Changing the rules

The National-led Government is planning changes to the way New Zealand conducts election campaigns and is beginning the consultation process. While some proposed changes are good, others caused me to raise an eyebrow.

For a change, let me start by mentioning what the government is getting right: They plan on closing funding loopholes that allow Members of Parliament to campaign using taxpayer money in the three months leading up to an election. This is good because it’ll take away an advantage of incumbency, but mostly because the current system is a campaign rort.

Another excellent change is that National will include exceptions for people expressing political opinion on blogs or social networking sites. The old law was so unclear that many bloggers—me included—refrained from commenting on the election campaign rather than risk being accused of violating it.

But these bright spots aside, National gets many things wrong.

One of the first things National did upon taking power was to repeal the Electoral Finance Act, passed by the previous Labour-led Government as a direct response to National’s abuse of the system in the 2005 election by then-leader, Don Brash. Then, a secretive fundamentalist Christian sect spent some $2 million on a smear campaign against Labour and the Greens in an effort to elect a National-led government. The new effort is intended to replace that repealed law.

National now plans to let special interests—like that sect—spend unlimited money on election campaigns, except that if they plan to spend over $12,000, they’ll have to register with the Electoral Commission but—and this is significant—unlike political parties, they’ll face no requirement to declare the source of their money or report how they spent it. Seems to me that if special interests want to influence election campaigns, then voters ought to have the right and the means to find out who’s paying for that campaigning.

The reason they’re not imposing spending limits is, they say, because “New Zealanders were strongly divided on these issues.” That’s nonsense. Like with the pro-smacking referendum, the campaign against the now-repealed Electoral Finance Act was run by an assortment of far-right ideologues, most notably a fundraiser for the neoconservative Act Party, John Boscawen, who’s now one of that party’s MPs. Some National Party supporters were also involved because they resented not being able to receive undeclared campaign assistance from special interest groups (like that sect). So, the right was screaming against the law, and Act demanded its repeal—that’s hardly New Zealand as a whole being “strongly divided”.

Apart from that thorny issue, the parties themselves are getting some reforms. For example, parties will be required to declare the number of donations that fall between certain bands (to be determined). Previously, only large donations had to be reported.

However, it’s unclear if the most glaring funding loophole—and National’s favourite—will be closed: The use of trusts to solicit campaign donations that are bundled together and donated to a party in bulk. In this way, donors can donate large amounts of money, but remain completely anonymous. It’s important to note that while Labour has benefited from this system, National has benefited far more.

The National-led Government is right to want to fix the rules for running election campaigns. Justice Minister Simon Power said, "If we are to have a system which is fair, workable, enduring, and in place before the 2011 election, broad consensus is essential." I agree. I’m just not convinced they really mean it.