Electoral Finance Bill

The 2005 General Election rates as one of the dirtiest, underhanded elections in New Zealand's history. Most parties were caught with behaviour that was less than desirable. So it's not a surprise that the Government did review the situation and suggest a clean up.

The main concerns raised during and after the campaign were:

• The Anti-Green Party/Change the Government Pamphlets issued by members of the Exclusive Brethren church.
• The use of Parliamentary Funding for campaign materials, principally by the Labour Party, but ultimately used by all parties except the Progressives to some degree.
• The National Party over spending it's election advertising allotment.
• The use of "non-political" advertising to promote the profile of candidates during the 90 day election campaign period (specifically by Bob Clarkson).

Rather than bag the Government for the heavy handed response in the Electoral Finance Bill, I suggest it would have been simpler to amend existing electoral law with the following:

Prevent candidates from advertising themselves for non-political purposes for 90 days before the election.

As borne out by Winston Peters' electoral petition, candidates can spend an unlimited amount promoting their business activities during a campaign, even if the advertising is a (wink-wink) promotion of the candidate. By preventing candidates using this to get around the $20,000 campaign budget.

Also, this will prevent Government funds being used to promote candidates during the election period. If political parties felt that this would have severely hampered promotion they could have voted to raise the $20,000 limit that was set for the 1996 election so in real terms is now the equivilant of $16058. And to future proof, the limit should be reset every three years by the Electoral Commission to allow for inflation.

Make authorisation of material more transparent and Increase penalties for false or improper declarations.

One of the best ways to prevent campaigns being hijacked by special interests is for transparency of special interests. The Exclusive Brethren are known to be a secretive and unusual group, once it was revealed that they were behind the anti-Green pamphlets a lot of the creditability was lost. I would find it hard to be influenced by fringe groups, as would most people who don't live on the fringe.

Introduce penalties for publishing misleading or untruthful election material

This would be the hardest to define, as a lot of material could be passed off as honest opinion. But by making it an offence to deliberately mislead in election material there would be a lot more thought and care put into publishing material.

Clarify responsibility for offenses to make Political Parties able to be charged, Increase fines for offenses to provide a firmer deterrence, and move the investigation and prosecution of Electoral Offenses under the control of the Electoral Commission.

By making Political Parties responsible for breeches of the Electoral Act (and Broadcasting Act), officials won't have to identify who specifically to charge. And with Political Parties being predominately volunteer organisations, having the threat of prosecution removed from individuals will not discourage people getting politically active.

Police resources are going to be allocated towards preventing and investigating crimes against people and property - it's their expertise. This was especially true when Police gave the investigation notified to them such a low priority that they would have missed the cutoff for charging under the Electoral Act if the media had not reported the deadline immediately before it was due. Electoral Law can be managed best by the Government Agency that has its expertise in the area.


So there you have - no limits on anyones right to participate in the debate and no need for organisations to register just in case they need to enter the fray later on. And I don't think my summary is too far from the current proposed Bill but doesn't include the worst aspects that are upsetting activists.