January 6, 2008 10:56am by David Farrar

McCarten on Labour

Labour had a terrible finish to last year. Any hope for respite in 2008 was smashed within minutes of the New Year. Just after midnight, some wannabe drove up on a scooter to Helen Clark’s electoral office and threw a brick at the window…

But the political relevance of this action was that the offender released a press statement afterwards saying it was motivated by the new Electoral Finance Act which came into force on January 1. It’s clear the controversy over this legislation isn’t going away as the Government hoped. Labour’s party strategists would sense this is a warning of more headaches to come.

For example, in the past few days a website was set up opposing the re-election of the Labour Party. The website creator refuses to register himself as required by the new act.

The ensuing media attention has resulted in this website’s domain name being extensively published and will make the website more successful than the creator could have hoped.

More dangerously for Labour, Invercargill Mayor and occasional revolutionary, Tim Shadbolt, is heading up a campaign to also tip the Government out of office because of education funding cuts to the Southland Institute of Technology.

Shadbolt is also required to register himself under the act, which he has no intention of doing. I’m sure he can’t believe his good luck his campaign will get even more profile.

I agree with former Labour leader Mike Moore, when he says the new laws are badly constructed and target the wrong problems. It is clear the print media is going to run a year-long campaign opposing this legislation and will highlight breaches. I can’t think of another time the national media was so united in a political campaign. It’s extraordinary that Labour has put itself in this position.

A political colleague of mine told me on the eve of the bill’s passing that if Labour had any hope of retaining the Treasury benches, it must pull it.

The electoral finance reform was well-intentioned and tried to address secret funding. But Labour’s paranoia has created problems far worse than the solution. Ironically, political party spending isn’t, in the scheme of things, that important. The big parties are limited to spending $2 million on their election campaigns and rarely raise that amount of money anyway.

Less well-known is the leaders of both main parties get more than $2m each in their parliamentary leader’s budget to spend essentially on whatever they like. When you consider hidden subsidies, such as MP and political staff salaries and expenses during an election period, it amounts to more than $20m.

Even then, most voters are influenced more by media reporting on politics through the year than 30-second ads on television in the last few weeks of the campaign. Party election spending only matters significantly when the support for both parties is close leading up to the election.

… In the next few months, political survival may focus their minds. If face-saving and practicality does not involve a full repeal of this law, they should at least address the more draconian parts of it.

If they don’t, the legislation designed to protect them from their political opponents could well be what tips them out of office on election day.