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NZ Politics Daily - June 29


Parliamentary-funded election advertisements | MMP referendum | Hone Harawira and the Mana Party | Sexual politics and pay | John Key in India

Bryce Edwards
Wed, 29 Jun 2011

Hone Harawira’s successful by-election campaign is instructive in many ways in terms of political finance. He is said to have spent less than the half of the $40,000 legal limit, and he used no parliamentary resources in fighting the campaign. His opponents, of course, utilised considerably more resources – they spent more on expensive paid advertising, and were totally reliant on taxpayer-funded parliamentary resources. Nonetheless, as has been shown countless other times, although such capital resources are useful in politics, they are far from the essential and dominating part of explaining success or failure in politics. In terms of Harawira’s success, this is partly explained today in Mike Dinsdale’s Northern Advocate article, Poor vote gives Harawira victory.

When it comes down to it – and as the Act Party has consistently illustrated – you can’t simply ‘buy votes’ by spending more and more money on advertising. An attractive political ‘product’ is much more important than the advertising budget. Yet the advertising budget still plays a part, and the inequities of money in New Zealand politics surely has an impact on our democracy. But to what extent New Zealand elections take place on an ‘uneven playing field’ is mostly produced by the inequities of (backdoor) parliamentary state funding. In the current parliamentary financial year, National has had a ‘Party and Member Support’ budget of about $7m and the Greens had about $1m.

Overall, the parliamentary parties receive resources and services of about $140m a year. These are intended to permit them to carry out their legislative duties and serve their constituents, yet much of this is used for highly partisan activities – such as political advertising, market research, campaigning, and organizing their extra-parliamentary organizational activity. In contrast, interestingly, private funding is fairly miniscule in New Zealand politics. 
 
So is this almost total reliance on parliamentary resources healthy for democracy? Surely most of the public would think not. Yet yesterday John Pagani tried to argue that such illegitimate use of taxpayer funds for campaigning is good for elections, and today The Standard blog deals with this too – see: Electioneering on the public dime? Such accounts appear blind to the role that parliamentary state funding has played in turning mass membership political parties into elite-professional organisations, where the parliamentary leadership is empowered by its control over all resources, professionals operate the parties, and activists and members are entirely marginalised.
 
The situation is also dealt with in two good newspaper editorials today: the Waikato Times’ Own jobs voted ‘essential’ and the Herald’s Tactic shows National in a poor light. The Herald in particular puts the blame at the feet of National’s bi-partisan, but heavily-flawed political finance reforms. It’s certainly worth reiterating that the current Government – with the support of the Opposition – has consciously manufactured a situation in which millions of dollars of parliamentary funding is available for electioneering. They did this with the introduction of the Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill 2010. As far as I know, when the select committee made their decision to support the bill, I was the only person to object to the bill – providing a written and oral submission to the politicians – you can read my detailed analysis of the problem of here: National to entrench backdoor state funding of parties.
 
Most partisans of the parliamentary parties regard the ongoing backdoor funding of electioneering to be beyond question, and simply a ‘belt-way issue’ that has been resolved now that the hated Electoral Finance Act has been repealed. But in reality, whenever such taxpayer-funded resources are highlighted as being used for partisan electioneering, the public appears to regard this as illegitimate use. We’re living in an age of ‘corruption politics’ – whereby the public is highly receptive to allegation of corruption, and all parliamentary players are keen to wield such allegations as a political weapon. Therefore this issue isn’t about to go away. 
 
Today’s content
 
Parliamentary-funded election advertisements
Editorial (Waikato Times): Own jobs voted ‘essential’
 
MMP referendum
Vernon Small and John Hartevelt: Key hints at move to stop party hopping
 
Hone Harawira and the Mana Party
Mike Dinsdale (Northern Advocate): Poor vote gives Harawira victory
Phoebe Fletcher (Tumeke): On the Mana Party win
Ally Mullord (TV3): Greens would work with Harawira
Vanita Prasad (Western Leader): Yes vote for Harawira
 
Sexual politics and pay
Darien Fenton (Red Alert): EMA and the grievance “gravy train”
 
John Key in India
John Hartevelt (Stuff): Tourism stars in Bollywood deal
Fran O’Sullivan (NZH): Time to smash some boundaries
Claire Trevett (NZH): Cricket offers winning hand
John Hartevelt (Stuff): Key gets royal welcome in India
 
Other
Lloyd Burr (TV3): Spy Bureau gets new boss
Stephen Franks: Happiness economics
Dom Post: Political briefs – Wednesday, June 29
 
Bryce Edwards is a lecturer with the Department of Politics at the University of Otago. He blogs at Liberation.org.nz.
 
Bryce Edwards
Wed, 29 Jun 2011
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NZ Politics Daily - June 29
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