants also claimed that the Attorney General should have drawn them to the attention of the House of Representatives during the legislative process. The appellants sought declarations that the Attorney breached his statutory duty under s.7 by failing to do so.

And what happened in the High Court:

Clifford J in the High Court granted the Crown’s application and struck out the ASOC in its entirety. Clifford J expressed reluctance to make declarations of inconsistency, particularly on an abstract basis, without clear jurisdictional guidance from this Court1. He also followed the 1994 High Court decision of Mangawaro Enterprises Limited v Attorney General (“Mangawaro”)2, and obiter dicta comments from McGrath J in Awatere Huata v Prebble (“Awatere Huata”)3 and found the Attorney General’s exercise of statutory power under s.7 to be non-justiciable.

Most of the argument will be around whether the Court can make a declaration of inconsistency regarding a law and the Bill of Rights Act. To date no court has done so, but Boscawen cites previous judgements that have alluded to the desirability of doing so. It will be an interesting outcome either way.

Many people will have seen ads on Sunday by John Boscawen continuing his campaign against the Electoral Finance Act. As I have said, I doubt there will be a vote against repealing it after the election, and then work could commence in good faith on a replacement which not only is clearer, but doesn’t have the restrictions on every-day advocacy and such low spending limits.

The NZPA database has 716 articles on the Electoral Finance Act since 1 January. Almost without exception, they are all negative.

Even worse is the hypocrisy since then of Peters and Clark, who claim it was all about stopping secret donations. That wasn’t even in the original bill, and since it got passed we have learnt a lot about how NZ First are the masters of the secret donations.

John Boscawen has kindly sent me a copy of the judgement which is here as a pdf.

As I said earlier the protection o parliamentary privilege saw the challenge to the Electoral Finance Bill dismissed. The similiar case against the Electoral Finance Act also was dismissed on the grounds it was asking the Court for an abstract ruling (ie just asking whether the EFA breached the Bill of Rights Act).

John Boscawen made some comments in the earlier thread which are worth repeating here:

Firstly there can be no doubt that one of the government’s orginal intentions was that anyone who wanted to express an opinion on any political issue in election year would first be required to sign a statutory declartion before they spent a single dollar doing so. ( and Graeme Edgler and others can you quote many examples of not even having to spend a dollar before being caught) .

That is right, whether you agreed with a government policy or you had to first sign a statutory declaration.

The Crown Law office specifically considered this issue and concluded that it was reasonable and was not inconsistent with the provisions of the Bill of Rights. ( although we should be grateful that they did at least state this was at the outer limit of what would be acceptable). That opinion is dated 26 June 2007, one month before the bill had its first reading. Presumably the Attorney General acted on that advice when he did not notify parliament that the EFB was inconsistent with Bora.

To me it is incomprehensible that the Crown Law office could consisder that it would be acceptable to make all New Zealanders first sign a statutory declaration before they spent a sinle dollar expressing a political view in election year. I would think that most New Zealanders, whether they supportted the left or the right wing of politics would consider this unacceptable.

We took the action we did becausee in my view that approval could not go unchallenged. To allow it to go unchallenged will allow the Crown Law office to write similiar opinions in future. We were looking to the court to tell the Crown Law office and politicians of all persuassions that this was not acceptable.

That original Crown Law opinion was a shocker. The Law Society and Human Rights Commission made mincemeat of it. One does have to wonder how it came to be signed off.

NZPA reports that the lawsuit seeking declaration that the Electoral Finance Bill breached the Bill of Rights, and that the Attorney-General erred in not informing Parliament it did has failed due to parliamentary privilege:

The applicants alleged the Electoral Finance Act did breach the Bill of Rights Act, and that Attorney-General Michael Cullen should have informed Parliament of this.

Justice Clifford said the Attorney-General had been performing a parliamentary function, and had not been acting as a member of the Government.

That meant the Attorney-General’s function was in the privileged category of internal parliamentary proceedings, and was non-justiciable.

This was not unexpected. A lawyer commented to me a while back that the chance of making it past parliamentary privilege was at best 3/10. They also said that if it did make it past the chance of sucess would then have been 9/10 as it was incomprehensible that anyone could find the original bill was not in conflict with the Bill of Rights.

It isn’t clear whether this decision affects only the lawsuit relating to whether the Electoral Finance Bill breached the Bill of Rights, or also affects the other lawsuit by John Boscawen and co seeking a declaration on whether the Electoral Finance Act is also in breach.

One of the opponents of the Electoral Finance Act died yesterday – Grey Power President Graham Stairmand. My condolences to those who knew him – I had not had the pleasure.

