That's the only way to describe the regime's new Electoral Amendment Bill. The big change is ending same-day enrolment, which enabled over a hundred thousand people to vote last election. National wants to disenfranchise those people. Their excuse? Administrative convenience - because they refuse to properly resource the Electoral Commission to handle the load. But it is simply a cynical attempt to strap the electoral chicken, and prevent those people - primarily young people and those who have moved shortly before the election - from voting.
But that's not the only change. They're re-instating the prisoner voting ban, which explicitly violates the Bill of Rights Act, in the process giving the finger to the carefully negotiated settlement between courts and Parliament over their responsibilities under our constitution. its pure performative punching down, while also helping to gerrymander electorates with prisons in them.
There are other unpleasant changes too:
- increasing the declaration threshold for donations from $5000 to $6000, reducing transaprency over who is bribing our politicians;
- restricting public access to donation records to the last six years, limiting our ability to see who has been buying our politicians, and making bribes paid in opposition effectively invisible;
- extending the prohibition on registering new political parties, from writ day to the entire regulated period, in an effort to stifle political competition;
- expanding the Electoral Commission from 3 to 7 members, enabling them to pack it with cronies, US-style.
So, reducing voting rights, transparency, and competition, while creating a one-off opportunity to put their thumb on the electoral scale for the next election. All of this runs completely counter to our democratic norms, and to public demand, which overwhelmingly favours more transparency. Combined with the regime's attacks on protest rights, it paints an increasingly dark picture of the character of this regime - and makes it clear that we need to oust it at the first opportunity.
