The Electoral Suicide Bill
The latest advertisement from John Boscawen is above as an image. The link below takes you to an 800KB pdf of it. It ran in the Sunday Star-Times.
Do Labour, the Greens, United Future and NZ First really want to be explaining next year why Tim Shadbolt has gone to jail for sticking up for his constituents in Southland by running advertisement ten months before the election. Do they think there is any way they can overcome the symbolism of that? Sure there are grounds to disagree about whether the ads he ran in December would infringe, but there is no doubt his ads planned for early next year will run afoul as they will call for the Government to be brought down.
It is no coincidence that those parties supporting the Electoral Finance Bill are well down in the polls. Now they can gamble that the issue will fade, but that is a very risky gamble.