The unauthorised Green ads

Well that didn’t take long. I blogged about the ads yesterday and today they are gone. Andrea Vance at Stiff reports:

The Green Party has pulled “Gone Off Phil Goff?” ads – and apologised to the Labour leader.

The online notices were placed this week but were not authorised by the party, which was alerted to them via social media.

Although the Greens would like to attract disillusioned Labour voters, co-leader Metiria Turei said earlier this month that it would support a Labour-led government following the November 26 election.

Green Party co-leader Russel Norman said the ads were placed as an “experiment” by a member of the party’s campaign team. He apologised to Mr Goff.

The ads were up for “a day or so”, he said.

“It was a very small-scale experiment by a member of our campaign team that actually wasn’t authorised.

 If the advertisements were not authorised by the party, then the team member who placed them has committed an offence under the Electoral Act. I hope the Electoral Commission will investigate, as it is a serious offence to place an ad on behalf f a party without authorisation.

The advertisement also did not appear to have an authorisation statement, which is potentially a seperate offence also.