Tuesday, September 05, 2006



One law for all on pledge cards

For the past year, National has been screaming about Labour's use of its Parliamentary Services budget to fund its pledge cards. But it turns out they did exactly the same thing back in 2002, and published a pledge list of their own, at election time, funded from their leader's budget.

So, will they pay that money back? Or is it "one law for all, for everyone but National"?

I've said before that there are serious issues with the use of Parliamentary Services funding around election time. While material may comply with the rules and avoid explicitly soliciting for votes, funds or members (and Labour's pledge card did none of these things), against the backdrop of an election campaign, it cannot be viewed as anything other than electioneering (and should therefore be authorised and declared as an election expense). Which means that regardless of who pays how much back, the rules are going to have to change - either to outlaw the use of the Parliamentary Services budget in the leadup to an election (which both hands an enormous advantage to a sitting government, and invites desperate, last-minute advertising splurges as the election approaches), or to admit that everything politicians do is inherently part of the battle for votes, and stop being so precious about it.

(This of course does not let Labour off the hook for their real crime - refusing to declare the pledge cards as election expenditure, despite being told to by the Electoral Office. But sadly, the time-limit for prosecution has expired, and there is nothing we can do about it now, other than fix the law to allow serious investigations in the future).

26 comments:

I know I could find out myself, but does somebody have a description of _every_ change in the rules between the two elections? I was just listening to Brownlee saying there were several and Cullen saying one was irrelevant.

Heh. Brownlee just declared he was calling the Govt corrupt and wouldn't withdraw, then withdrew.

Posted by Lyndon : 9/05/2006 03:03:00 PM

The only one I know about is that mentioned by Cullen today - the requirement that all material carry both a Parliamentary Crest and a point of contact, where previously it only had to carry one.

Posted by Idiot/Savant : 9/05/2006 03:11:00 PM

My understanding is that Labour did delcare the pledge card, but it was declared in the category "contested spending".

Posted by Anonymous : 9/05/2006 03:14:00 PM

National are trying to divert attention form the fact they lost an election despite friterring away millions of tax payer and trust fund dollars in 2005 and despite the "illegal" proxy campaign run on their behalf.

The call for a fresh election, NOW, is nuts and shows just how much contempt they hove for our democratic system and for the ordinary NZ voter. I don't think I have *ever* seen such a cynical move in politics here.

Posted by Anonymous : 9/05/2006 05:18:00 PM

Noddy: it goes back to that (US) Republican view that politics is a bare-knuckle fight, in which the purpose is to smash yur opponent in the face with a brick and nothing is out of bounds. Unfortunately, it seems to have thoroughly infected the National Party's strategists.

Posted by Idiot/Savant : 9/05/2006 05:34:00 PM

Cullen sent out a release with those changes attached:

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA0609/S00115.htm

Posted by Lyndon : 9/05/2006 05:39:00 PM

I/S, exactly. Anyone who opposes this style of politics is considered a Labour apologist with zero ethics. It's all about how they frame the debate. Just see how Runsfields detractors are now considered supprorters of terrorism and anti-American.

We know that DPF has just attened a "Freedom Forum" at Reagan's ranch where like minded freedom loving young democrats are out to promote the "American Way".

I see he took copious notes.

Posted by Anonymous : 9/05/2006 06:08:00 PM

> But it turns out they did exactly the same thing back in 2002

1) there are relevant diferences
2) dont tell me you think that effects the labour situation - that is what I would call an "argument to corruption" or more charitably "an argument to conflict of interest"

I.e. you are implying that as long as you are exposed to implications of cporruption you should support it in others. that is deeply wrong argument and says very little good about those who use it.

> So, will they pay that money back?

Obviously if the legal establishment says they should then they should - unless labour retrospectively validates it... And national would probably be happy
If we take it back several years labours bill might get so large it could be crippled as an effective political force because it looks like labour has out spent national by a large margin every election for a while.

> The call for a fresh election, NOW, is nuts

of course, the public doesn't seriously wants an election over this.

Posted by Genius : 9/05/2006 06:31:00 PM

> Tony Milne said...
My understanding is that Labour did delcare the pledge card, but it was declared in the category "contested spending".

Heh, and it was contested and it would seem they are likely to loose that contest, the implication being..... [please continue the train of thought]

Its not so bad if they do that because it implies they are opening it up for being resolved at a later date when an expert like the AG advises them.

Posted by Genius : 9/05/2006 06:37:00 PM

Hey Savant, great post btw - do you have any idea how much money National spent on their 2002 pledge card?

Posted by Bomber : 9/05/2006 06:45:00 PM

Genius: there are relevant diferences

What exactly, pray tell?

The rules then were the same in the relevant respects as the rules now; the changes have been cosmetic.

