We can see your house from here, Helen

 

Helen Elizabeth Clark, of 4 Cromwell St, Mt Eden, introduced a law last year requiring all political speech to be regulated one year in three, including the rule that all such speech must include the name and address of the person who "authorises" it.  So the Libertarianz party has followed the law with our billboards, and as the Herald has just noticed we've included on with it not just the name and address of the fine chap who authorised them, and also the name and address of the woman who mandated that we must.

After all, if she's going to write laws placing at risk the homes of people who criticise her, people whose homes don't come complete with  police protection...

NB: Interesting, don't you think, that the Herald in the picture above chose to blank out Helen's home address, but not the one above it.
Herald picture by Brett Phibbs.

A novel EFA prosecution

Everyone's fallen foul of the Electoral Finance Act, and now news is just in that despite his non-existence God is to be prosecuted for promoting ... some damn party or other.  God knows which one.

Free elections, free speech, free expression ...

"It is inconceivable that you can hold open fair and free elections if you have media intimidation and great restraints on the freedom of expression."  That was Helen Clark, speaking yesterday about Fiji.

Hasn't the Herald and a few other people been saying something similar about the situation in New Zealand?

Just asking. 

[Hat tip Sandi]

UPDATE: Speaking of intimidation, restraints on the freedom of expression and unfair and unfree elections -- all brought to you by Helen Clark's Electoral Finance Act -- the Electoral Commission is seeking advice whether political opinions expressed on personal websites is legal.  I kid you not.

Spin is still in

Spin is already as endemic this year as it has been in year's past.  Despite campaigning for everybody else’s political affiliations and home addresses to be outed for one year in three and passing legislation under urgency to take "anonymous money" out of politics, the Labour Party has at the same time been funding, hosting and all but paying the staff's salaries for the blog that calls itself 'The Standard.'  Story here.  According to the law the pseudonymous co-bloggers themselves promoted at that blog, The Sub-Standard (as it will be known when the histories are written) should be wearing a parliamentary crest to show we've paid for it, a list of the names and home addresses of the contributors, and the following disclaimer (courtesy of the blogger known as 'Insolent Prick'):

“The Standard is proudly supported by the Labour Party, which subsidises the hosting of this blog. Some Standard authors are active Labour Party members. Some Standard authors are also paid employees of the EPMU. Some Standard authors are employed by Parliamentary Services and work in the Beehive.”

Or was the Electoral Finance Act only supposed to muzzle the Clark Government's opponents, rather than its few remaining supporters?

Liars at large

This election year, individuals have been severely restricted in the amounts they can spend opposing government policies -- meanwhile, the Clark Government has spent record amounts of your money fitting out government departments with spin doctors to trumpet its own lies.  [Story here.]While individuals are confined to spending $120,000 over the whole year in a national campaign (or just $10,000 in a local campaign), government departments now boast a whopping 448 spin doctors -- 210 more than just five years ago, and nearly ten times the number of the mid-eighties -- who cost us the sum of $47 million, not including the cost of campaigns these lying arseholes dream up. 

This is where your tax dollars go to, while the sound of protest is muzzled.

Remember last year when a huge taxpayer-funded advertising splurge trumpeted the government's  Kiwisaver, Student Loans and Welfare for Working Families election bribes? You and I paid for that.  Remember all the lies and spin fed to you by the Clark Government-- lies and spin about smacking your children, about the Electoral Finance Bill, about their pledge card ... You and I paid for all that too, and they plan for you to keep right on paying, election after election, while being muzzled in how much we can pay to protest.

The explosion of spin under the Clark regime and of the liars who are paid to do it mirrors a similar explosion in lying and spin in Tony Blair's New Labour.  The pledge card wasn't the only thing NZ Labour borrowed from UK New Labour.  They've also borrowed their mendacity.  As Peter Oborne notes in writing of the rise and rise of political lying in Britain, the reliance on spin and the volume of its is a new phenomenon in politics.

All governments have contained liars, and most politicians deceive each other as well as the public from time to time.  But in recent years [under New Labour] mendacity and deception have ceased to be abnormal and become an entrenched feature of the British [political] system.

The institutionalisation of spin is almost complete, here as it is in Britain.

Records Ruth Laugesen in yesterday's Sunday Star Times, the number of spin doctors is at a record high.  "Government agencies have hired more new communications staff in five years than all the journalists working at Television New Zealand, Radio New Zealand, the Sunday Star-Times and the Dominion Post newspapers put together."  As Gerry Brownlee points out, this leaves them ideally placed to use the machinery of government as its personal campaign for re-election.

