It couldn't happen to a nicer guy

In 2011, former United Future MP Larry Baldock ran as a candidate for Colin Craig's Conservative Party. And now he's been referred to police for filing a false election expenses return, and for exceeding the $25,000 limit on candidate election expenses. If done knowingly, then each is a corrupt practice, with a penalty of 2 years imprisonment. otherwise they are merely illegal practices, subject to a $40,000 fine.

Of course, we know what will happen: the police will take the complaint, and then forget about it, just as they have with virtually every other complaint referred to them by the Electoral Commission. The police simply don't care about electoral law. If you steal a television, they'll throw you in jail. Try to steal an election, and they ignore it.

The police don't care about electoral law

New figures from the Electoral Commission tell us what we already know: the police don't give a shit about electoral law:

Police are still investigating 89 alleged breaches of electoral law relating to the 2011 general election, new information has revealed.

Police say there were 62 complaints of individuals voting twice, while nine candidates did not file their returns by the due date of 30 April last year.

They have completed only two of the 94 cases the Electoral Commission referred to them following the election. No prosecutions were made from those investigations.

Most of these cases (e.g. double-voting and failure to file returns) are not exactly complicated. Being left this long shows that they are simply not regarded as a priority by the police. They'd rather focus on "real crime", like putting petty drug users in jail, rather than protecting our democracy. And in the case of offences allegedly committed under the Broadcasting Act - which included unlawful electoral programmes and overspending of the broadcast advertising limit, this has resulted in the time limit for prosecution expiring, and those alleged offenders getting away with it.

This isn't acceptable, and it has reduced our electoral laws to a joke. If the police aren't going to do the job, then we should take it off them and give it to someone who will: the Electoral Commission.

Party donation returns

Party donation returns have been released by the Electoral Commission. From the summary, National took in $2.57 million, twice as much as its nearest competitor, which was ACT, and more than twice as much as the left combined (no surprises there). That staggering figure included more than $700,000 in declared donations, from companies and wealthy individuals. I wonder what they'll be demanding in exchange?

The Greens took in more than $180,000 in declared donations - but looking at their return [PDF], most of that was from their MP's. Significantly, they accepted $20,000 from Fletcher Building, who donated the same amount to every significant party. Fletcher's would no doubt call this "supporting democracy", but it may be compromising for the Greens.

(Sadly, the Greens did not take the moral high ground on electoral finance, and declare everything down to $1,000 to shame the other parties and make them look dirty. A lost opportunity IMHO).

Labour's campaign was largely funded by the unions (most notably the EPMU), but they also took $50,000 from Todd Corporation (who made an equal donation to National), $20,000 from Fletcher's, $30,000 from painter Cao Jun, and $20,000 from the Road Transport Trust.

ACT was largely funded by rich individuals such as Alan Gibbs and Louis Crimp, as well as John Banks, Don Brash, and John Boscawen.

National, OTOH, is awash with corporate money, from Gallagher Group, CitiGroup, Oravida, Fletcher's and Todd Corp. There are a few wealthy individuals, including Natural Dairy's Susan Chou, and Wellington hotel owner Chris Parkin. But its mostly big business.

This year parties were also required to give a breakdown of donations in bands, giving the number and total for donations between $1,500 and $5,000; between $5,000 and $15,000, and various other categories (such as the corrupt "donations protected from disclosure" mechanism, overseas donations, and small anonymous donations). Here's a graph showing the proportions of each for each party declaring over $100,000:

The Greens were the clear winners on small donations, and its even more impressive when you remember that their declared donors were their MP's tithing their salaries. ACT OTOH doesn't seem to have much of a grassroots at all. But maybe Alan Gibbs thinks he can buy them one.

Why we don't vote

Last election saw the worst ever voter turnout, at a mere 73.8% of enrolled voters. No matter how you look at it, this is a failure of our democracy, so the Electoral Commission has been looking into it as part of their usual post-election voting process survey:

The survey showed that the reasons for not voting were similar to the 2008 election. Non-voters said they had other commitments (14 percent), work (9 percent), could not be bothered (14 percent), could not decide who to vote for (11 percent), or felt their vote would not make a difference (8 percent).

