KEY POINTS:
The Sensible Sentencing Trust says victims of crime will ensure its message gets out in election year if the trust goes over its proposed spending limit.
Spokesman Garth McVicar told the Herald that the Electoral Finance Bill was discussed at a victims' conference in Napier recently.
Under the bill, expected to be reported back to the House this week, groups spending more than $5000 on election advertising must be registered as third parties.
Unless the Government decides to ditch the bill and start again, from January 1 next year interest groups such as the trust will have a spending limit. This was $60,000 in the original bill but is expected to be lifted to something like $120,000.
Mr McVicar said individual victims would be prepared to fundraise and advocate individually.
If that was considered breaking the law "some of them would be prepared to go to jail if that is what it meant. They won't accept that they don't have a right to stand up on issues they feel passionately about".
Mr McVicar said no official decisions had been taken about election-year action.
"It is not an ideal situation, I must admit, because I don't want to see anybody in the position of breaking the law - but if you are put in that corner you don't have an option."
Business New Zealand chief executive Phil O'Reilly said his group would not prepare for the January 1 start until it saw the bill reported from the justice and electoral select committee.
But he was sure the new law would be tested through the courts before the election next year.
"The difficulty ... is that it leads to a chilling effect, where people are frightened to say something in case they are in breach of the onerous provisions of the law. And that is very bad for democracy."
The Electoral Commission chief executive, Dr Helen Catt, said the priority for the commission would be to set out a guideline to interpret the definition of "election advertising".
Her aim was to have that done by January 1.
"But we just have to recognise that the really tough things that define boundaries might not be defined until we have actual examples or get asked, 'Is this in or is this out?"'