In the last election the Clark Government thought they could use taxpayer's money intended to run the Prime Minister's office in order to run for the Prime Minister's Office.  This was what paid for their pledge card.  This election they clearly intend to use every "communications" resource  in every government department they can lay their hands on to run for re-election.  This is the reason the Madeleine Setchell/Clair Curran employment saga was so important (the only reason): it's important to the Clark Government that the have loyal "communications staff" are in place in every department.  With the numbers Laugesen quotes, it's clear that the capture of the public service is all but complete.

• "The Ministry of Social Development topped the list with 54 communications staff and contractors, making it bigger than Radio New Zealand's entire workforce of journalists."
• "The biggest spender on communication contractors and staff was the Ministry of Education, with 70% of the $6.6m it spent going on contractors."
• "There are 10 times as many government "communications staff" as there were 25 years ago, despite a smaller public service."

Not included in this number is the cost of bloggers such as the hacks at the Sub-Standard, who spin this news by arguing that it's not that there are too many spin doctors but too few journalists -- echoing a line used by Helen Clark at a journalism conference last December, and doing it on Labour's ticket.  (As Paul M. points out in the comments at Kiwiblog, the Sub-Standard is hosted on the Labour Party's server, but without the parliamentary crest that's supposed to appear on taxpayer-funded pieces of puffery such as this is, leaving a few questions for the Sub-Standard boys and girls to answer, including who exactly pays their wages, and for what purpose.)

Watch out people.  There are liars out there, and you're paying for them.

The Rise of Political Lying by Peter Oborne Read more about this book...

Street fighting men against free speech (updated)

Over recent weeks Trevor Loudon has been searching out links between local anarchists and peace activists, their associations with the Green Party, Zapatistas and international anarchist networks, and the weapons training so many of these peace lovers were undergoing in the Ureweras. (See the many, many posts he's made making the links at his weblog, New Zeal).   While the Green party has maintained a stoic silence, this has upset the anarchists and so called peace activists.  So much so that at Indymedia where they hang out, they're talking about where Trevor lives ...

...also they [Trevor and his family] live in a freakishly clean suburb called Northwood where there are rules for everything from the car you park in the driveway to the amount of money you spend on landscaping. Would anyone like the address? phone number?
Another has added;
He [Trevor] has a file in the Suspected Child Molester data base at CTF, in another words, he likes young boys .

Trevor no longer lives in Northwood (so don't bother firebombing the suburb) but as he says, "you can see how this sort of carry on might be intimidating on several fronts."  Certainly can.  He makes the point that the left tend to attack or intimidate those who oppose them.  It's a common modus operandi, to vilify rather than oppose honestly (perhaps because socialists overwhelmingly view others as a route to their own power, and as Chris Trotter has written are prepared to accept any corruption as long as it keeps the left in office*).  It's something even Barrack Obama is enduring at present with wild talk of assassination in the air -- a "meme" Obama rival Hillary Clinton is apparently willing to have used to her advantage.

Even so, Labour's Electoral Finance Act requires individuals expressing political opinions such as Don't Vote Labour to publish their names and addresses, leaving them and those they live with open targets to any nutjob under the sun.

This can't be right.  It certainly isn't free speech.

-------------------------

* Zen Tiger's recent comment about Trotter is spot on: "Chris Trotter is a man of standards. He has at least two of them. And double standards equip the left so very well to argue their way to electoral victory."

UPDATE: From Jack Wheeler's To the Point comes this comment, which is, um, exactly to the point:

If you Google "Obama" and "assassination" you will get 384,000 hits.
All over the world, the media is speculating on the possibility.  Typical is the January 8 (the day of the New Hampshire primary) headline in one of Australia's major newspapers, The Australian: Obama Must Be Wary of the Assassin's Gun.
The "news angle" of thousands of such stories is the same.  The first line of The Australian story is:  "Barrack Obama is crazy brave.  His victory in Iowa puts him in the crosshairs of many a gun-toting racist for whom the thought of a black president is an abomination."
It's the drumbeat theme echoing around the globe:  evil racist-fascist right-wing war-mongering child-eating nazi conservatives will always destroy America's hopes of being a peaceful humanitarian nation.
After all, it was just such a fascist-nazi right-winger that murdered JFK and killed Camelot, right?  What's that?  Lee Harvey Oswald was a Communist?  Oh...
Please ignore that impossibly embarrassing fact.  Especially since it brings up the real question that no liberal dares to think, much less ask:
Will Hillary find an Oswald of her own to take out Obama?

Read more ...

