November 2007

There is another Auck­land March tomor­row. Here are the details and a let­ter from John Boscawen.

[quote]To my friends, fam­ily & busi­ness colleagues

Just over a fort­night ago I sent you an email draw­ing your atten­tion to the Elec­toral Finance Bill and ask­ing you to sup­port me in a protest march I was organising.

I am doing so again tonight as I pre­pare for a sec­ond march this Sat­ur­day 1 Decem­ber, assem­bling out­side the Auck­land Town Hall from 2pm.

For the last month I have been try­ing to cre­ate aware­ness and oppo­si­tion to the pro­vi­sions of this Bill which I feel goes to the very heart of our democ­racy. I have attached a copy of an ad that ran on page A6 of today’s NZ Her­ald (there will be another one again on Fri­day and Sat­ur­day). I hope you will take the time to read it, and hope­fully act on it.

I have been try­ing to draw New Zealander’s atten­tion to the sub­mis­sion of the New Zealand Human Rights Com­mis­sion on this bill. The Com­mis­sion called the orig­i­nal bill “inher­ently flawed” and called on the gov­ern­ment to with­draw it and start again. It was ignored.

Sec­ondly, in the event that the bill was not with­drawn, the Chief Com­mis­sioner said it would be: “essen­tial that any changes be sub­ject to the widest pos­si­ble pub­lic scrutiny (via a sec­ond round of pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion) to ensure the cred­i­bil­ity and legit­i­macy of what­ever elec­toral law reform emerges”. I attended the select com­mit­tee hear­ing in Welling­ton on 18 Octo­ber to hear her give this evi­dence. Again she was ignored.

Finally she said what­ever restric­tions were placed on “third party” speech they should be for no longer than the three months before an elec­tion. Again the gov­ern­ment ignored her and is push­ing on with restric­tions for the entire elec­tion year (up to 11 months). Basi­cally one year in three. There is no other democ­racy in the world that has restric­tions on free­dom of speech of this length.

I believe if this law passes we will no longer be a demo­c­ra­tic coun­try. There will be mas­sive ben­e­fits of incum­bency. It is not an issue of polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy, but free­dom. Many oth­ers have openly opposed the bill, despite the recent amend­ments, includ­ing the NZ Law Soci­ety, the for­mer Labour Leader and Prime Min­is­ter the Right Hon. Mike Moore and radio hosts and for­mer MPs John Tami­here and Willie Jackson.

Unlike oth­ers, how­ever I do not believe this is a fait a com­pli. I believe if enough peo­ple express their oppo­si­tion at least one of the gov­ern­ment par­ties will back down, be it Labour, The Greens or NZ First. I maybe wrong on this, but I am not pre­pared to sim­ply sit back and see it hap­pen before my very eyes with­out doing every­thing I can to stop it. How­ever, I need your help.

Please make every effort to march with me this Sat­ur­day 1 Decem­ber. We will assem­ble out­side the Auck­land Town Hall from 2.00pm and march off at 2.30pm for QEII Square/Britomart where there will be brief speeches.

I urge you to bring this mat­ter to the atten­tion of as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble and would be very grate­ful if you would be pre­pared to onfor­ward this email to your fam­ily, friends and busi­ness asso­ciates. I would also urge you to either write or email your views to the lead­ers of the par­ties sup­port­ing this Bill whose addresses are quoted in the attached NZ Her­ald advertisement.

Kind regards

John Boscawen

PS For those want­ing to know more detail I out­line below some of the key pro­vi­sions of the Bill.

1. The over­rid­ing effect of the bill is to reduce and restrict the rights of indi­vid­u­als (or groups of indi­vid­u­als act­ing together) to spend their own money either crit­i­ciz­ing or sup­port­ing any polit­i­cal party. It is being intro­duced at a time when the recent Appro­pri­a­tion Bill sub­stan­tially freed up the abil­ity of polit­i­cal par­ties, and in par­tic­u­lar the gov­ern­ing party be it Labour or National, to spend tax­pay­ers money pro­mot­ing their own views. For exam­ple, this Bill which was passed just last week now makes legal the tax­payer spend­ing on the so called “Labour pledge­card”, which was pre­vi­ously illegal.

2. For the first time restric­tions are now being placed on the amount of money that may be spent by “third par­ties” in an elec­tion year. Third par­ties want­ing to spend between $12,000 and $120,000 oppos­ing or sup­port­ing any polit­i­cal party will now be required to reg­is­ter and be sub­ject to var­i­ous reg­u­la­tions. Spend­ing in excess of $120,000 will be ille­gal. This sum com­pares with the total cost of the cam­paign run by the major oppo­si­tion party of between $5–10 mil­lion, and in the case of the major gov­ern­ing party a sum well in excess $10 mil­lion. In effect the two major polit­i­cal par­ties will be able to drown out any third party pri­vate oppo­si­tion. (An ear­lier pro­vi­sion requir­ing any third party who wishes to spend just one dol­lar, to sign a dec­la­ra­tion before a JP has been deleted).

3.Restrictions also apply to can­di­dates seek­ing elec­tion to par­lia­ment. A non MP can­di­date will now only be allowed to spend $20,000 over the entire elec­tion year (ver­sus the cur­rent 3 months prior to elec­tion) while any exist­ing MP will have in addi­tion to the same $20,000, much larger and more freely avail­able amounts of tax­payer fund­ing. This will tilt the play­ing field even more firmly on the side of incum­bent politi­cians, of what­ever polit­i­cal per­sua­sion. It will now be even harder to unseat a sit­ting MP.

4. Tighter restric­tions on anony­mous dona­tions are also being intro­duced. Sub­ject to a max­i­mum limit of $240,000 of total anony­mous dona­tions, all dona­tions to a polit­i­cal party above $1,000 (pre­vi­ously $10,000) will be required to be sep­a­rately dis­closed. The effect of this will be to reduce the amount of money a polit­i­cal party can raise and hence spend. Even tighter restric­tions apply to third par­ties. This anony­mous dona­tion regime was not in the orig­i­nal Bill and has not been sub­ject to pub­lic input or debate at the select com­mit­tee process.[/quote]