KEY POINTS:
There is delicious irony in the fact that one of the first victims of the Electoral Finance Act is a labour union. The Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union has been muzzled for two months while the Electoral Commission considers an objection to the union's application for a right to advertise its views in election year.
The irony is no coincidence, of course; the objection has been filed by an opponent of the detestable act, website "blogger" David Farrar. He has no real objection to the union's running political advertisements this year just as it has done in many previous election years. In fact, like all opponents of the act, he would probably say the union should have every right to exercise the same freedom it had before.
But the legislation has bound such activity in volumes of statutory red tape that stands to discourage all truly independent campaigns this year. The clause that could stymie the EPMU campaign is typical of the petty restrictions, many poorly worded, that always arise from excessive regulation. It forbids anyone involved in the affairs of a political party from supporting the party with ostensibly independent advertising. The EPMU is affiliated to the Labour Party and its national secretary sits on the party's ruling council.
Mr Farrar has set out to make fun of the legislation and his objection has succeeded in that aim, whatever the commission's ultimate ruling. It is ridiculous that there should need to be a regulatory assessment of the union's ties to the Labour Party before it can do exactly as it has done in the months before previous elections.
The purpose of the provision is to prevent party insiders circumventing restrictions on the party's campaign spending and the commission must now decide exactly how to define "involvement" in a political party. Did the legislators intend the restriction to apply to any person or group affiliated to a party? Probably not, because that would unfairly penalise Labour's supporters who tend to be in unions more formally affiliated to the party than are National's sympathisers.
But where, then, should the commission draw the line on who might be allowed to register as a "third party" under the act and advertise in a way that might tend to support a party or candidate standing at the election? Pity the commission; it has been handed this pointless, pin-pricking exercise only because the Labour Party lives in excessive fear of private money in politics.
Privately financed campaigns designed to influence an election are a double-edged sword, as the seven Exclusive Brethren proved in 2005. Whatever harm their insidious material did Labour was probably outweighed by the embarrassment they caused National when the media, including this newspaper, flushed out who was behind it. The Prime Minister must have forgotten our efforts when she labelled us partisan last week.
It is not partisan to argue for the widest possible participation in our politics. New Zealand is not so susceptible to opinion backed by wealth that we need to restrict political expression as rigorously as Labour, the Greens and NZ First have set out to do.
It is entirely healthy that any organisation - industry association, trade union or religious sect - caring enough for a principle or policy to promote it to the electorate should be allowed to do so. Voters are not fools; money cannot speak louder than the merits of the message it is paying for.
We hope the EPMU receives permission to speak this year and we dare hope the challenge to its political rights has given the architects of the act cause to regret. The gag stands to earn considerably more ridicule before it ends at the election.
