Election funding: now there's a surprise...

It turns out that Peter Shirtcliffe, Hollow Man extrodinaire and with something of a history of setting up front organisations to undermine democracy in this country, is bankrolling the anti-Electoral Finance Act "Free Speech Coalition". And in similar news, it seems that other Hollow Men - the Talley Brothers, who offered to run a $1 million parallel campaign in support of Don Brash in violation of existing electoral laws - are bankrolling Tim Shadbolt's little exercise in martyrdom. What these people have in common, of course, is the desire to buy political influence, elections, and ultimately policies beneficial to themselves and their equally rich mates through waving around scads of dirty money (as Shirtcliffe almost managed to do during the 1993 MMP referendum). The Electoral Finance Act limits their ability to do this, so it is no surprise at all that they oppose it.