Public funding?

So, the other shoe has dropped on the illegal election spending issue, with Labour pushing for public funding of political parties, and Michael Cullen talking of the possibility of retrospective legislation to validate past spending. I'm of two minds about this. On the question of public funding, it will guarantee a level playing field, allowing parties to compete on their merits (however defined) rather than the depth of their pockets and the wealth of their backers. And it will decrease the ability of the rich to buy themselves political power - which can only be a Good Thing (if they want political power, they can vote like everybody else). But it’s not all good. DPF argues that

It's good for a party to have to work hard to earn its money. It's good that when you are out of touch with your supporters that your funding declines. It's good that your sucess is linked to how many dedicated activists will sweat and toil for the party. They all help keep a party honest.

Of course, he's being disingenuous - while supposedly talking about the grassroots, what he's really supporting is the "right" of rich supporters to buy themselves undue power and influence - but glaring inequalities of wealth aside, he has a point. The trend over the past twenty years (or longer) in New Zealand politics has been for New Zealand political parties to become increasingly divorced from their membership. The grassroots are a source of funds, and people to do the donkey work at election time, but are otherwise completely sidelined and have very little influence on policy (they're not even allowed to talk about it at party conferences anymore - or at least, not in public; it might take things "off message"). I don't think this is a good trend - grassroots involvement makes democracy strong - and public funding will strengthen, rather than weaken it.

If we want to limit the power of the rich, then we can do it through greater electoral transparency - lower declaration thresholds, a ban on accepting donations unless the source is known, and a ban on "laundering" donations so as to disguise the source. Force party backers to put their mouths where their money is, rather than hiding behind bank cheques, special purpose trusts, and a knowing wink. But I'm not sure that we can level the playing field without further divorcing parties from their grassroots (though fixing the laws around broadcasting funding so that it is equal, or proportional to the number of electorate candidates, rather than a self-fulfilling prophecy based on the last election result would be a good start).

As for retrospective validation, I think there's a clear need. Much of the spending in question was explicitly authorised by Parliamentary Services, and the parties should not have to pay for their mistake. And as Cullen points out, this isn't just a matter of the last election - the Auditor-General's opinion affects every past election. Unless National wants to find itself repaying debts from the 90's, they'd be wise to support such a move. The problem is that Labour will try and use this to write itself a "get out of jail free" card on its pledge cards, which is something I disagree strongly with. Any retrospective validation should only apply to spending that was within the guidelines at the time - not to egregious abuses which were explicitly in violation of those guidelines.

Unfortunately, National's fundamentalist stance and its traditional inability to cooperate with other parties and build coalitions is likely to mean that Labour will get its way. Oh, for a smart opposition...