Don't vote National

Okay, as most of you and New Zealand now know, Andy Moore started up attack website Don'tVoteLabour, and he's in trouble with the Electoral Commission.  I like what he's doing.  I like it a lot.  And guess what: Friend Richard Goode has started one called Don'tVoteNational.  I like that one too.  I like it a lot.  An awful lot.  ;^)

UPDATE:  From this morning's Herald editorial:

How absurd that New Zealanders can no longer make a political statement in an election year without satisfying a welter of petty regulation...
... it is on the web, a new frontier of attempted regulation, that Labour's red tape will be most resented. The act's restrictions on election material expressly exempts "the publication by an individual, on a non-commercial basis, on the internet of his or her personal political views ... "
Bloggers might have little difficulty fitting that definition but they will need to be aware that should their site acquire more than one author or, heaven forbid, make some money in some way from their political observations, the speech patrol could be down on them. It is outrageous that they even need to concern themselves with such rules.
When people come to wonder what has happened to a freedom they once took for granted, the answer is seldom a single, memorable edict. It is more often a hundred trifling rules, requirements and restrictions, each defensible within the logic of the law but together oppressive in their effect.

That's the way that freedom ends. That's the way that freedom ends. Not with a bang but a whimper. If you've never understood how to boil a frog alive, then here's your answer: not with a single bold move to turn the tepid water hot, but by a hundred trifling raises of temperature until the frog has ceased to wonder what happened to the tepid temperatures it once took for granted.   So it goes.

Anti-Labour website hears (but not heeds) electoral watchdog's warning

The new year has barely begun and the Electoral Commission is already flexing its new Government-given muscles, warning website creator Andy Moore that if he doesn't heed their warning over his attack website Don't Vote Labour that "he is not complying" with provisions of the Electoral Finance Act, then trouble will be a-coming his way.

Moore correctly says that the Commission's demand that he include his name and address on the site "is a breach of freedom of speech," and at this stage he has no plans to knuckle under.  Good on him, I say.

But there are others who are less supportive of free speech.  Martin Bradbury for instance, who says "you want to be an attack dog for the right, you gotta be registered" -- which to translate from oaf-ese means "Register with the government in order to criticise the Government." Brilliant!  Or: "Disagree with me, and I will defend to to the death the necessity for you to be muzzled."  With 'allies' like that, free speech hardly needs enemies.

Perhaps protagonists here should be reminded again of some of life's verities. That, as Salman Rushdie points out, without the freedom to offend, then freedom of expression ceases to exist.   And those still left defending the Electoral Finance Act might like to be reminded of the words of Thomas Jefferson, who said that "it is error alone that needs the support of government.  Truth can stand by itself."

Free speech is a precious and delicate flower.  As Saudi blogger Fouad al-Fahran has discovered in being arrested for violating Shari'ah laws on free speech (“everyone shall have the right to express his opinion freely in such manner as would not be contrary to the principles of the Shari’ah”) it is a flower all too easily pruned.

Don't vote for Nanny, or for Nanny's supporters

As the new website advertised in that banner on the right says, Don't Vote Labour.  In fact, don't vote for any party, politician or candidate that supported the Electoral Finance Bill and the rorting of NZ's electoral law, including the opportunists who were embarrassed into changing their minds at the last minute -- but do add the 'Don't Vote Labour' banner to your own website  (instructions for that here), and don't be prepared to give the other bastards an even break either.

Why not vote for these particular lying bastards?  As Libertarianz leader Bernard Darnton explains:

In 2005 Labour flouted election laws by stealing public money to buy propaganda.

In 2006, they abandoned all constitutional norms and retrospectively changed the law so that they wouldn’t be called into the High Court to answer for that action.

This year the government has passed legislation allowing them to steal far more at the next election. Worst of all, the Clark regime is now trying to ram through legislation that would ban me from pointing out that they are behaving like tyrants and telling people not to vote for them.

They've now rammed that legislation through with the support of assorted toadies. That is wrong.  As Peter Osborne says, “If ever there were a time to openly break a law, it is now. Bugger registering to have your say, and bugger staying silent.”

Thus following the sidesteps of DPF and sundry others, let me follow the no-nonsense balls-out approach of KG by asserting:

This website is published by me on a commercial basis.  Advertisers pay to be here.  Views expressed on it by me are political views which are not intended to inform, enlighten or entertain, but to cajole, induce and persuade.  They are specifically intended to sway the votes and sympathies of readers, which in this context means to persuade the chatterati to the promotion of capitalist acts between consenting adults, and to dissuade voters from voting for or supporting Nanny's legion of cheerleaders.

Hence under paragraph (g) of Section 5(2) of the Electoral Finance Act this website may be considered an election advertisement.

I further assert that this website is a news media Internet site and that posts on here written by me, as the editor, are intended not  to inform enlighten or entertain but solely for the purpose of swaying the votes and sympathies of readers, and hence also may be considered an election advertisement under paragraph (d) of Section 5(2) of the Electoral Finance Act.

For the record, my name is Peter Cresswell, and my address is none of your damn business.

Have a nice day.

Elections 2008

Oswald managed to snare a copy of next year's election ballot paper, as authorised by Helen Clark's chief of staff (and snaffled by ZenTiger).

