January 2008

Mike Moore: Repeal elec­toral act … that’s progress — 31 Jan 2008 — Pol­i­tics: New Zealand Polit­i­cal News, Analy­sis and Com­ment — NZ Herald

Mike Moore gives us a brief his­tory of the Labour move­ment and in the process high­lights just where they have gone off the rails. Unusu­ally for him it isn’t just a col­lec­tion of waf­fle and sound bites.

• There were many Australian-born min­is­ters in the first NZ Labour Cab­i­net — dis­senters, trade union­ists, who were hounded out of Australia.
• Chris­tian­ity played a huge role in the beliefs of early Labour, we owed more to Method­ism than to Marx. Branches of my union, the Print­ers Union, were called ‘chapels’
• Our first Labour Prime Min­is­ter, Sav­age, was a strong Catholic; Nash, a lay preacher; Nord­meyer a Pres­by­ter­ian Min­is­ter; Kirk a young Sal­va­tion Army mem­ber; and Lange, ini­tially a devout Methodist. Labour’s rela­tion­ship with the Ratana Church was the key to hold­ing power in Maoridom for generations.
• Paddy Webb, later a min­is­ter, was stripped of his par­lia­men­tary seat and lost his civil rights for 10 years because of his oppo­si­tion to con­scrip­tion dur­ing World War I.
• Tim Arm­strong, Bob Sem­ple and Peter Fraser were jailed for sedi­tious behav­iour. Wal­ter Nash was fined for import­ing sedi­tious mate­r­ial. That’s two future Labour Prime Min­is­ters with crim­i­nal convictions.
• One cur­rent min­is­ter was ejected phys­i­cally from the par­lia­men­tary gallery for protest­ing against the exten­sion of the pow­ers of the Secu­rity Intel­li­gence Service.

[quote]This short his­tory of demo­c­ra­tic Labour and dis­sent is to remind peo­ple of Labour’s tra­di­tions. Why and how we stand on the shoul­ders of oth­ers in our his­toric com­mit­ment to human rights; free­dom at home and abroad.

Early Labour took unpop­u­lar, minor­ity stands, attack­ing the Gov­ern­ment of the day for their impe­ri­al­ist slaugh­ter of Samoans in an early inde­pen­dence upris­ing. These are the his­toric planks that made our platform.

Why then the prob­lem now with Chris­tians? Is it because we don’t approve of their brand of Christianity?

Why then this his­toric blun­der of the Elec­toral Finance Act, which con­tra­dicts this fine tradition?

Why the silence of the lambs in the civil rights move­ment who so pub­licly con­demned me when I sug­gested we should merge tax and social ben­e­fit num­bers to pre­vent fraud?

Geof­frey Palmer was at his thun­der­ing best when he attacked Mul­doon for his ret­ro­spec­tive and fast-track leg­is­la­tion, and for using SIS files on opponents.

There’s a cost to dis­agree­ing, as I found when I pub­lished an arti­cle com­par­ing all this to Mul­doon­ism. The response was furi­ous and focused. Civil Rights groups have been eerily silent. The Human Rights Com­mis­sioner, bravely and almost alone, has spo­ken out.

Is it all a cock-up or a con­spir­acy that we have enacted such a repres­sive, unwork­able, flawed law to cover elec­tion year activists?

Bit of both. Trau­ma­tised by the Brethren, who the Gov­ern­ment believed were pre­pared to use pri­vate detec­tives to check out fam­ily mem­bers and spend mil­lions, the Gov­ern­ment has used the ham­mer of the state to smash a few nutters.

We are all affected by the heavy-handed response. The con­se­quence has been leg­is­la­tion that will be tested in court and be found to be unwork­able. Good.

Why should you have to reg­is­ter with the state if you want to oppose or sup­port a polit­i­cal party, or pro­mote pub­lic pol­icy? Lawyers have sug­gested that car­toon­ists who seek to per­suade read­ers could be cov­ered, even theatre.

You may have to ask per­mis­sion of a can­di­date to email or write a let­ter in their sup­port, but not if you rub­bish them. A pri­vate poster on your own wall is cov­ered — is graffiti?

Some­one could set up a free give­away paper, lose a mil­lion dol­lars, go broke, and that’s not cov­ered. Even MPs who voted for the leg­is­la­tion can’t work out how to spend their own elec­torate allowances.

Peo­ple are going to test this law, per­haps get a terminally-ill per­son in a hos­pice to be an agent. A heroic defence was sug­gested, that is the law of com­mon sense. Unique in world jurispru­dence — tell that to the judge or elec­toral com­mis­sioner who closed down an anti-Government web­page. The blog­ger wouldn’t give his address because he lived at home and might upset mom. Is this silly or sin­is­ter? Both.

My plea to the party I love is to just repeal the act. Accept it’s wrong in sub­stance and prin­ci­ple before it hurts us fur­ther and does the exact oppo­site of what’s intended by encour­ag­ing big money to cir­cum­vent this law. J’Accuse.[/quote]

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