It's a lovely petarding. If National wants to claim that their past spending was OK, then the same applies to Labour. And if they want to claim that Labour's spending now was a misappropriation and should be repaid, then the same applies to them. Having rich friends with deep pockets means they may opt for the latter - but this simply gives the government the opportunity to mention their secret funding again, and claim that the Brethren are bailing them out.

(And no, I'm not making any sort of 'argument to corruption". It's a consistency argument, in which National's own axioms are turned against them. It says nothing at all about what I may or may not think)

Posted by Idiot/Savant : 9/05/2006 07:42:00 PM

The funny thing is you all go on implying we live in a substantive democracy. It's delusional if you ask me.

Posted by Anonymous : 9/05/2006 07:55:00 PM

I/S,
> What exactly, pray tell?

For starters
1) it was not the last election
2) prior to the last elections there were clarifications (I'm sure DPF will give you a detailed timeline if you ask)
3) it was probably much less money than labour spent at the same time leaving labour STILL as the main offender (and thus the apropriate first target).

> If they want to claim that Labour's ... simply gives the government the opportunity to mention their secret funding again.

1) again your argument plays to their self interest - for me that counts for nothing and it SHOULDN'T count for any other person without a conflict of interests.

2) the right call is more or less what national seems to be doing - asking for the law to be enforced - if it means that they have to pay up more money then that just makes them even MORE "rightious" and yet you talk about it as if it is a bad thing. even if that isnt what you intend, it is what you seem to achieve.

If your morality can be turned against you and you still support it then you have given indication it is the morality and not corruption that drives you. If national sees your argument AND THEN does as you seem to suggest (ie back down) THAT is what would be damning.

Im sure you are familiar with the argument that it is nothing to support freedom of speach unless you also suport the freedom to speak against you.

Posted by Genius : 9/05/2006 09:03:00 PM

Genius: yes, there were clarifications - I mentioned them above, and they make no difference at all. National is in the same moral boat as Labour, and they sink or swim together. And I'm revelling in the irony.

And I agree entirely - National should be consistent, and do what they've been demanding others in similar circumstances do: admit wrongdoing, and pay the money back. However, they're politicians, and thus almost certainly constitutionally incapable of it.

Posted by Idiot/Savant : 9/06/2006 02:56:00 AM

Anthony: it may be a less-than-perfect democracy, but its the only one we've got. What's important is that we keep pushing to improve it, rather than throwing our hands in the air and leaving it to the would-be-aristocrats and oligarchs.

Posted by Idiot/Savant : 9/06/2006 02:57:00 AM

There has been a lot of comment about "diversionary tactics" over the last couple of days. Which has got me thinking.

Why on earth is Don Brash going so over the top on this issue? Calling for fresh elections, now? WTF? I really doubt the public would appreciate this and given that all the parties other than National would oppose such a move I cannot see them winning an election right now. In fact they would probably be creamed.

He knows that National used their PS allocation for 2005 he also knows that National and its proxies spent up big in 2005, easily matching and probably exceeding Labour and its proxies. In other words, he nows using the term "stolen election" is a lie.

So the real question now is, what do National, and Don Brash have to hide? I wonder what is in the emails WP claims to have or what other information about last years campaign is waitingin the sidelines. There is something fishy in his part of Denmark, it will out.

Posted by Anonymous : 9/06/2006 09:01:00 AM

It has taken some time, but I think people are starting to understand the point.

If National is right on the pledge card, then every party (including National) are in the wrong and every Party will have a substantial amount of money to each pay back.

Or (here is a novel through) if every other party in Parliament is right and National is wrong, then the spending was within the rules.

The rules were clarified after the 2002 election, but clarified in a way that makes it clear that National and Labour's 2002 pledge cards (and 2005 spending) were both acceptable.

That's not to say there should be changes. I think there should be no leaders office spending in from writ day, there should be full transparency of political donations, and democracy funding for political parties to help build a better democracy in NZ.

What's National's solution - we'll they don't have one. This whole display is aimed at damaging Labour. They thought they were clean because they had such huge donations from the Brethren and secret big donors that they could use their leaders office before the Election. But they are not clean. They have operated within the rules on secret donations, but those rules should be changed. The question is, will National support greater transparency or not?

Posted by Anonymous : 9/06/2006 10:17:00 AM

"What's National's solution - we'll they don't have one."

That's not entirely fair Tony - I think National believes this would all be solved with a fresh election.

Posted by Graeme Edgeler : 9/06/2006 10:23:00 AM

Not that I'm personally conclusive on this, but I'll write it down anyway...

It's not that 'it's alright because everyone was doing it' or whatever. Not exactly.

It's that if _every party_ was doing it (presumably believing it was within the rules) - these being more or less the same people whose representatives revised the (Parliamentary Services) rules - and the rules are officially interpreted differently, it looks like a genuine case of unintended consequences. Which is something Parliament legislates retrospectively to fix from time to time.

