Summary of Electoral Finance Submissions
The Ministry of Justice has released a summary of submissions on its electoral finance review. Later this month we should see the Government’s proposals. Some interesting aspects of the summary:
- 79 submissions. 29 from individuals, 20 from Otago Uni students, 11 from industry groups, 5 from political parties, 6 from Govt bodies, 2 from unions and 2 from businesses. National I know did not do a submission, and Labour published their one (which was helpful). Would be interested to see the submissions from the other political parties. Hopefully the Ministry will publish these to save me the trouble of OIAing them. UPDATE: I was wrong. National did do a submission. I just did not hear anything about it. I will blog it later
- Eight submissions (including mine) support an additional principle of simplicity.
- There was little support for increasing the limit for anonymous donations from $1,000. I proposed it reduce to $100.
- There were 12 submissons both for and against retaining the protected disclosure scheme where anonymous donations can be routed through the Electoral Commission. I was one of those saying the scheme should be scrapped.
- 14 submissions want the $10,000 disclosure limit for party donations lowered to $1,000.
- 13 submissions wanted no cap on donations from a single source. 19 supported a cap.
- 33 submissions favoured public funding of political parties, but only nine supported extra funding on top of the broadcasting allocation
- 10 submissions favoured abolishing the broadcasting allocation
- 17 submissions favoured parties being able to purchase broadcast advertising beyond their allocation
- 13 submissons supported increased spending limits
- 9 submissions supported a three month regulated period and 10 a 12 month or from 1 Jan regulated period.
- One person submitted that bloggers who advocate for a party must get the permission of that party! Another said bloggers with significant influence should not be anonymous.
- 15 submissions favoured regulation of parallel campaigning and seven did not.
I am looking forward to seeing the proposal document. I hope in some areas it may give two distinct options rather than merely this is what is planned.