KEY POINTS:
Legislation passed to address specific problems is almost invariably bad law. So it is with the Electoral Finance Bill, which is an egregious challenge to democracy and our freedom to express political opinions.
Its name may seem innocuous, even yawn-inducing: the words "electoral" and "finance" are not likely
to inflame public passion the way, say, "anti-smacking" will. But danger lurks beneath that apparently tedious terminology.
The bill is a response to the campaign at the last election in which seven wealthy businessmen who belonged to the Exclusive Brethren paid for advertisements in support of the National Party. The idea - and it is a good one - is that people and organisations who want to spend a lot of money backing specific parties need to do so in full public view and not by stealth. But the proposed law goes much further. First, it defines as an "election advertisement" any expression of opinion that "takes a position on a proposition with which one or more parties or one or more candidates is associated". It's hard to think of what is excluded from that definition: as worded, it would apply to the author of a graffito or even an email.
Second, it imposes burdensome clerical and accounting requirements on any "third party" that spends more than $5000 in an election year - and caps spending by such groups to $60,000, which sounds like a lot but is actually the cost of three full-page newspaper advertisements.
It is hard to imagine a piece of legislation more ill-conceived or repugnant to the New Zealand version of democracy. It is ill-conceived because it hits big spenders and backyard single-issue battlers alike: the Exclusive Brethren's campaign was sustained, as it transpired, by false declarations about who had authorised the advertisements - a clear breach of electoral law which required no legislative change to deal with it.
And it is repugnant because it means that small community groups - whose opinions are every bit as valid as those of big business or obscure and well-heeled religious sects - are caught by its scattergun blast.
Justice Minister Mark Burton - echoed by the Prime Minister - has responded to the chorus of disapproval from lobby groups, constitutional experts, media commentators and the Government's political opponents by coughing and mumbling that the bill will undergo amendment after consideration by a select committee whose deliberations will, in turn, be informed by public submission. But that is somewhat worse than no answer at all. Select committees exist to make fine adjustments to legislation or - more often - to finesse their political management so as to ensure they have adequate support when they are reported back to the House. They can also ensure that laws have a decent burial when they are euthanased in the committee room. They do not exist to redesign, clause by clause, legislation as shoddy as this.
Ironically, the law as proposed has the potential to muzzle the Government more tightly than its critics. It covers the entire election year, rather than the two or three months before the vote when political campaigns swing into action. Thus the Government may find that it alone is staring down the barrel of a gun it loaded, when its announcements of initiatives start getting defined as electioneering. Such policy rollouts typically proliferate in election years and the Government is fond of saying that they are simply informing the public - not soliciting votes. But if they have forgotten the pledge-card debacle in the Beehive, you may be sure that the folks at the Auditor-General's office haven't.