The biggest influence on New Zealanders who did not vote was a distrust of politicians. A third of all non-voters said this was their reason for failing to turn up on election day.

A large proportion of non-voters cited the polls predicting the National Party's victory, and decided the election was a foregone conclusion. The percentage of non-voters who said this was a factor was far higher in 2011 than in 2008.

Two-thirds [see below - I/S] of non-voters said they were unaware of the option to vote in advance, and would have voted if they had known about it.

With the relaxation of the rules around advance voting, there's pretty obviously something the Electoral Commission can do about the latter. And they could also do more to highlight the law which gives employees paid time off to vote. As for the political side of things - making people feel that their vote makes a difference, giving people something to vote for rather than just a general feeling of resigned disgust at the whole show - that's really up to politicians.

Radio New Zealand's Insight will be discussing the survey on Sunday morning. It might be worth listening to or downloading.

Correction: I've just been notified that the Herald messed up, and got the proportion of non-voters who knew about advance voting round the wrong way. Two-thirds knew, and one-third did not. Thanks to the Electoral Commission for the correction.

Who is buying our politicians?

On Thursday the Electoral Commission released details of electorate candidates' donations and expenses. On Saturday morning I spent some time going through them. Highlights include:

• Pita Sharples brought in the big bucks from the construction industry, collecting $20,000 from Fletcher's Construction and $10,000 from MainZeal director Richard Yan. He also scored $25,000 from MainFreight chairman Bruce Plested.
• Labour's Andrew Little was partly funded by two Australian unions (to a total of $2,975). He also received a $5,000 donation from Todd Corporation, the movers and shakers in the electorate he was contesting.
• Tech entrepreneur Selwyn Pellett contributed openly to Labour MPs David Cunliffe ($2,000), David Parker ($1,999), then gave them another $2,000 each through his company Storm Distributors as well. He also donated $4007.75 to the unsuccessful campaign of Stuart Nash.
• Clayton Cosgrove was given $17,500 by Independent Fisheries. Shane Jones was given $10,000 from Sealord.
• Slave-fishers United Fisheries also got in on the act, donating $3,000 to Labour's Megan Woods and $2,800 to National's Nicky Wagner. That's dirty money, and they should return it.
• Nick Smith's campaign was wholly funded by Nelson Pine Industries Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sumitomo Forestry Limited. There's an obvious payoff there as he was climate change Minister.
• The Road Transport Trust went on an influence-buying spree, donating $5,000 each to Ruth Dyson, Bill English, Judith Collins, Joanne Goodhew, Todd McClay, and Phil Heatley. They also reportedly offered money to Clare Curran, but she turned them down.
• Talleys - who are in the news ATM over their poor employment practices - also went on a buying spree, contributing $5,000 each to Eric Roy, Colin King, Chris Tremain, Joanne Goodhew, Todd McClay, Lindsay Tisch, Chris Auchinvole, and Chester Borrows. That's a lot of National backbenchers in their pocket.
• Only one Green candidate, Jan Logie, declared any donations (and it was beneath the threshold) - presumably because they were running a campaign focused on the party vote.

Of course, this isn't the whole story; candidate donations of less than $1,500 are now invisible to us. But its a troubling picture nonetheless. Companies don't give out money out of the goodness of their hearts - they expect a return. Its pretty obvious what Talley's wants: a bunch of loyal backbenchers to advocate against any improvement in worker's rights. Likewise the Road Transport Trust: advocates for more roads. But what does the building industry want from Pita Sharples, and a pack of slave fishers from Megan Woods and Nicky Wagner?

Party donation returns are due at the end of this month. Unfortunately, the politicians raised the disclosure threshold to $15,000 - because obviously anything less than that is just pocket change - and so we will have far less information about who is trying to buy influence from them next time round.

The laws still mean nothing

The police have announced that they will not be laying charges over John Key's pre-election radio show. Their reason? "Insufficient evidence". Because obviously, merely having recordings of the thing, and the paper trail showing that the Prime Minister had his grubby paws all over it isn't enough.