On the same day a dedicated group of around 40 anti EFA protesters led by John Boscawen protested outside the venue for Helen Clark’s post-budget speech. Not PC has photos.

Neither of these are reasons why the EFA should be repealed. The ultimate proof of the stupidity and far reaching effects of the Electoral Finance Act comes in this story by Audrey Young.

All references to a “Labour-led Government” were deleted from the Government’s press releases on the Budget for fear of breaching the Electoral Finance Act.

People laughed and jeered at me when I said that the law was so bad it even included press releases, but it does. It is the height of stupidity that one can not even refer to the name of the major party in power in a press release.

Labour should just admit they fucked up, and it is a stupid law. It is probably going to stop their biggest ally from running the campaign they want, and it stops them even mentioning their party’s name in press releases.

“We were advised that the use of the term ‘Labour-led’ in the Government releases could be seen as coming under the Electoral Finance Act and obviously that would not be appropriate because they were Government publications, not Labour Party publications.”

That is a quote from Michael Cullen. Bet he would like to give Mark Burton and Annette King the bash.

It believed the term could be seen as promoting Labour and could therefore meet the new definition of election advertisement under the act.

That would have meant that the material should have been authorised by Labour’s general secretary and financial agent, Mike Smith, and possible prosecution of the Secretary of Treasury, John Whitehead, because Government departments are banned from publishing election advertisements.

Indeed.

Dr Cullen’s own Budget speech contained the term twice but he said he had received advice that because it was a speech in Parliament, parliamentary privilege applied.

It gets even more insane. If it were not for parliamentary privilege, then speeches in Parliament might be illegal election advertisements.

I’m serious. It is time to repeal the law. If it is not repealed before the election there will be court cases galore. Electorate MPs will be fighting off electoral petitions for months and months. By-elections may change the result of the election.

Some may claim that no one thought the law would end up being this far reaching. That is not true. There were warnings and warnings. Submissions were made. Protests were organised. It was all predictable. The Government even gave up trying to defend it and retreated behind their “law of common sense”.

Someone should go ask Annette King how common sense required budget press releases to not mention the name of the major party in Government. You can mention it in 2009 and 2010 but not in 2008 or 2011 as they are election years. You could not get more absurd.

If they will not repeal the law, a compromise would be to return the regulated period to 90 days. This would allow MPs to actually mention the name of their party in press releases for most of the year!

The NZ Herald reports on the arguments in court yesterday on the Electoral Finance Act:

Aucklander John Boscawen – a fierce opponent of the Electoral Finance legislation – along with ACT MP Rodney Hide, Sensible Sentencing Trust spokesman Garth McVicar and Grey Power president Graham Stairmand, want to take a case to court, seeking a declaration that Attorney General Michael Cullen should have told Parliament that the law breached the Bill of Rights.

In the High Court at Wellington yesterday, Dr Cullen sought to have the case struck out. Crown lawyer John Pike argued that parliamentary privilege prevented the court from inquiring into the content of the legislation and the debate around it, and also that there was no settled legal view that the court could declare that the Electoral Finance Act was inconsistent with the Bill of Rights.

It is important to note the arguments yesterday were on the Crown’s application to strike the lawsuit out on the grounds of parliamentary privilege. It is only if they get past this strike out attempt, will the principal issues of whether the EFB and EFA breach the Bill of Rights get determined.

The legal arguments took all day and traversed time and space – judgments from three centuries, spanning four continents, were cited by lawyers from both sides. Justice Denis Clifford reserved his decision, a judgment which will instigate an intense constitutional debate on the roles of Parliament and the courts if he permits the case to proceed.

Nikki Pender, for Boscawen and the other complainants, said the Electoral Finance Act contained myriad provisions which breached the Bill of Rights, and that the Attorney General should have warned Parliament of that – as section seven of the Bill of Rights obliged him to do.

In a sense there are two issues here – whether the Electoral Finance Bill as originally drafted breached the Bill of Rights and whether the final Electoral Finance Act is inconsistent with it.

The NZ Law Society and Human Rights Commission (and almost every lawyer in NZ who has offered an opinion on this) is adamant the original EFB was in breach, and I would put the chance of victory there as well over 95% if the strike out application is unsuccessful. I mean the original EFB would have required every NZer to swear a statutory declaration before even offering an opinion on a political issue. It was, to quote Nicky Hager, something you would expect from the Nazi Party.

The final version of the EFA, while still seriously flawed in my opinion, certainly was a significant improvement over the original EFB and the arguments over how it stacks up with the Bill of Rights are more finely balanced.

Since the 1st of January there have been around 470 articles (and from what I can tell not a single one is favourable to the EFA or the Government) in the NZPA database mentioning the Electoral Finance Act. The Government hoped it would disappear as an issue within a few weeks, and instead it has been a relentless string of negative stories.

