Newspaper websites and blogs all closed down

Bill English has pointed out in Parliament that the Electoral Finance Bill only has an exemption for newspapers, but not for websites and blogs run by newspapers. And as they no doubt cost more than $60,000 a year to run, and certainly take positions on propositions associated with political parties, we can say goodbye to Herald online and Stuff next year if the bill is passed in its current form.

You see in the exceptions to what is an election advertisement in Clause 5(2), we have paragraph (c):

any content of a newspaper or periodical that has been selected by, or with the authority of, the editor of the newspaper or periodical solely for the purpose of informing or entertaining its readership

And a website is not a newspaper or periodical. And as Colin Espiner’s and Audrey Young’s blogs are not done on a non commercial basis (they are part of their paid jobs), their blogs will have to go also.

Yes, once again, the bill really is that bad.

The Government can’t even deny in the House it isn’t that bad. All Burton can say is:

Questions about the bill would be answered at select committee hearings, where MPs would receive expert advice about how key sections of the bill would be interpreted

Now this is crap. The Minister has tens time the number of expert advisers than the Select Committee has. It is a disgrace he can not get up in Parliament and answer questions on it.

This shows why the bill must be killed. The Government will just claim the interpretations are wrong, and then come election year it will be too late. Because the most nasty part of the bill is that once it is passed, you will not be able to spend more than $60,000 in election year criticising the bill itself.

Anyway this bill might be great for me. If Herald and Stuff and TVNZ have to close their websites down, I might get some of their advertising dollars 🙂