(The police might credibly have been able to argue that the law wasn't clear, due to the disagreement between the BSA and Electoral Commission - but they didn't)

Its a highly convenient decision for John Key - and highly convenient for the police, who won't end up offside with the people making their budget decisions. But it again shows the flaws in our electoral law. Once again the police have been handed clear evidence of a breach, and once again they have failed to act. They've also failed to act on any of the dozen other cases handed to them last election cycle, and its hard to escape the conclusion that they just don't see it as a "real" crime. Unlike, say, recording politicians in a public place at a media event they called...

Again, it has to be pointed out: this is a real crime, and it threatens the integrity of our democracy. If the police are unwilling or incapable of dealing with that crime, then its time we gave the job to a body which can. And that body is the Electoral Commission.

Election expenses

Returns of party expenses for the 2011 election have been released. The big story? The Conservatives, who spent nearly $1.9 million [PDF], $100,000 more than Labour, in an effort to buy their way into Parliament. There were unsuccessful - there just aren't enough crazy, child-beating fundies out there - but its indicative of Colin Craig's mindset that he thinks he just needs to throw money at the problem. But that's exactly why we have spending limits: to prevent wealthy individuals like him from turning elections into money-mediated shouting matches.

In other news, the Alliance spent less than the ALCP (they ran fewer candidates too). Another example of their decline.

Unebelievable

Yesterday, Labour got the goods on John Key and his illegal "PM's hour" election broadcast, showing that Key's office had its grubby paws all over it. They had arranged the guests, they had instructed RadioLive on the brief for the show, and they'd even written RadioLive's inquiry to the Electoral Commission. Key's response to this was to say that he had no knowledge of any of this, and in followup questions today he claimed that he had first learned of it in Question Time yesterday.

This is simply unbelievable.

Firstly, there's the sheer implausibility that Key would not have been briefed on the arrangements being made for his appearance and the concerns around it. Are we really supposed to believe that he didn't know who his guests were until he stepped into the studio? Or that his staff didn't tell him about the legal concerns, and reassure him that everything was OK?

But secondly, and more importantly, the documents Labour tabled were obtained via an OIA request to Key's office. Given past practice, the request would likely have been handled by his Chief of Staff, Wayne Eagleson, but it is unthinkable that Key would not have been briefed about a request on a politically sensitive topic, both to decide what to withhold and to manage any fallout. To believe that, we'd have to think that Eagleson was utterly inept. And I know that he is not. It speaks volumes about Key's character that he is trying to defend himself by effectively slandering his Chief of Staff as an incompetent. But I guess that's just one of the management tricks bankers learn...

Will the police enforce the law?

So, the Electoral Commission has found that John Key's pre-election radio show was an unlawful election programme. RadioLive is now potentially facing a fine of up to $100,000.

Assuming, of course, that the police enforce the law. Sadly, that seems unlikely. Their past record on prosecuting electoral offences is not good, and while we might expect them to have improved, the facts speak for themselves. This election, there have been over a dozen referrals to the police for beaches of electoral law, some from as long ago as August. And the police have apparently done nothing about any of them. You'd almost get the impression that they don't think its "real crime".

Except it is real crime. This is the integrity of our democracy we're talking about, and that needs to be protected. If the police are unwilling to do that, then its time we took the job off them and gave it to the Electoral Commission instead.

The PREFU SNAFU

So, the government has announced that it may not be able to reach its fiscal target of returning to surplus by 2015. On the one hand, this isn't really surprising: the global economic crisis has got worse, and you'd expect us to be affected by it. On the other hand, Treasury was forecasting a 2015 surplus just three months ago, and dismissed any suggestion that its forecasts were too optimistic. For them to reverse themselves so suddenly suggests that they got it seriously wrong, in the process making both our major parties (who made campaign policy on the basis of those projections) into liars. The question now is whether anyone will be held to account for that. Sadly, I think the answer will be "no".

