KEY POINTS:
Sooner or later someone was going to say `I told you so' over the Electoral Finance Act and David Farrar has done so this morning.
If anyone can, he can. He predicted what is happening.
The definition of advertising in section 5 of the act is so broad, it could cover almost everything, and does, including some MPs' newsletters so Act MP Heather Roy was told by the Chief Electoral Office. By the way the Electoral Office deals with candidates and the Electoral Commission in parties.
Here is section 5. Judge for yourself whether Roy's newsletters meet the definition.
Meaning of election advertisement(1) In this Act, election advertisement
(a) means any form of words or graphics, or both, that can reasonably be regarded as doing 1 or more of the following:
(i) encouraging or persuading voters to vote, or not to vote, for 1 or more specified parties or for 1 or more candidates or for any combination of such parties and candidates:
(ii) encouraging or persuading 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 (whether or not the name of a party or the name of a candidate is stated); and
(b) includes
(i) a candidate advertisement; and
(ii) a party advertisement.
This is the moderate definition. The original definition was much wider that by the time the select committee arrived at this, they thought they had workable definition.
The wide definition, coupled with the fact that spending restrictions of the campaign are to cover virtually the whole year, it is no wonder MPs feel constrained in what they can put out. They don't want to blow their $20,000 campaign spending limit before the campaign starts.
MPs wanted to write in an exemption for themselves for all material produced with parliamentary funding and a parliamentary crest but didn't have the nerve. . Peter Dunne wants cross-party conference to discuss it all. I'll bet that's where the issue is headed.
I've heard people who voted for the bill, like Metiria Turei, start to blame the Auditor General, Kevin Brady, for the schemozzle which is a bit rich.
The problem is with the Act. The remedy is in the act.
I'm off to the House now where Annette King is bound to get a roasting over her comments in today's Herald about being in the room when Mike Williams recommended the distribution of Government publicity as a campaign tool.
Unfortunately she recalls some things and not others.
