Chris Trotter defending the Electoral Finance Bill

Today Chris Trotter is defending the indefensible - the Electoral Finance Bill. It's a real party political broadcast, of the type that would most likely be illegal if Labour were not in Government at the time, under the bill Trotter is defending. In Trotter's world, it's the National Party and allies "under the bed".

Here is his Just Left column from The Dominion Post.

Best democracy money can buy
Chris Trotter, From the Left

NZ is the place where bad ideas go to die. If that judgement seems harsh, just think about the extraordinary response to Justice Minister Mark Burton's Electoral Finance Bill.

To hear Bill English tell the story, NZ is about to enter the Stygian darkness of a full-blown Stalinist dictatorship. Every organisation, from the tiniest local child-care committee to the super-heavyweights of the Business Roundtable, is about to be fitted with a scold's bridle by Helen Clark and her minions.

Freedom of expression is under threat, scream National's cheerleaders in the commentariat. Democracy too, is deemed to be at risk from Mr Burton's bid to regulate the behaviour of "third parties" (private organisations) in the run-up to the general election.

Such wild claims about the Labour Party's intentions have been heard before in our history. Consider the following, doom-laden, prediction printed in The Dominion on the morning of Election Day, October 15, 1938:

"Today you will exercise a free vote because you are under this established British form of government. If the socialist government is returned to power your vote today may be the last free individual vote you will ever been given the opportunity to exercise in New Zealand."

Well, the "socialist government" was returned to power that day with the most emphatic mandate ever vouchsafed to a NZ political party. But, the elections continued to be held, and the socialists' opponents were (eventually) returned to office.

It is no more coincidence that the sort of wild claims concerning the Labour Party's undemocratic intentions first hurled about in the 1930s and 40s have resurfaced.

Not since the days of Mickey Savage and Peter Fraser has the Right been kept out of office for such a long period. The National Party and its backers are terrified that New Zealanders may yet decide to give Helen Clark a fourth term in government.

National's fear is that if she breaks its charge for the Treasury benches a fourth time, the party will collapse, and then disintegrate into three warring factions that only the recent run of favourable poll results has kept from each others' throats.

And so, in desperation, Mr English trumpets the evils of Mr Burton's Electoral Finance Bill hoping to succeed in 2007 where The Dominion failed in 1938.

But let's just take a deep breath and examine the rules that govern election spending in Britain and Canada (countries which, the last time I looked, were still counted among the world's leading democracies).

In Britain, "third party" expenditure is capped at 5 per cent of the expenditure authorised for political parties in the 12 months prior to polling day.

In Canada the figure is 1 per cent, but applies only to the period of official campaigning. (Mr Burton is proposing a cap of 2.5 percent or $60,000 for 10 months.)

In both Britain and Canada, third parties are required to register with the official electoral regulators; both countries also restrict the contributions of foreign donors to third parties; and both require the identity of third party donors to be made public.

That is how modern democracies conduct themselves.

But, in NZ, it is still acceptable (at least to the National Party) for those with the most money to have the most say. It is also acceptable (at least to the National Party) for the NZ and foreign funders of third-party campaigns to remain anonymous.

The National Party and its allies similarly find it unremarkable that the full-page advertisements of a right-wing lobby group like the Sensible Sentencing Trust can be heavily subsidised by conservative business interests and the public kept in the dark.

National politicians have also demonstrated that they're quite happy to have a bunch of right-wing Christian businessmen put up a million dollars for the purposes of defeating a Labour government and its allies and not have it counted as part of their election expenditure.

NZ is one of the few Western democracies where outrageous rorts of this sort are permitted to live on. It is about time they were given a decent burial.

Over the coming weeks, as opposition to the Electoral Finance Bill reaches a crescendo, take careful note of who is doing the shouting, and ask yourself: Could I, as a citizen, afford to spend a million dollars advancing my political preferences?

Then ask: "Is is fair that my vote's strength will be diluted by those who can?"