I am looking forward to the first reading of the Electoral Finance Repeal Act – hopefully it can be introduced before Christmas.

Yesterday and today have had the Electoral Finance Act occupying the time of the High Court, but with two different lawsuits before two different Judges.

I popped into court for some of yesterday to hear counsel for the National Party, the EPMU and the Electoral Commission make their cases over the EPMU’s application to be a third party. The hearing though really was just on the technical issue of whether the section which states a person can not be a third party if involved in the administration of a party’s affairs means legal persons (including organisations) or just natural persons.

This was pretty dry, and a few grumpy journalists who spent all day in court told me they blamed me for the most boring day of their life

I expect the Judge to rule in two to three weeks. If he rules it means legal persons, then the Electoral Commission will consider the issue of whether or not the EPMU is involved in Labour’s administration. If he rules natural person, then the EPMU gains registration unless National appeals.

I found it interesting that the EPMU QC made an two errors of fact [see update below] while I was there. Neither are particularly important though to the main case. He said that a party’s spending limit is $1 million rather than $1 million plus $20K per electorate they contest. More significantly he said if a party overspends their limit they can face an electoral petition. This is incorrect. There are no electoral consequences at all for over-spending on the party vote (hence why Labour did it last time). Merely prosecution. It is only over-spending on an electorate campaign which can result in an electoral petition.

The EPMU in its counterclaim has asked the Court to rule that the Electoral Commission was wrong to even allow members of the public such as me (I was officially referred to as a busybody in the EPMU affadavit which become the mode of address the National lawyers used when greeting me at the break ) object to an application, saying there is no requirement in the Act for people to be able to object. The Electoral Commission disagrees (saying it could lead to “absurd” outcomes) saying they have the power to go beyond the minimum requirements in the Act. If the EPMU won on this point, this could lead to significant changes in how the Commission operates – not just for third parties.

As I said, much of the arguments were on whether or not person includes organisations when judging third party ineligibility on the grounds of involvement in a party.

If National loses, then it means any organisation can be a third party, no matter how involved in a party. One example of this was pointed out to me by a senior official in ACT. ACT originally was an incorporated society called the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers. It then morphed into the ACT Party. However I am told the A.C.T. Incorporated Society still legally exists, and is controlled by the board of the ACT Party.

Now if the ruling goes against National, the ACT Society could register as a third party, despite being controlled by the ACT Party Board. Ridiculous, but that may be what the law is – time will tell.

Today sees the High Court consider an application from Crown Law to strike out the lawsuit from John Boscawen and the President of Grey Power and Director of the Sensible Sentencing Trust (and Rodney Hide).

The plaintiffs are asking for two things basically:

1. A ruling that the Attorney-General was wrong when he said the Electoral Finance Bill did not breach the Bill of Rights.
2. A finding that the Electoral Finance Act is inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act.

Crown Law is claiming parliamentary privilege means the lawsuit should be struck out. So the arguments today will mainly be on parliamentary privilege not the Electoral Finance Act.

UPDATE: Andrew Little has pointed out to me that my statement regarding the EPMU QC should be amended. He referred me to the written submission which in regards to the party spending limit correctly states it is $1 million plus $20,000 per electorate. I think it is fair to say that in oral submission this was merely shortened to $1 million (which isn’t technically inaccurate if no electorates are contested) and at worse is a mere paraphrasing.

I do still hold the view that there was an error by referring to electoral petitions in relation to party spending, as such petitions can only relate to candidate spending. This point is unrelated to the first point of what the spending limit is. However I am going off memory and did not take written notes, so I have indicated I am happy to do a correction if I am incorrect. Having said that I do recall the statement reasonably clearly as I commented to the lawyer next to me that it was wrong, and he concurred. Regardless I would stress that the error is of little significance in this particular case, and I wouldn’t take my mentioning it as an indication as to which party the Judge will concur with.

In a political sense, I do think it is a real issue that there are no electoral consequences for party vote overspending, and if National wins and does a full review of the Electoral Act, it is an issue I hope will be considered.

TV3 had an item last night on the successful march of over five hundred people in Tauranga against the Electoral Finance Act, organised by John Boscawen.

I saw the item at the time, and thought it bodes badly for Winston Peters. It was a fairly elderly group of people – probably many former NZ First voters. And one of the speakers, Ralph Maxwell, is not just a former Labour Cabinet Minister but was last year on the Tauranga Executive of NZ First.

Supporters of the Electoral Finance Act claimed it would fade as an issue once it was passed. On the contrary, it has had literally scores and scores of negative stories about it over the last few months, and there is no reason to think this will change before the election.

