KEY POINTS:
Electoral campaigns should be a contest of ideas, with the widest possible participation. Welcome, therefore, is the Electoral Commission's permission for major trade unions with Labour Party links to list as third parties for the election.
The decision, arrived at after seven months of legal wrangling directly involving the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union, means the union can spend up to $120,000 on election advertising for or against a party. That is as it should be. The EPMU should be able to have its say, as should any organisation - business association, union or religious faction - from any part of the political spectrum.
The Electoral Commission has undoubtedly exercised a liberal interpretation of the Electoral Finance Act. In reality, it had little choice if it was to deliver even a vague functionality to electoral proceedings, so inherent are the legislation's absurdities. The objection to the EPMU listing was laid by David Farrar (a website blogger with strong links to the National Party who has campaigned against the act) on the basis that people or organisations involved in the administration of a political party are prohibited from also listing as third parties. This clause was meant to prevent conflicts of interest and to stop campaign directors, financial agents and the like from also registering as third parties to beat the system.
As is so often the case with regulatory zeal, it has produced unintended consequences. Not only, in a major stroke of irony, was the EPMU, a Labour Party ally, muzzled for two months but it would also have been restricted to spending $12,000 on election advertising if it had been refused permission to list. The union is an affiliate of the Labour Party and its national secretary, Andrew Little, is vice-president of its affiliates group and represents union interests on the party council. The commission chose not to define "involvement" in a party's internal workings as applying to any person or organisation affiliated to a party.
That was, surely, what the legislation intended, if only because Labour supporters tend, through unions, to have a more formal affiliation to the party than those who back National. Beneficiaries of this test case include the likes of the Meat Workers and Related Trades Union and the Service and Food Workers Union. They, in fact, plan to do nothing more than they have done during previous election campaigns. But now a line has been drawn, the Electoral Commission must bring a similar liberal spirit whenever it is asked to undertake the empty exercise of ruling on who might be allowed to register as a third party. That approach should apply, particularly, to groups at the other end of the political divide, including those who have contributed to Labour's inordinate fear about private money in election campaigns.
The commission ruling has spared Labour some blushes. But the wrangling has re-emphasised the senselessness of the Electoral Finance Act. Yet another reason for ridicule, and one easily comprehensible, has emerged with the possibility that a Tui billboard critical of Winston Peters may breach the act because it represents "election advertising" against him. The commission, again hopelessly exposed, says it will warn Tui, which has not listed as a third party, whether or not it receives a complaint.
National says it will revoke the act. The ongoing foolishness associated with it provides plenty for Labour, the Greens and NZ First to rue, and points to the immense amount of work that will be necessary to sort it out. A good starting point would be a more realistic assessment of the influence of money in politics.
