KEY POINTS:
There's a good reason why I have never attached a "no junk mail" notice to my letterbox.
That's because those who deliver those huge volumes of retail leaflets would probably consider election leaflets to be "junk mail" rather than the gems that they are to political journalists.
Failure to receive such literature would be no good, considering how important election advertising has been since the 2005 election, and how important it will be for the 2008 election.
I just didn't think it would be important so soon. But Grant Robertson, the new Labour candidate for Wellington Central to replace Marian Hobbs, is on the job already.
His elves yesterday delivered the first proper election pamphlet for the 2008 election to my letterbox - yes, on December 11, 2007, almost a year before the election, a red Labour leaflet introducing him as the new candidate for Wellingtonn Central to replace outgoing MP Marian Hobbs.
Robertson would make an excellent MP (he worked in the Beehive as Clark's s second-most-senior political adviser) and I have already tipped him in the Herald as a future foreign minister.
I got to know him when he worked in the Beehive as adviser to present Wellington Central MP Marian Hobbs then as 2IC to Heather Simpson, Helen Clark's chief of staff and chief policy adviser.
There was something odd about not only receiving a leaflet so early but about the leaflet itself. It had no parliamentary crest that denotes it has been funded by the taxpayer.
It looked similar in almost every other respect but the crest wasn't there - as a non-MP Grant isn't yet entitled to taxpayer funded advertising.
Yes he paid for it, but there is little daylight between party advertising and what Parliamentary Service accepts as parliamentary advertising these days with the gradual increase of state-funding by stealth.
Grant's is the first election leaflet I recall having received in my letterbox outside the statutory regulated election period for years and years that has not been paid for with taxpayer parliamentary funds.
Why has Grant's election leaflet come so early?
So it wouldn't be caught by the new Electoral Finance Bill before the House that advances the regulated advertising period from three weeks before an election, to January 1 next year (three weeks away).
He or his backers have paid for it and the cost of it does not count against the $20,000 he is allowed to spend between January 1 and the election next year. It is outside the regulated period. Just like John Key's DVD and National's billboards in 2005.
Fair enough. But it does show how new laws create new behaviour and do not constrain old behaviour. This campaign leaflet would never have been distributed so early if it weren't for the EFB. Nor would Key's DVD.
What - if the law is not repealed by National - should we expect for the 2011 election? Campaigning 18 months out to get a jump on the regulated period?
Will parties start to spend vast amounts before the regulated period kick in?
Where will it end?
Parliament has already passed a law that continues MPs' taxpayer funding for political advertising so long as the MPs are not stupid enough to say 'vote for me' or 'give me cash'.
We don't automatically get to see what this taxpayer money funds unless we happen to buy receive the literature accidentally as a consumer.
I think Parliamentary Service - or the Speaker - should make all such political advertising funded by Parliament publicly accessible as soon as it is approved so we can see how close it looks to perfectly legitimate advertising of the type Grant has funded.
I'll make inquiries and keep you posted.