Tomorrow Tauranga has its anti Electoral Finance Act and it is looking to be pretty high profile. The local Bay of Plenty Times ran this story on most of its front page yesterday including a route for the march.

The Sensible Sentencing Trust is rallying its 3500 Tauranga members and the community to pound the footpaths in opposition to the law that restricts the campaign spending of electoral parties and supporters.

Those opposed to the Electoral Finance Act say it is unworkable and must be repealed and that neither MPs nor political parties seem able to understand it or work within it.

Saturday’s march will end at Baycourt where former Labour MP and minister Hon Ralph Maxwell will speak. Others could also take the opportunity to have their say.

Ralph Maxwell is (or was as of a few months ago) an executive member in Tauranga for NZ First. The local NZ First committee voted 13-1 to oppose the law.

For those in Tauranga the march assembles at 10.45 am at the corner of 1st Avenue and Devenport Road, then proceeds to Baycourt.

John Boscawen is planning more marches in provincial centres after this one.

The fire alarm which went off just as Helen Clark was about to speak has turned out to be a genuine fire alarm, not something done by the protesters. In that case it was bloody unfortunate timing, as it forced all the delegates and MPs onto the street where the protesters heckled them.

The protesters were the normal suspects complaining about the Urewera arrests, snails, mines etc.

Earlier in the day John Boscawen and a dozen or so supporters handed our pamphlets highlighting the defects of the Electoral Finance Act.  They got radio coverage most of the morning.

I wasn’t there, but was interesting to hear from someone who was, the different reaction to the protest from two MPs who got promoted to Cabinet in the last reshuffle. One of the new Cabinet Ministers had a discussion over the human rights issues around the EFA, which was respectful and courteous and went on for around five minutes or so. Another of the new Cabinet Ministers ripped up the pamphlet in front of the EFA protesters.

I won’t say who was who, but found it an interesting contrast.

The Herald reports on an anti-EFA protest march in Auckland. Helen shows her empathy:

But Prime Minister Helen Clark dismissed yesterday’s march, saying: “The problem with silent protests is that no one listens to them.”

The issue is that Helen didn’t listen to anyone at all in ramming this through.

March co-organiser Jim Bagnall estimated about 500 people marched from the Auckland Town Hall to QE Square at the bottom of Queen St where Auckland University law lecturer Bill Hodge spoke.

“Essentially what the act will deny voters is the freedom to be informed, so that they vote intelligently,” Dr Hodge told the protesters.

This is a very key point. They have deliberately set the spending limits so low that the effect is to actually deny candidates and third parties the ability to effectively communicate.

“The law is just bad legislation, and I feel Dr [Michael] Cullen has failed in his role as Attorney-General and should not continue in that office.”

Dr Hodge, a constitutional law expert who had not participated in any protests in Queen St since 1977, said he felt compelled to this time because he didn’t want New Zealand to have elections that were won in court rather than the ballot box – like American President George W. Bush did in his victory over Al Gore in 2000.

It is worth recalling that Dr Cullen told Parliament that the original EFB (the one which would have regulated people who took a position on any issue a party had a position on) was not a breach of the Bill of Rights. It defied both common sense and the opinion of almost every lawyer in NZ.

Protester Ramesh Kunagaran, an immigrant from Malaysia, said waking up to the news that the Malaysian Government had had its worst result since independence at the country’s general elections last Saturday made him come to the march.

“I am a Labour supporter and I am worried that if they do not repeal this law, it could be the single issue that would bring them down,” he said.

“I come from a country where free speech and even the media are controlled, and I don’t want the same thing to happen in my new country – and from the Malaysian election results, I hope Labour can see that gagging is not the way to win elections.”

Clark still thinks that opposition to the EFA is just from the right, when in fact it has been condemned and opposed by people from all over the spectrum.

The protest march was organiser John Boscawen’s fifth against the legislation, but his first since it took effect on January 1.

“Free speech is an issue that concerns all New Zealanders and the Electoral Finance Act is a profound betrayal of trust by the people whom we have voted to represent us,” he said. “I intend to continue protesting throughout this year until such time as the act is repealed.”

John has devoted an amazing amount of his time to this issue, and it is great to see he is going to carry on.  It is no coincidence that the massive gap in the polls has happened since the public started to be informed about the EFB and now EFA.
Personally I would have rather the EFB had been defeated, even if it meant the gap in the polls was less.  The main reason for that is the damage to the constitution conventions of having had such a major electoral change pushed through without even an attempt at bipartisan consultation.  It is one of those genies that when is let out, is very hard to get back in.