But this also raises a bigger problem. Back in the 90's, we amended the Public Finance Act to require pre-election disclosure to protect us from governments who shuffled big economic problems under the carpet and left them for their replacements to deal with. But while that may protect us from lying politicians, it doesn't protect us from Treasury - who in the past have demonstrated a definite political agenda, and may not be above stacking their projections to advance it (in particular by crying "crisis!" so as to apply the shock doctrine). Which makes it all the more important that this "error" is investigated and those responsible held to account.

Leaked

The infamous "teapot tape" has been leaked online. I'm currently seeking legal advice on whether I can link to it here; in the meantime the link is going around Twitter and other social media.

Burns is out; let the Dolchstoßlegende begin!

The judicial recount in Christchurch Central is complete, and National's Nicky Wagner has won by 47 votes. Which means its about time for the Labour hacks to start their angry Dolchstoßlegende muttering about how their guy would have won, if it wasn't for the Greens - just as they did over Epsom and Ohariu. Obviously, this is true in a mathematical sense; the 2,321 votes won by David Moorhouse is far more than Wagner's tiny majority. But its predicated on an absolutely toxic assumption: that Green supporters owe Labour their votes, and that they have some obligation to stand aside to let Labour win. Which is absolutely nonsensical.

To point out the obvious: the Greens are their own party, with their own priorities. If Labour wants their electorate votes, it has to earn them. Clearly, Labour does earn some of those votes (Iain Lees-Galloway earned mine). Equally clearly, it doesn't earn them all. Stamping your feet and demanding support out of some assumed feudal overlordship of the left is unlikely to help earn more. And doing it where the outcome is absolutely meaningless (as here) just makes you look even more arrogant.

(And yes, it is meaningless. Under MMP, whether voters in Christchurch Central chose Nicky Wagner or Brendon Burns makes no difference to the overall outcome. It makes no difference even in terms of the Labour list; Burn's success would simply have meant the elimination of some other Labour MP. The only person it matters to is Brendon Burns. But while its a tragedy for him, and for Labour's organisation in Christchurch, it means absolutely nothing in terms of the balance of power in the House).

The deals

A bit over a week after the election, and National has signed its confidence and supply agreements with United Future and ACT. We don't have a government yet - that will have to wait for the final results - but we've certainly got the core of one. So what have they agreed to?

The United Future deal [PDF] is fairly moderate. Peter Dunne agrees to roll over and do whatever National tells him to - including further abuse urgency if Gerry Brownlee so desires - and in exchange he gets a Minister's salary. And that's about it - because there's certainly no substantive policy in there. Oh, there's a pile of kibble - the Game Animal Council, reinstatement (but not passage) of income splitting, an end to helihunting - but its either all minor (as in those examples), or stuff National wanted to do anyway (e.g. not selling KiwiBank or Radio New Zealand, and limiting sale to 49%). Dunne is crowing very loudly about this indeed, with three seperate press releases - but this is just compensation behaviour. OTOH, its not as if Dunne has voters to deliver to, so I'm wondering why he's bothering to make the noise.

ACT's agreement [PDF], OTOH, is of a decidedly different and more threatening nature. In exchange for exactly as many votes as Peter Dunne, ACT (well, really John Banks) gets not only a Minister's salary and perks, but also to inflict all manner of madness upon the rest of us. Charter schools (state funded, but not state-regulated, and free to teach any old quackery), legislated spending limits, a further gutting of the RMA, the total privatisation of ACC's work account (saving the new providers from the risk of being outcompeted by ACC), and the worst aspects of welfare "reform". Given the wildly different outcomes from identical bargaining positions, its pretty obvious that National is using ACT as cover to do to us exactly what it wanted to do anyway. The question is whether the media will go along with that story, or sheet the blame for these policies home where it belongs: to National.

No-one to blame but themselves

The Vote For Change Campaign is blaming the lack of public debate for the public's (apparent) decision to keep MMP. But whose fault is that? To point out the obvious, a debate requires more than one participant. And Vote For Change were mostly silent. Nationwide, their "campaign" seems to have been limited to a few newspaper ads in Auckland. In Palmerston North, we never saw them. They had no activists, no flyers, no billboards, and when the local media went looking for a spokesperson to quote in an article on the referendum, they couldn't find one.

