Helen Kelly, Dominion Post column, Electoral Finance Bill

Dominion Post BusinessDay column
Helen Kelly, CTU president
Published Monday December 3 2007.

The Electoral Finance Bill will come back before the house later this week.

The problems with the Bill have been well documented.  In some cases these problems were significant, such as those affecting the legitimate role of third party advocacy groups. 

Like many other organisations, we proposed amendments to the definitions relating to third party election activity so that they more carefully targeted electoral speech, rather than wider political activity.  Amendments put up by the select committee have gone a long way to fixing these problems.

However recent debate over the Electoral Finance Bill has ranged from the sensible to the almost hysterical, including a dedicated campaign against the bill by another newspaper.

Due to problematic drafting, the public focus has inevitably been on the problems with the Bill. 

But what has been largely absent from recent public debate has been the very real reasons why we needed change in the first place.

There was a high level of public interest in reform following the last election when we saw millions in secret funding to the two main political parties and a third party spending over $1 million seeking to discredit two political parties and clearly influence the election outcome.

And because of the devious actions of that third party, we have this year been considering scrutiny of funding and activities of political parties and third parties in election year.

We accepted the need  to provide more transparency and limit the potential for unlimited parallel election campaigns, and so supported moves to better regulate the role third parties. 

The view of unions was that the principles driving our electoral finance reform should be about limiting the undue influence of wealthy interests on the electoral process, and providing for transparency in the funding and activities of political actors, including third parties.

Unions are upfront about their political activity, and many of our goals for working people can only be achieved through involvement in the political process.

And we defend the right of all groups to have a say in issues that affect them, including through participation in the electoral process.

But there is every reason to be very cautious about defending the rights of wealthy interests to spend millions of dollars procuring electoral objectives.

As the CTU has often quoted recently, international financier George Soros has warned that “perhaps the greatest threat to freedom and democracy in the world today comes from the formation of unholy alliances between government and business.”

Nicky Hager’s well-researched and unchallenged analysis of the National Party funding and strategies in his book last year provided clear evidence of an urgent need to reform our election funding laws to, in the words of the 1986 Royal Commission on the Electoral System, “limit the potential for corruption by interests with access to substantial funds”.

It shouldn’t be possible for Australian insurance companies to secretly pay million dollar donations to a New Zealand political party with the objective of securing privatisation of ACC for their private profit. 

And I have a level of suspicion of those who are calling this Bill an attack on democracy under the guise of freedom of speech. 

Freedom of expression or freedom of speech through expensive mass advertising are not freedoms that every person can exercise.

The average New Zealand income is around $34,000, and so a third party spending limit of three and a half times that amount needs to be seen in this light.

And, following the select committee amendments, this limit is only when they are calling on people to vote for or against a candidate or party or parties.

It is encouraging that there is now going to be some movement on anonymous donations and secret trusts.  There was a strong public expectation of reform in this area.

We don’t think electoral reform should stop here.  Public funding should stay under active consideration.  It difficult to see why the campaigns of political parties should be privately funded, with the corresponding advantage (and risk of undue influence) to parties backed by corporates and millionaires.

Public funding of elections would build on the existing funding that we all already accept as a given, through Vote Parliamentary Service and through the extensive broadcasting allocations.

We also think a cap on donations to political parties should be considered, alongside consideration of public funding.  It is far preferable to front up with a small amount of money and prevent parties from accessing millions in secret and corporate money, through both a ban on anonymous donations, and consideration of reasonable caps on political donations.

Ends.

There is more information about the CTU's views on election funding here: http://union.org.nz/electionfunding