It's 'back to business' time: National are not the answer

I like these comments by Lance Davey at SOLO on the aftermath of the Electoral Finance Bill's passing into law.  It's a timely reminder that despite the anger over this Bill and some very occasional appearances to the contrary, National are not the answer:

Shadbolt is temporarily off my shit-list, for now. As were National. I didn't once call them Labour-Lite or refer to them as Natscum throughout the anti-EFB campaign. But now that's over it's back to business.

The problem with the "we must vote National to dislodge Labour" is that we are then "settling" for National; a barely more palatable alternative. We then strike the problem that to prevent Labour coming back to power, we "must" vote National again. It's Tweedledum and Tweedledipshit, and it frustrates me that people see a need to support one over the other...

What sticks out in my mind [from the anti-EFB campaign], beyond the sickening arrogance of Labour, beyond the dangerous rhetoric of Winston "our censorship laws are perhaps too liberal" Peters, beyond the hideous stench of corruption of the whole damned process, is the smug, snide look on the face of John Key and Bill English when they first started speaking out against the bill in the media.

National are not our saviours—they cannot be trusted any more than Labour can. To them this wasn't an all-out assault against free expression. No, this was a golden opportunity. I'll never forget the overjoyed look on John Key's face while describing just how draconian the EFB was. Smiling and laughing the whole way...  Do not for one second think that they are any more conducive to liberty in New Zealand than Labour.

If Labour are the type to launch a "dramatic assault" on liberty, then National are the type to give her a quiet back alley raping, then tell us that she was asking for it. Voting National just to dislodge Labour would be votes wasted.

The EFB is not my main concern. It's the culture that led to it... The Libz have it right, it is the mainstream that has it wrong. New Zealand needs a massive cultural and philosophical revolution. To do that you have to set your teeth, draw a line in the sand and say "No further, these are our demands, these are our principles and we will fight for them unwaveringly and unflinchingly". What hope if every time the bogeyman spectre of Labour raises it's head we go running back to National?

I'm not yet so scared of Labour and their policies that I'll hide behind the skirts of National.

As you'd expect, it's kicked off some debate...

TFR78: The Democracy Rationing edition (updated)

"Don’t Vote For Any MP, Any Party Or Any Candidate Who Supports The Electoral Finance Bill!"

Democracy is now rationed. Political speech is being muzzled. Has New Zealand really come to this? The latest Free Radical magazine hits the streets, just in time for Christmas, and just in time to dissect the greatest assault on New Zealand's democracy and free speech since .. well, for ever.

How did it come to this, that saying what's quoted above could have just become illegal? Bernard Darnton and Peter Cresswell explain why, how, and why it’s so wrong – why and how what our soldiers fought to defend is being taken away -- why thousands have taken to the streets to protest it, and where that leaves us now. And that's just the cover story of this bumper summer issue of 'The Free Radical.'

• NANNY's BIG BABIES: The Rise and Rise of an Infantilised Culture
  We now have virtually cradle to cradle nannying -- we’re never allowed out of our cribs, and there's nothing any of New Zealand's childlike, apathetic would-be whiners care to do about it. Marcus Bachler and Peter Osborne take the culture of infantilisation to task. How did we become such crybabies, they ask?
• FEEL-GOOD ENVIRONMENTALISM: Spinning the Climate
  How is it that the forces of global nonsense can fly to Bali in their thousands to force us to make any sacrifice hey consider necessary towards their goal of “saving the planet”? Talking about ways to force us to reduce carbon emissions, emitting 100,000 tonnes of the stuff themselves to fly there to talk about it – that’s how ‘seriously’ they take their own warnings. Vincent Gray, Callum McPetrie, Joel Schwartz, Steve Hayward and Ken Green explain how spinning the climate requires politics to pose as science, and emotions to replace thought.
• BANNING BZP: Prohibition Still Doesn't Work
  How is it that despite abundant evidence that prohibition doesn’t, can’t and hasn’t ever worked, the forces of darkness are doing it again: banning a peaceful party pill, and inviting the social destruction of prohibition all over again. Rodney Hide, Nandor Tanczos and Richard Goode point out the how, as Richard Goode says, the party pills ban but the 'P' into BZP.

All this plus the usual treats, including reviews, interviews, all your regular columnists, and a celebration of the 40th anniversary of your editor’s favourite TV show, all in this 78th Free Radical. 78 blows for freedom, and still going strong!

Head to the Free Radical store to subscribe or to buy your digital Free Radical. Or head to one of these top shops around the country to pick up your hard copy (they should be arriving in shops this afternoon).