People don't become aware of your cause by magic. You need to speak up for it. Vote For Change effectively abandoned the field. That was great for our democracy, but it seems a little sad of them to whine about it afterwards.

The Gallagher Index

The Gallagher Index is a basic measure of disproportionality of electoral outcomes, and therefore of their fairness. As someone interested in the fairness of our electoral system, I thought I'd calculate it for the 2011 election, based on the preliminary results:

Party	% Vote	Seats	% seats	Difference	Diff2
National	47.99	60	49.59	1.60	2.55
Labour	27.13	34	28.10	0.97	0.94
Green	10.62	13	10.74	0.12	0.02
NZ First	6.81	8	6.61	-0.20	0.04
Māori Party	1.35	3	2.48	1.13	1.28
ACT	1.07	1	0.83	-0.24	0.06
Mana	1	1.00	0.83	-0.17	0.03
United Future	0.61	1	0.83	0.22	0.05
Conservative	2.76	0	0.00	-2.76	7.62
ALCP	0.48	0	0.00	-0.48	0.23
Democrats for Social Credit	0.07	0	0.00	-0.07	0.00
Libertarianz	0.07	0	0.00	-0.07	0.00
Alliance	0.05	0	0.00	-0.05	0.00
Total					12.82
Gallagher Index					2.53

(All figures rounded to 2 d.p.)

This is slightly below the average for NZ elections under MMP (time series here). 2008 had a Gallagher Index of 3.84; 2005 had 1.13 (FPP's average since 1946 was 11.10, with the last two FPP elections being 17.24 and 18.19 - which explains why people wanted MMP so badly).

2.53 is low internationally, but we can clearly do better. And the obvious way of doing that is by removing the threshold and giving people the freedom to vote how they please.

Democracy 101

So, John Key thinks MMP is "weird":

Prime Minister John Key says MMP is a "weird" system when National can win a large majority but Parliament remains tightly balanced.

[...]

"But it's a funny system when you can poll this massive number and still theoretically be wondering whether you've got a government.

"If this was First Past the Post and there were 100 MPs, there would be roughly 65 National seats and 35 Labour, so it would be this massive majority.

"Yet under MMP you sit there and go, 'you've got this huge result and yet it still feels tight'."

What's weird about it? National won 48% of the vote. While 48% is huge for a single party in New Zealand, its not 50%. And if its not 50%, you need someone else's help to govern.

This is democracy 101: in order to govern, you need a majority. What's weird is that 75 years after its formation, the National Party still doesn't understand this. But I guess that's what you get in a party which calls itself "the natural party of government": disdain for democracy.

(As for why things are so tight, look at it this way: in the last Parliament, National and its friends controlled 69 seats. Now they control 65, which is likely drop to 64 on the special votes. And in practice, on controversial legislation, its going to be either 62 or 61 seats, depending on whether they pitch to the Maori Party or Banks and Dunne. That is indeed tight, but that's the will of the voters, not some flaw introduced by the electoral system).

Picking the bones

So, the election is over, the votes have been counted (bar the specials), and John Key is still Prime Minister. He didn't get the outright majority all the polls were predicting, but will have no real trouble with confidence and supply, and with multiple majorities available should be able to pass whatever he wants. Hopes of saddling National with an uncooperative coalition partner (or the not always slavishly obedient Maori Party) have been dashed.

While National will probably lose a seat on the specials, that basic situation is unlikely to change. Yes, they'll need either the Maori Party or ACT plus United Future, but it isn't that hard to get the latter two to agree on economic issues (Dunne was after all first elected as part of the Fourth Labour Government, and has never repudiated its NeoLiberalism).

The Greens did well. MMP did well. Given its demographics, the advance vote was likely to favour change. The fact that it came out for retaining MMP means we should have the referendum in the bag. And what does it say when blank ballots beat all of the alternatives? There was never any grassroots push for change, and hopefully the right will now accept that and move on (winning a second election under MMP should help with that).

