Herald on revised EFB

Let’s start with Audrey Young’s blog:

The definition of political advertising in the bill has been reined in somewhat but is still ambiguous enough for Government department campaigns to court legal challenge around technicalities when they start to roll out in election year. They could prove to be politically dangerous.

The Greens manoeuvred themselves well to get greater transparency to donations though there is something a little unnatural about having the Electoral Commission being the conduit of money from one private source to another.

There will be a lot of back-slapping by a slim majority in Parliament which convinces itself it has removed the worse excesses from the bill and there is no need to dump it.

They sky won’t fall in. It won’t affect people’s pockets. Opponents of the bill will be painted as having hidden agendas. Apologists for the bill like Dr Peter Davis will convince themselves that the bill does no harm at all.

But those changes do not alter the big picture.

Along with the advantage incumbent Governments will have, the advantages to incumbent MPs remain unchanged by the select committee, when seen in conjunction with the Continuation of the Validation For MPs to Spend-Up Large on Political Ads Bill due to get its third reading tomorrow.

As bad will be the likely chilling effect on participation in democracy produced by imposing a new set of rules around so-called third parties.

The most pernicious effects of the bill will be unseen and unmeasured.

The editorial is harsher:

The revised Electoral Finance Bill remains a constitutional outrage – for the hasty and partisan way that it is proceeding as well as its repression of election participation. Parliament’s justice and electoral committee has removed some of the draconian elements, not all, and introduced a completely new dimension to our electoral rules, requiring large donations to be channelled through a public body, the Electoral Commission.

Nobody needs to read very far into the 151-page report to realise this subject is too big and too important for a select committee, dominated as such panels are by the governing parties. The drastic plan for the channelling of donations seems to have appeared before the committee not much more than a fortnight ago, and the bill will need to be rushed through remaining stages before the year’s end to bring all private political finance under state control from the beginning of election year.

As originally drafted, the bill would have captured any group “taking a position associated with one or more parties”. That preposterous clause has been culled by the committee but another remains. It will be an offence to encourage people to vote, or not vote, for “a type of party or type of candidate described by reference to views, positions or policies … ” whether or not the party is named.

Thus if civil libertarians, for example, want to urge New Zealanders to stand up for their freedom to publish their political views in election year, they will be caught by the bill from January 1. That sort of message would clearly be intended to encourage people not to vote for the Labour Party.

The bill is a drastic alteration of electoral law, going to the heart of our freedoms and democracy. It is being rushed and reeks of partisan opportunism. It should go no further.

John Armstrong says:

The Electoral Finance Bill emerges from its select committee scrutiny slightly better, but still a fundamentally flawed piece of legislation.

Justice Minister Annette King told the Herald the longer period would allow parties to “better plan” how they would spend their money in election year because previously they did not know when the regulated period would begin.

No one will buy that rationale. As the select committee’s report reveals, under questioning, Ministry of Justice officials could not offer committee members any rationale for the extended regulated period. To have done so would have meant embarrassing the Government.

Also the Herald has an article on the new megaphone clause.

National-aligned blogger David Farrar said that meant loudhailers joined other staples of protest movements such as placards in the list of political advertisements covered by the bill.

He received some backing from Green MP Metiria Turei, who said that the clause was intended to the cover commercial use of loudhailers, such as atop candidate’s vehicles.