Cheers,
Peter Cresswell
EDITOR, THE FREE RADICAL
**POLITICS, ECONOMICS & LIFE AS IF FREEDOM MATTERED**

NB: We're having a few teething problems getting the new digital issue for TFR78 succesfully uploaded at the Free Radical store. Keep checking back: I've been assured it will happen soon.

In the meantime, here's a link for an A3 poster of the cover you can download. Enjoy.

UPDATE: As astute readers might by now have realised, our webmaster appears to have taken an early holiday -- for which I can only offer prospective purchasers of the digital edition my profound apologies, and a recommendation that they purchase a hard copy edition from one of these top shops. And to say that volunteers for the job of Free Rad webmaster will be gratefully received in the New Year.

UPDATE 2: Mystery solved. Just heard that webmaster presently responsible for uploading digital Free Radicals was hospitalised after a car accident. News such as it is so far here. Naturally, our thoughts are with the young man as we wish him a speedy recovery ...

Darnton offers Libz political party as 'flag of convenience' for free speech

The first truck was driven through the Electoral Finance Act this morning, even before the Governor General had the chance to sign it into law.

Co-trustee of the Free Speech coalition and leader of the Libertarianz Party Bernard Darnton is offering his Party as a 'flag of convenience' for third parties wanting to spend more than the cap imposed upon them by the Electoral Finance Act.

As a registered political party, Libertarianz has a spending cap of $2.4 million dollars, twenty times what is allowed to third parties under Labour's draconian new free speech rationing rules, and Darnton sees a way to use that to promote the free speech this Government would like to muzzle. Darnton announced the new policy, explaining:

"Libertarianz is happy to authorize election advertisements for the third parties that Labour has tried to crack down on. We've never spent anything like $2 million dollars on an election campaign, so we've got plenty of room to spare.

"Free speech is far too important to let the Clark regime and its cronies flush it away. We will fight this law all the way to the election and we'd like to help groups that might otherwise be excluded from the election to do the same."

Darnton invited all third parties who wanted to include their spending under the Libertarianz cap to contact him to discuss the details:
BERNARD DARNTON
Phone: 021 324 466
Email: bernard.darnton@libertarianz.org.nz

UPDATE: The Free Speech Coalition has begun its billboard campaign in earnest this morning against the parties who voted the Electoral Finance Act into law.

"The Electoral Finance Act was correctly labeled by the New Zealand Herald as an "Attack on Democracy" so we think it is fitting that Democracy should attack back," said spokesman David Farrar.

Three billboards are initially going up. One in Auckland targeting Helen Clark (above), one in Tauranga for Winston Peters (below) and one in Wellington for Peter Dunne [or the Greens]. "They are a clear statement," says trustees David Farrar, Cameron Slater and Bernard Darnton, "that we regard their legislation as anti-democratic and unconstitutional. MPs are there to serve the public, not to silence the public...

"We hope the public enjoy the billboards over summer. We only have funding to keep them up for a month but will be asking people to donate to keep them up longer, or to allow us to roll out more billboards in more cities."

You can buy more billboards for the Coalition at their website.

Electoral Finance Act: "It's about the sweet scent of power, and the lust for control" (updated)

Crikey, Hone Harawira can get to the heart of an issue.  Here he is speaking yesterday on the Government's Incumbency Protection Act, (passed last night by 63 votes to 57):

Yes folks money talks, but nothing talks quite like the truth, and the truth about this Bill is that it's nothing but an arrogant dismissal by this Labour-led government to deny the citizens of Aotearoa / New Zealand the right to participate in one of the fundamental rights of any so-called "democratic society" – how you elect your government.

And no – we will not be fobbed off by any talk about how this is only about election finances, because it ain't.

If this was only about election finances, then why did this Labour government push through special legislation to validate their $800,000 over-spend at the last election, rather than let the legal process take its natural course?

If this was only about election finances, then why didn't this Labour government ask the Auditor General and the Electoral Commission, to present a range of options for public consideration, and presentation to the House?

If this was only about election finances, then how come the Human Rights Commission says this Bill is a dramatic assault on fundamental human rights – freedom of expression, and the right to participate in the election process?

If this was only about election finances, then how come the Human Rights Commission says that even this rewritten, flea-bitten, revised and patched-up version should still have been given back to the public for full discussion and debate?

I'll tell you why Madam Speaker, it's because this ain't just about election finances.

It's about the sweet scent of power, and the lust for control. It's about the decadence of corruption, the stench of deceit, and the refusal to accept the reality of impending defeat.

Yes, there have been amendments, hell we even voted for one of them, but given the constitutional importance of legislation that will play a critical role in determining how the next election will be fought – stitching up this deal behind closed doors, and then adding a veneer of democracy through a select committee process, is nothing but a sick joke.

Mind you, this government denying the people of Aotearoa the right to open and public debate on the process by which we manage the next election, is right up there, with their changing the law to bypass any serious questioning of their expenditure, at the last election.

