Kiwiblog

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.

The Telegraph has a story on how evil corporates are exchanging cash for policy in the UK:

For as little as £2,000 the businesses can secure membership of the management committee in target seats and a direct influence in policy making at the party’s annual conference.

In return for the money the local parties set up Constituency Development Plans and agree to a raft of business demands. They include appointing ‘business officers’ to branch committees, encouraging recruitment for the branch from within the business, and in return for their funding, Labour MPs must do their bidding.

In return for a massive increase in financial support businesses are drawing up a shopping list of policy changes which include making it less expensive to dismiss staff, new rules to protect bosses of private equity owned firms, and push to make get rid of equal pay audits in the private sector.

The negotiations between the businesses and ministers over a new deal – known as Warwick II – will see a raft of new concessions that will further deregulate workplaces and are designed to help businesses recruit more non-union staff.

The demands are set to become ever more important to the Labour Government as ministers increasingly rely on business backing.

In 2006, 70 per cent of Labour’s donations – £8.5million – came from businesses. Since the beginning of 2001, when parties were required to declare large donations, businesses have given £55million to Labour.

The blueprint for financing local parties is contained in a business web site  which states: “A robust CDP agreement will also include targets and activities that the Constituency Labour Party pledges to undertake.

“If a Constituency Labour Party has a CDP in place with a business, then the business should take an active role in ensuring that the terms of the agreement are fulfilled; and take responsibility for writing six-monthly activity reports.”

In return the businesses will provide: “…polling or opinion surveys among the electorate; recruiting and retaining members; producing and distributing literature; informing and encouraging dialogue between the party and the community.”

This all sounds very shocking.Surely there must be an investigation into how these businesses are purchasing inappropriate influence in politics.

Be aware I have made some minor changes to the article, and people should read the original.

The Daily Show hasn’t really gone tough on Obama much, but this clip above is a good piss-take of efforts to defend his u-turn on public financing of his campaign.

Also Nevil Gibson at NBR examines his growing flip-flop on Iraq.

Gordon Campbell looks at National policies and has many legitimate questions about them. He may or should regret this line though:

In Ryall’s opinion, money isn’t the main issue anymore in health care – its more about the cultivation of fruitful and personally fulfilling caring, on current rations. “Money talks, but it is not the only, or even the prime, motivator.” Lean thinking, Ryall concludes, is bringing nurses at Middlemore hospital back to the bedside, and lean thinking is allowing them to do what they had trained to do. “They’re happier, enjoying work and doing more.” Truly, as the sign used to say over the gateway to Dachau concentration camp, work will make you free.

That goes beyond tacky.

Frog blogs (?in support) of a James Hansen who is trying to prosecute CEOs of large oil companies for “crimes against humanity and nature”. And their crimes:

Undermining public understanding about global warming

Is that not the most scary thing you have read? This mad bastard wants to lock up or execute people (normal punishment for crimes against humanity) because they disagree with him on global warming. There are fanatics and there are eco-fascists.

Frog doesn’t offer a view as to whether the Greens support jailing and execution of climate change sceptics.

Whale Oil is detecting some photoshopping amongst Labour.

No Minister notes the irony hypocrisy in the following sentence:

A spokesman for Foreign Minister Winston Peters, said it was of “grave concern” that Shameem and the military were using what appeared to be hacked private emails.

Truly no shame.

Paul Walker looks at some research on campaign finance reform, and how mostly it benefits incumbents.

An interesting article in the Edmonton Journal, a reader e-mailed to me.

The Government there is planning to bring in laws to restrict third party campaigns. And it is a Conservative Government doing so. Why?

Albertans for Change was a union-backed effort that ran splashy election advertising attacking the Stelmach government’s record. The ominous voice accusing Stelmach of having “no pla-a-a-a-n” was easily the most recognizable refrain of the campaign.

The exact cost of the ads – which were supported by the Alberta Building Trades Council, the Alberta Federation of Labour, the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, the Health Sciences Association of Alberta and the United Nurses of Alberta – has never been made fully clear, but estimates have pegged it at over $2 million, more than double the NDP and Liberal budgets combined.

Just like in Australia – the biggest spenders are the unions. And they spent twice as much as the two actual left wing parties themselves.

So is the Government right to try and ban such a campaign? Well I note the campaign was unsucessful:

“It’s something that really piqued my curiosity during this last campaign, though I believe the strategy backfired on whoever came up with the idea,” Stelmach said of the campaign.

And the unions are not happy:

AFL President Gil McGowan accused Stelmach and the Conservatives of trying to muzzle its opponents with the new laws.

“This is a disturbing development and it doesn’t bode well for democracy in this province,” McGowan said. “He’s just trying to shut down the voice of the labour movement as a voice of dissent on the left.”

Which is very bad. Shutting down chinless scarf wearers though is very good.

And with further comparisons to NZ:

Alberta Liberal Leader Kevin Taft said the Albertans for Change ads may have actually hurt his party.
“We had nothing to do with that spending whatsoever,” Taft said. “And yet, on the doorsteps, we were often getting lectures about how ‘you guys are running those terrible attack ads on Ed Stelmach.’ So we got dragged into it.”

Yes if a third party campaign spends too much money or is too aggressive, it often harms the party they are trying to support. You see voters have a degree of intelligence.

The left often go on about how awful money in politics is, and how we need the EFA because hell we can’t have a third party spend more than $120,000 supporting or opposing a party over a year etc.

So where have been the protests from the left that Barack Obama “purchased” the nominaion by outspending Hillary Clinton? Why are they not denouncing Obama for unfairly spending more money than Clinton?

Now Obama pledged in February 2007 that he would stay in the federal public financing system if he did win the primary fight, as long as his GOP opponent did the same, which McCain has agreed to. What this means is you get around $85 million of public funding but can’t spend extra on top of that, once the nominating convention has concluded.

Now Obama is looking to renege on that pledge, and may become the first ever presidential candidate to try and bury his opponent through outspending in the general election. So again where are the howls of outrage?

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.