My inclination to believe the rules were believe to be as Labour presents them may derive from the way that's what - I - thought the rules were.

Anyway, that doesn't make it good, just legitimate. The rules as I understood them are pretty weird, and that's part of what the public is reacting to.

OTOH, in this particular case the 'unintended consequences' are to the MPs who are voting on the issue. Which smells, but I can see where, if that kind of thing were utterly forbidden, permantent messes could be made.

And in the event that every party just decided to do some corrupt thing because knew they could ignore or fix it, that would suck too.

Posted by Lyndon : 9/06/2006 11:22:00 AM

> However, they're politicians, and thus almost certainly constitutionally incapable of it.

part of that is how we (the public) react to these sort of things.

> What's National's solution - we'll they don't have one.

even if that was true, does it matter? this is not national vs labur it is 'the law' vs labour. if labour didn't do anything wrong then its all smiles and flowers if they did they should make it right not pass retrospective legislation or to try to intimidate the AG etc...

> I think National believes this would all be solved with a fresh election.

thats like re-running the olympics because a country used drugs. Stupid talk... is National seriously calling for that or is it just hot air?

Posted by Genius : 9/06/2006 11:23:00 AM

If the rules were agreed and percieved differently one would expect al parties to spend more or less to the limit that they percieved.

One party seems to have done this to a very high limit (Labour) while most of the others seem much less and in a less wholesale sort of a way.

It is a bit like having a "walking race" and you walk it a handful of other people walk almost all the way (ie breaking some rules - and don't win) and one just just sprints (and wins).

reasonable to think you did well the other people made some sort of effort and the last guy batantly cheated. You might have some reason to be upset at him while not being nearly as upset at those who at least made some sort of effort to obey the rules.

Maybe that isn't the situation - but it SOUNDS like that is the situation.

Posted by Genius : 9/06/2006 11:35:00 AM

Genuis

"One party seems to have done this to a very high limit (Labour) while most of the others seem much less and in a less wholesale sort of a way."

I think this purely due to the fact that the PS allocation for the larger parties is...larger. It seems that all parties, other than National, saved as much as they could to spend in the run up to the election. The arguement is that National, confident that they had enough external funding, spent a lot of theirs in the period before the election was annouced during the "phoney war" if you like.

This is why the "stolen" tag is simply untrue and it is pretty lazy of the media to latch on to it, but they do like tax payer money misspent stories and I suppose anything that raises public awareness of the issues is ok. I would prefer it to be accurate as well but then is probably expecting too much.

Posted by Anonymous : 9/06/2006 12:09:00 PM

maybe, but it does look suspicious.
Besides your argument implies that national knew it would be having us on to usethat money as oppoed to the mony of it's backers.

Posted by Genius : 9/06/2006 12:13:00 PM

"We need to start thinking like this again, just a little bit. It is absurd for citizens of a democracy to be so wilfully naive about politics as to see in every gap between ideal and action, every decision of a less than utopian nature, the operation of Satan in the world. Which is what we imply when we condemn all politicians as liars, manipulators and spin merchants. Isn't that their job? Would we want to be governed by moral zealots, like the Jacobins who came to power in France after 1789 and ended up massacring everyone, including themselves, in the pursuit of an absolutely authentic political voice?"

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/story/0,,1388186,00.html

This is about the British Labour Party's infighting, but nice as our two major political parties try to claim ever higher moral ground...

Posted by Anonymous : 9/06/2006 05:23:00 PM

Noddy: Why is National keen on a new election now? Because Brash is an old man in a hurry, frustrated by the narrowness of his defeat last year (that must really bite, just as it bites for the Greens), and desperate to impose his market revolution on New Zealand before he is rolled by a more moderate candidate. That, and because theyhave money, while all the other parties are still paying off the last election.

We now have such an inequality of resources that one party is able to run a permanant campaign. If we want our elections to be fair competitions in which parties are judged on their merits (however definied) rather than the depth of their politics, then something needs to be done about it.

Posted by Idiot/Savant : 9/06/2006 09:16:00 PM

I/S,
national is just really frustrated that it would seem labour won by breaking the law. Most on the right have quite a strong belief that the world is "fair" in the sense that breaking the law is never worth it.

It makes their skin crawl to think that a group they already hate (labour) broke the rules and it seems to have been worth it in this case.

Beyond that there is the obvious knee-jerk that if you see a hint of weakness go for the throat (as per our adversarial system).

Of course not having enough money might have caused them to act in a more corrupt way by trying to close off the debate, and if they were thrashed in the last election you would probably be accusing them of desperation but I guess there might be less people out there willing to accept that labour might have done something wrong. And if brash was younger we would be accusing him of posturing to establish himself I guess.

Posted by Genius : 9/06/2006 09:39:00 PM