Madam Speaker, the Maori Party will not be party to a bill which is clearly aimed at restricting freedom of speech.

We will not be party to this desperate attempt by Labour to stay in power at the expense of the fundamental human rights of the citizens of this country.

We will not be party to a bill designed to put fear into those who would speak their mind, by forcing them to run the gauntlet of registration, audit, notification, financial agency, monitoring, reporting, scrutiny, and penalty.

And we will not be party to a bill that slams the door on opposition spending, while allowing government to continue to spend millions on promoting its own policies and programmes.

Madam Speaker, the Maori Party was borne out of Maoridom's absolute rejection of this Labour government's arrogant denial of our basic human rights to the foreshore and seabed.

And we will reject this Bill to rewrite the law to allow that same government to stay in power - with the same vigour and determination.

Madam Speaker, money is not what drives people to vote, it is truth...

And I sincerely hope and pray, that those who have sacrificed the truth for the delusion of power, that overwhelms this decadent and depraved piece of legislation, will come to see the folly of their ways when the people reject this sham, come Election 2008.

UPDATE: The Free Speech Coalition sums up the impact of the Act, which will come into force in just two weeks!

The Act discourages individuals and groups from participating in the electoral process and spending their own money, while at the same time allows MPs and parliamentary parties to far more easily use taxpayer funds on their election campaigns and not even have it count towards their spending limits. It is the ultimate act in hypocrisy.

The MPs have

- Ignored the Law Society's advice that the Bill should be scrapped

- Ignored the Human Rights Commission opposition to the regulated period, and their request to allow the public to submit on the amended Bill

- Ignored the NZ Institute of Charted Accountant's advice that the Bill is unworkable

- Ignored the Electoral Commission's advice on spending limits

- Failed to provide legislative certainty around the exemptions for MPs

- Protected anonymous donations with massive loopholes which may result in less, not more, disclosure

- Continually misrepresented key clauses of the Bill

"New Zealand has no written constitution. At the end of the day 61 MPs in Parliament can pass any law they like, no matter how repugnant. Previously constitutional conventions have protected Acts like the Electoral Act, but the passage of the Electoral Finance Bill sees the demise of that convention." said spokesperson David Farrar.

"We hoped the parties supporting this Bill would listen to the near universal opposition from the media, from the legal profession, and from the public and do the right thing. Sadly they have chosen not to.

"We do not believe there should be no consequences for those parties which passed the Electoral Finance Act into law. The NZ Herald correctly labeled it as an "Attack on Democracy" and we believe it is time for Democracy to attack back.

Smokescreen (updated)

Yesterday I quoted Duncan Garner's observation about politicians, "that politicians' default position is to lie and surround issues with a smokescreen."

Today the Electoral Finance Bill is being voted in by Hard Labour, Dis-United, Red-Green and New Zealand Fascist parties, all of whom have lost support for their support of this Bill.

Yesterday the Government released news of the stadium upgrade to Eden Park, just as they did when the anti-smacking controversy was at its height.

Coincidence?  Smokescreen?  What do you think.

It's not too late to email the bastards from each of those parties and tell them what you think of their decision to support this bill -- a bill that diminishes democracy, that threatens jail time for exceeding your ration of free speech.  Contact details for all of them are here, for every MP from each of those parties.  United, NZ First, the Greens and Hard Labour: Here's a list of their email addresses, and here their mailing addresses [pdf].

UPDATE: DAY OF INFAMY  - Lindsay Perigo:

In what is destined to be remembered as a Day of Infamy, December 18, 2007 is set to see the passing of the Clark-Cullen government's Electoral Finance Bill. This Bill kills the Bill of Rights, specifically the provisions allowing for freedom of speech and association.
SOLO Principal Lindsay Perigo reiterates that the Bill thereby kills the government's moral legitimacy.
"In the circumstances," says Perigo, "it's timely to release again the Constitution for New Freeland drawn up by Libertarianz—a document to which the wise and honest should repair in these times that try men's souls..."

Polls deliver EFB verdict

Two recent polls have the commentariat all aflutter.  I don't usually comment on polls, but Lindsay Perigo does.

Labour and the Greens have been pulling out all the stops to pass the fascist Electoral Finance Bill, the work of Labour's obnoxious, liberty-hating deputy-leader Michael Cullen. Voters have delivered their verdict. 

But it's important not to become complacent.  The Orwellian shape of New Zealand should Labour win a fourth term is obvious enough just from today's headlines... [Read on here.]

Controlling speech in order to keep it free

Attacks on free speech gather apace, even as the Electoral Finance Bill thunders through Parliament like a runaway train with the brakes gone -- and as the title above suggests, the attacks are taking on an increasingly Orwellian tone.