As for Labour, two months of solid left-wing policy couldn't make up for three years of doing nothing in opposition. And thanks to a list focused on protecting long-serving incumbent hacks, they've thrown the future of the party overboard, sacrificing people like Carmel Sepuloni, Stuart Nash and Brendan Burns in order to retain such stellar performers as Sue Moroney, Maryan Street and Rajen Prasad. Heckuva job, guys. You've got no-one but yourselves to blame for this one. Not that that will stop you.

(Actually, its Labour's long-serving electorate MPs like Trevor Mallard, Annette King and Ross Robertson who really need to move on. But that's not something the party list can really help with)

Finally, the graphs. First, the "wasted vote":

Disenfranchisement halved this election, from 137,500 to 68500. But that's still too many. We need to ditch the threshold. Fortunately, the MMP review will give us the opportunity to do just that.

Secondly, relative party vote shares for Labour, National and small parties:

Finally, left (Labour / Greens / Mana, and historically the Alliance and Progressives) vs right (National / ACT):

As can be seen, the tide is against the left at the moment, primarily because of the failure of the Labour Party. Assuming they get around 50,000 specials, they will have lost 200,000 votes since the last election. 50,000 of them have gone to the Greens, and 50,000 to NZFirst. As for the rest, they stayed home, unwilling to turn out for a Labour Party so uninspiring. Labour will blame them, of course, and make a lot of noise about "apathy" and evil polls, but that's just excuse-making. If parties want our votes, the onus is on them to make us care enough to spend ten minutes to tick a box. Labour didn't do that. And their desire to blame us rather than accept responsibility for their own failure is a big part of the reason why.

Vote!

And while I can still legally say it: remember to vote. Yes, no matter who you vote for, a politician is going to win. But who those politicians are can make a dramatic difference to your life.

Who wins tomorrow will determine whether we keep our assets, whether we fight child poverty, whether we throw the poor to the dogs or not. It will determine how clean our lakes and rivers are and whether we have clean or dirty energy. It will determine whether Auckland gets more roads, or the rail system it has needed for over fifty years. And it will determine whether we fight in more US-sponsored wars in faraway countries and keep being complicit in US torture and war crimes.

While your vote is one among many, it will make a difference. So use it. Its a diffuse weapon, but its one of the best ones we've got.

(And the biggest argument for voting? Just look at who doesn't want you to...)

Final thoughts on the election

Its almost all over. campaigning ends at midnight, and then we get to vote. And then we get to party, either commiserating or celebrating depending.

(Those of us interested in the referendum will have to wait until December 10, though if the advance votes show a clear victory for MMP, then I think it will be in the bag).

Labour has run the most left-wing campaign that I can remember, repudiating core aspects of NeoLiberalism previously deemed sacred. Unfortunately, from the polls, it hasn't been enough. We will in all likelihood be looking at a National-led government on Sunday morning. The question is whether it will be hamstrung by an anti-asset sales coalition partner or not.

But even if they lose, Labour's campaign will still have changed things. Assuming, of course, they don't respond to a loss by blaming the policies rather than the people (which will probably be tempting for the high-list dead wood). But if they avoid that mistake, then these policies will be here to stay. We'll have a clear alternative direction (rather than just a bunch of people promising to do the same things, only better) and a prospect of real change for the future. It may take until 2014, but we'll get that Capital Gains Tax, we'll get those fairer employment laws, we'll get those policies to eliminate child poverty.

And while it may be too early, the clear winners of this campaign seem to be the Greens. On current polling, they've almost doubled their vote, and even if they suffer the usual election-day underperformance, they're still looking at 10% and becoming a real third force in New Zealand politics. The question will be whether they can retain and build on that success. And that I think is going to depend entirely on whether they're forced into coalition with National...

Radio silence?

Uninspired this morning, and I have last-minute campaigning to do. If I don't get anything posted until later this afternoon, its because I'm frantically handing out flyers for the MMP campaign.