liberation

What’s left in 2009 in New Zealand?

In July I gave a talk to the Dunedin branch of Drinking Liberally on the topic of “What’s left in 2009 in New Zealand?” The rough notes I used for my talk are below (although I didn’t actually read the speech sentence-for-sentence, nor did I use every paragraph). It sparked off some very interesting discussion about the state of the left. Some of the main questions I was asking were:

• Is the left-right political spectrum still relevant to politics in New Zealand?
• What other spectrums are now useful for understanding politics?
• What is the difference between left-right and liberal-conservative in modern NZ politics?
• Why is politics increasingly based more around societal issues instead of economic ones? [Read more below]

Political advertising in the 2008 NZ election

Which political parties had the best advertising in the last year’s general election? How come the Greens’ had such good advertising but did relatively poorly? What was wrong with Labour’s advertising? What was right about National’s advertising strategy? Did New Zealand First lose representation because of, or despite of, its election advertising and strategy? Did the Electoral Finance Act properly define and understand what a political advertisement is? Claire Robinson answers these questions in her chapter entitled ‘”Vote for me”’: Political Advertising’, published in Informing Voters? Politics, Media and the New Zealand Election 2008 (edited by Chris Rudd, Janine Hayward and Geoff Craig of the University of Otago Politics department). This blog post is the fifth of a series of explorations of the chapters from the new book (which I also have a chapter in). [Read more below]

Matt McCarten: “there is an ethical sickness in our Parliament”

Matt McCarten has written the best commentary so far on Philip Field’s conviction for corruption and bribery by linking it very plausibly to the ongoing parliamentary expenses scandal. Field’s corruption springs from the same ‘avaricious political culture of Parliamentary entitlement’ that has infected virtually all contemporary MPs and political parties. McCarten’s whole column is worth reading in full, but it’s the last part that most crucially highlights the fact that the biggest rort is actually due to the parliamentary parties themselves corruptly appropriating taxpayer funds for partisan political activity:

In my opinion there is an ethical sickness in our Parliament when even senior MPs no longer see themselves as the people's servants in public duty, but as political elites who are entitled to the maximum remuneration and perks they can give themselves.  But the rort isn't just restricted to individual benefits. All the parties now collectively fleece the taxpayer to fund their political election machines.  For example, three of the four main candidates in the recent Mt Albert byelection were already MPs and receiving their salaries and expenses right through the campaign.  In addition, the campaign staff were either MPs as well or Parliamentary staff with most of their costs paid.  Even the Prime Minister authorised a Cabinet minister on full pay to manage his candidate's campaign for eight weeks. The salary bill for just that was a good part of $40,000.  This week, a lone MP was convicted in court for corruption. But our whole political system is fraudulent. Party organisations as we used to know them no longer exist in a meaningful way.  List MPs are effectively party organisers and parties are covertly funded by taxpayers through the back door. Every party is guilty of it. This week the senior leaders of every Parliamentary party should have been in the defendant's dock with Field.

David Lange's expose of Philip Field's dodgy political finance

The conviction of ex-MP Philip Field for corruption, reminded me that David Lange had once regarded Field as unscrupulous in terms of political finance back in the 1990s. In a remarkably unusual attack on a fellow party member, Lange wrote the following lengthy expose of Field in one of his newspaper columns, suggesting that he was guilty of illegal electoral practices:

Mr Field returned expenditure of $14,996, accounting for his spending on posters, pamphlets, hoardings and signwriting. He did not declare the costs of advertising two campaign fundraising socials and a campaign rally, or the costs of the food, drink and entertainment which were offered at these events. He made no allowance for the running costs of his campaign van, or for its purchase price or its depreciation.  On the other side of the ledger, he returned a donation of $5000 from the Otara Labour Party Trust, but did not disclose another sum of $15,000 given to him by the same trust.  These matters were referred to the Electoral Office, which referred them to Mr Field. After considering his reply, the Electoral Office decided that it would not refer Mr Field’s return to the police, because it was not satisfied that any offence against the Electoral Act had been committed.  The act broadly has it that campaign spending need be returned if it relates exclusively to the campaign for the return of the candidate (spending which relates to the return of two or more candidates is to be apportioned). Mr Field told the Electoral Office that the advertising left out of his return did not relate exclusively to his campaign.  "The fund-raising social," he declared, "was held to raise funds which were used for a variety of purposes including for the Labour Party as a whole. Proceeds also went towards funding the Mangere Labour Party organisation, including its local committee activities, meetings and levies payable to the party’s head office."  According to the Electoral Office, the undeclared advertising for the campaign rally promoted not only Mr Field’s candidacy but also the launch of Labour’s Pacific Island policy, noting that in respect of the campaign social, the member had stated that this "was also not a function exclusively related to the campaign for my return as the candidate for Mangere".  The costs of the vehicle, Mr Field advised, were not declared because it was purchased while he was not only candidate for Mangere but MP for Otara, and needed the van for his electoral work as well as his election campaign (David Lange, ‘Law Made in an Age When MPs Did Not Behave like Tax Laywers’, Press, p.11, 29 July 1997).

In this, Lange alerted us to the potentially corrupt nature of Field, but also to the difficulties in policing New Zealand’s political finance regulations. The Electoral Commission has very few powers to investigate discrepancies or to check that the parties are following the rules. The system essentially relies on the honesty of the parties and politicians. Lange showed that the Electoral Commission must take the parties at their word on any regulation inconsistencies and problems.

(I see that Poneke has also drawn attention to Lange's disputes with Field).

A critique of the disclosure of MP expenses

The rort of parliamentary expenses for MPs and parties continues, and the latest move to open up the books should be understood as a defensive attempt to quell the growing public concern about political corruption while also confusing the issue and robbing the public of their right to know how politicians spend public money on themselves. The following critique – drawing on a previous critique of the Greens’ disclosure of expenses – argues that there should be maximum transparency for the use of parliamentary funding. Millions of dollars of MP and party expenses are still unaccounted for, which this blog post draws attention to. [Read more below]