Not content with simply introducing and passing law that muzzles political opponents, there are now signs that, as David Farrar suggests, the Clark Government has plans to muzzle her opponents in the media -- that "her logical next target will be media regulation."  Keep that in mind, he says when you look at her words on Monday:

"She said there was little point complaining to the print media’s self-regulatory watchdog, the Press Council.

That just doesn’t get you anywhere."

Sounds like [says Farrar] she would like a system where her complaints will get her somewhere and she doesn’t have to just “shrug and say, ‘Well, that’s life,’ and get on with it.” Her Foreign Minister has labelled journalists as traitors and rails against the media and their owners.  If he demanded media regulation as the price of support, do you think Helen would resist?

Do you think she could resist for a moment?  Or want to resist?  As Phil says at Pacific Empire -- and he backs this up with several examples -- the disturbing truth about freedom of speech is that it’s just not that popular anymore!  Phil's critique of Jeffrey Sachs' toe-in-the-water for outright censorship also sweeps up in its net the method by which Clark and her allies have been spinning the Electoral Finance Bill, and describes their likely modus for the future:

Lame collectivism with the pervasive use of an all-encompassing “we.” A call for responsible journalism, which seems to mean nothing more than journalism Sachs agrees with, and a criticism of the unregulated Internet with its “blog sites.” But no call for outright censorship.

That should perhaps read "no call for outright censorship" YET.  When it comes, it won't come as an open attack, but as more slippery spin in which the would-censor acts to "protect" democracy, and from attacks upon it by "big money" -- enter stage left this point, Big Nanny, with her big stick. 

But wait, we've seen this strategy already, haven't we.  With the arguments for the EFB and it's "acceptable corruption," the stage is already being set to argue that in order to protect free speech, free speech itself must be muzzled.  It's not a big step from there to where we might be going, and the methodology is precisely the same.  Argued Chris Trotter for exaemple in support of the "ownership class" being muzzled by his favourite new law,

when these "owners" talk about the right to "free expression" [inverted commas his] what they're really referring to is the right to restrict ready access to effective mass- communication technologies to people like themselves.

Trotter's cloth cap hatred for those he derisively calls the "ownership class" allows him to believe that what he says is true: that it's "us" against "them"; that "they" hold the commanding heights of press power, and must be muzzled to protect "us" (with "us" being people like himself on behalf of people like the rest of us); that the only way to defend genuine free expression is to "restrict ready access to mass-communication technologies" to people like himself, and to place "limits on the rights to 'purchase' speech" in order ... "to protect our democracy from money politics" and "the machinations of an owning class." 

It's slippery spin like this and that of Sachs that is being used to justify crushing free expression, and genuine hatred of free expression like that of Winston Peters and his ilk that empowers it.  Wedge politics for speech rationing.

It's slippery spin from a song sheet prepared by the Apostle Al Bore (yes, him again)-- one from which he's already been singing for some time -- a new front he's opened in his war on western civilisation -- and in his book The Assault on Reason: A How-To Manual, he makes it even plainer than Mr Cloth Cap.  As Jason Roth summarises (in a review written for the last 'Free Radical')

It's interesting to observe the mind of a huckster -- a dimestore philosopher with the aspirations of a dictator. Gore has already been fighting a war on industrial civilization. He's now opening up a new front against free speech. As can be expected from an aspiring dictator, his war against free speech will be fought under its exact opposite premise. He wants to control speech in order to keep it free.

Taking his title from an old joke, Roth's review is entitled Al Gore Gave Us the Internet. Now He Wants to Take It Away. The first sentence is the joke.  Only true vigilance will ensure that the second sentence is too.

del.icio.us Tags: Free_Speech

MEMO: To Greens' co-leader Russel Norman

The Greens are  right behind Labour's Electoral Finance Bill.

The Greens say if it was in any way an attack on free speech, they  wouldn't be supporting it.

Sadly, with this press release complaining about the Herald's deletion of a paragraph of misspelled childish whinging, you demonstrate that you don't know free speech from a hole in the ground.

In calling a simple editorial decision "censorship," you are either disingenuous or deluded.  Either way, you fully deserve derision.

MEMO:  Censorship is interference by the state in the expression of ideas.  It is not censorship if a free agent, eg., a newspaper, decides to edit or reject your copy.  There is nothing in the principle of free speech requiring that I provide you with a megaphone, or the Herald provide you with a platform   A private network refusing to publish your views is not censorship - it is their choice.  A private newspaper editing your ill-thought maunderings is not censorship, it is good judgement.

