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NZCPR
Guest Forum
Opinion piece by Bernard Robertson
26 August 07
Regulating
Freedom of Speech
The
so-called Electoral Finance Bill is really about participation
in election activity by people who are not professional
politicians. It says that politics is for politicians and that
you and I, who are not self-promoting climbers of the greasy
pole, have no business interfering. The policy agenda should
be determined by the political parties and not by the public
and so should the way those policies are marketed.
The
Bill will control election advertising. Well that is fine
isn’t it? Anyone who engages in election advertising must
know what they are doing and will find out the rules. Well, it
is not that simple. Can you define “election advertising”?
Whatever definition we choose, people will work out how to get
round it. It would be too simple, for example, to say that it
is election advertising if it mentions a party or candidate.
People would then pay for advertisements that only tackled
policies without naming parties.
So
we have a very wide definition. Election advertising includes
anything that takes a position on a proposition with which one
or more candidates or parties are associated. Think about this
carefully. It means that if you in your private or work
capacity send letters to clients, or to parishioners or to the
parents of the children at your school and mention that the
remaining tariffs adversely affect your business, or that some
form of regulation imposes a burden for no benefit, or
encouraging people to think when voting about the plight of
the homeless, or the need for money to spent on education,
then you will be engaging in election advertising. In fact, it
is impossible to give a complete list of subjects that will be
covered without a complete list of candidates and what they
are campaigning on. There is probably a candidate in some
electorate somewhere who believes that we need to do something
about alien abductions.
If
you wish to deliver a leaflet or send out a letter like that
then you will have to register as a “third party” unless
you can prove that you spent less than $500 between 1 January
2008 and the election date. (And don’t ask me how the
accounting will be done, how overheads will be apportioned and
so on.) So in order to exercise your right to free speech on
political issues during election year you will have to
register and then expose yourself to having to produce sets of
accounts, having to have them audited and being investigated.
So if you want to exercise a right supposedly guaranteed by
the Bill of Rights Act, you have to register with the state.
Then
you will be subject to a spending limit of $60,000. That may
sound like a fair bit, but consider the position of think
tanks like the New Zealand Institute, the Council for Socially
Responsible Business, the Business Roundtable, or the Maxim
Institute and many centres and institutes at universities.
These bodies put out major papers and books which they
distribute to mailing lists. These papers provide in depth and
independent analysis of policies which politicians offer us
only sound-bites on. A decent research paper, once one has
paid the author, had it proofed, professionally edited,
printed, bound and distributed, is not going to cost much less
than $60,000.
So
all these bodies which provide us with proper research into
policy proposals, will be limited to one decent research paper
in the year and will then be effectively disabled from
offering any comment on issues of the moment.
Stories
in newspapers and commercially sold books will be exempt. But
what is a newspaper? Many are distributed free. It is easy to
set up something which looks like a newspaper but which is
really a campaigning device. Once that has been done once or
twice we will be into the government deciding what is and what
is not an exempt newspaper and controls on speech will be
complete.
Funnily
enough, there will be an exemption for trade unions (it
won’t mean anything to any other incorporated body)
communicating with their members.
This
Bill cannot be salvaged by detailed amendment. The requirement
to register in order to exercise your right to freedom of
speech is fundamentally wrong and without the requirement to
register none of the rest of the scheme will work. This Bill
itself demonstrates that whatever rules are made, someone will
find ways of working round them and then greater controls will
be introduced.
The
whole concept of limits on election spending but not on
donation of time of course favours parties supported by those
with low opportunity costs, beneficiaries, public servants,
teachers and so on. Those who are too busy creating wealth and
employment would prefer to give money.
So
this Bill is fundamentally wrong and has a good measure of
bias thrown in. The parties that support it should be punished
on election day.
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