"When a government becomes powerful, it is destructive, extravagant and violent; it is an usurper which takes bread from innocent mouths and deprives honorable men of their substance for votes with which to perpetuate itself." - Cicero
"Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. It is force." - George Washington
"In all that people can do for themselves, the government ought not to interfere." - Abraham Lincoln
"The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power." - John Stuart Mill
"The government's role is whatever the government defines it to be." - Helen Clark

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Sad day for democracy in New Zealand

I was in Parliament this afternoon for the final stages of the Electoral Finance Bill. The speeches from both sides were a bit weak, I thought. A lot of noise but not much substance. Rodney Hide's, in particular, was not up to his usual standard.

The core of the matter is how willing we should be to limit freedom of expression when people start using it in ways we find inconvenient. MPs and commentators have indicated their position on the liberal-totalitarian scale by their votes and comments. It's just sad that so many cannot recognise evil and resist it's temptation.

Peter Dunne reversed the position he has held up to now and voted against the bill. His conclusion was correct but his reasoning was not. Essentially, he likes the bill but thinks it will do more harm than good as the public are too stupid to recognise it's many benefits. More charitable summaries of his position are possible but I think mine is fair. Maybe people are still roasting him over his support for the anti-smacking law and he doesn't want to make the same mistake again.

Tim Shadbolt was there. There has been some suggestion that a campaign against the Southland Polytechnic funding cuts would be issue based, and therefore not illegal. This is incorrect. The part that has been cut out was s5(1)(a)(iii) which said:

taking a position on a proposition with which 1 or more parties or 1 or more candidates is associated

What remains, however, is s5(1)(a)(ii):

[can reasonably be regarded as] encouraging voters to vote, or not to vote, for a type of party or for a type of candidate that is described or indicated by reference to views, positions, or policies that are or are not held, taken, or pursued ...

So the final version permits issue advocacy only to the extent that it doesn't encourage people to vote for or against any particular party. If Southland Polytechnic runs ads complaining about their funding being cut, any reader can figure out that the party in power is the one that did the cutting and, if they want the cuts reversed, they need to vote for someone else. If Shadbolt runs too many of them he's going to jail.

In the end, all election campaigning is about parties. Even if you are completely outside party politics and concerned only with a single issue, you can only advance that issue by getting people to vote for parties that agree with your position on the issue. So an effective election ad cannot just talk about the issue. It has to also make it clear where the parties stand on that issue. But as soon as you do that, you have a regulated election advertisement.

So the situation now is: if people can figure out what party or parties to vote for or against based on your issue ad, then the ad is caught by the bill. If they can't, your ad is of course quite ineffective for electioneering purposes. So, all election-related issue advocacy is still restricted.