However, it is censorship if a government uses legal force to ban speech, especially political speech.  It is censorship if a government places a limit on the amount of political speech one is allowed one year in three.   It is censorship to require registration with a government agency before exercising political speech.  It is censorship if politicians can slag off private citizens one year in three with all the power of parliamentary privilege at their disposal, whereas to defend themselves those citizens will be required to file declarations about who their supporters and donors are and to keep an account of expenses to ensure they don't exceed some arbitrary amount (see here for example). 

It is disgusting that some people under the Electoral Finance Bill will be barred from fully exercising free speech one year in three while being forced to fund the megaphones of their opponents.  And it is enlightening, Russel, that you are right behind that.

As a former Green voter said to me at the most recent Anti-Electoral Finance Bill march, "I didn't vote Green for this!"

Just to help you out, Russel, here are some propositions on free speech on which you could do with some brushing up.  Why not print them out and hang them up on your wall, and then hang your head in shame at what you're about to help ram through.

Perhaps the most important principle for you to get your head around is this: Without the freedom to offend, it doesn't exist.  If you're offended by people donating to other parties who support their views, then get over it, and get some better ideas yourself.  Don't try to screw the scrum to enforce your own views on us at our expense, especially not while supporting the censoring views of that offend you.

UPDATE 1: By the way, readers can send your own memo to the semi-literate deluded whinger here at the Green's Frog Blog, where' he's reproduced his press release --  complete with spelling errors...

UPDATE 2: An anonymous commenter makes the perfect point about Russel's whinging: "

So Russel complains about having his rebuttal capped at 200 words (the same as everyone else)?
Welcome to your level playing field, Russel.

Determining who can buy an election

Jim Hopkins compares two high profile thefts, and finds a connection: 

Anyone at Waiouru contemplating the theft of national treasures need only have looked to the leaders of the land to find others whose behaviour offered both justification and vindication.

For it surely must be more than coincidence that Parliament is passing a bill which will steal our right to free speech in the very same week that other thieves have been roundly condemned for stealing the medals awarded to those who once defended it.  There's an awful symmetry here, an apposite meeting of motives that is too obvious and poignant to ignore... 

What our politicians are doing this week is not preventing people from buying an election. They're actually determining who can buy it. And they've very sensibly decided it should be them. While deftly wrapping a gag of red tape around everyone else's tongue, their bill specifically exempts parliamentarians from its provisions.

When Hopkins gets to the point, he can be awfully direct.  "What our politicians are doing this week is not preventing people from buying an election. They're actually determining who can buy it."  Print that out and hang it from the nearest flag pole.

What's wrong with "big money"?

I hear all the time that "minorities" should be protected. "Minorities" need the protection of law. Minorities need to have their voices heard. This is widely considered today to be a moral principle of a very high order.

Yet as the spin around the Electoral Finance Bill demonstrates, this defence of minority "rights" is applied by this government and its allies in a most discriminatory manner: it is applied only to racial minorities.

There is one minority however who this government thinks should sit still while the law removes their voice and taxes them to hell; who should remain silent their right to speak freely is muzzled; who should keep quiet even while this government goes through their pockets to pay for views which they oppose.

The one minority whom this government has chosen not to protect but instead to do over, are people who have earned their own money. The rich. The wealthy. This "ownership class" it seems is the one minority that deserves not protection, but out and out political persecution.

Why?

Why shouldn't people be entitled to advertise their own views with their own money, just as long as all are free to do the same thing? Why should people be required to stay silent while they're forced to fund views they oppose? What's actually wrong with "big money" and those who've earned it? Why should the speech of producers be rationed, while they're forced to fund the speech of the unproductive?

There is nothing more cancerous or corrosive than to vilify the most productive members of society.

There was a time last century when those who didn't own property were excluded from voting. one could be forgiven for thinking that those fomenting the present feeding freezy would like to bring about that same situation in reverse.

Perhaps you think the word "persecution" too harsh? Consider this*:

If a small group of men were always regarded as guilty, in any clash with any other group, regardless of the issues or circumstances involved, would you call it persecution? If this group were always made to pay for the sins, errors, or failures of any other group, would you call that persecution? If this group had to live under a silent reign of terror, under special laws, from which all other people were immune, laws which the accused could not grasp or define in advance and which the accuser could interpret in any way he pleased -- would you call that persecution? If this group were penalized, not for its faults, but for its virtues, not for its incompetence, but for its ability, not for its failures, but for its achievements, and the greater the achievement, the greater the penalty -- would you call that persecution?

If your answer is ''yes'' -- then ask yourself what sort of monstrous injustice you are condoning, supporting, or perpetuating. That group is the [world's] businessmen. . . .

Any good reason they deserve to be silenced?

* * * * *
* From the introduction to Ayn Rand's 1961 article 'America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business,' reprinted in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

UPDATE: A graphic from a reader at Kiwiblog makes plain the difference between "big money" and "government money" under the Electoral Finance Bill: