Election Campaign Funding Poll

One News had a Colmar Brunton poll on three issues around campaign funding. I’m pleased to say it puts me in the majority on all three issues.

By almost a 3:1 ratio NZers are against state funding of party’s election campaigns – 70% against and 26% in favour. Labour’s proposal in fact went beyond that and was for actual funding of the party not just their campaign.

Now what I found fascinating was that Labour Party voters were more opposed to state funding than the average NZer. So Labour was out of step with even its own supporters in its greed.

On the issue of declaring all sources of campaign funding, 81% are in favour, and only 16% against. Banning anonymous donations and trust donations over a threshold has the support of both National and Labour, so should happen.

The final issue is that of third party advertising. Now Labour will be appalled that despite a year of vilification of the Brethren, only 39% support tighter controls on such third party advertising. 61% (a 3:2 ratio) say there should be no controls beyond the current law. And this comes despite an explicit reference to the Brethren in the question.

I am basically with the public on this one. I support greater transparency requirements for third party groups, and can live with a limit similar to political parties – $1 million for the last 90 days, but the proposed limits of $60,000 over eleven months are an appalling attack on free speech.

So pretty grim for Labour. The public only support them on the issue which already has bipartisan support, and are not with them on the others.