Coalition for Open Government

I welcome the announcement yesterday that the Coalition for Open Government have been re-formed.

They've proposed some key principles for electoral law reform.

1. Ban anonymous donations

Parties should have to record who is giving them money. There should be no anonymous donations above $20.

Parties should have to disclose the identities and donations of anyone (or any organisation) who gives more than $200 in a year. It should be an offence to donate money via another person or a trust.

Parties should have to disclose their donations leading up to the election, so voters know who is giving money when they vote.

I agree with this. Transparency is key.

2. Limit the size of large donations

No person or organisation should be allowed to give more than $5000 a year in political donations (including a maximum of $1000 for any one candidate).

I agree with this. Large donors should not be able to have a large impact. Yes, I know it would hurt my party as well as National. This isn't a partisan issue. There is no fairness in people with more money being able to make enormous donations and swaying politics.

3. Control third-party election campaigning

People and organisations wanting to spend money to influence the election publicly should disclose their identities and, like parties, have their spending limited to a reasonable cap. This is a difficult area to develop effective laws; we will be developing more detailed policy.

The law should stop people colluding to circumvent the spending limits.

I agree with this too as a matter of principle.

4. Enforce the laws effectively

Political parties should be liable for breaches of electoral laws.

The fines and jail terms for corrupt and illegal practices should be increased significantly: for example, the maximum penalty for corrupt practices should be $1 million for parties and 7 years’ jail for individuals.

Parties should have to declare more of their election-related expenses – including money spent on issue advertisements, polling, and political strategists. And those expenses should be included in the parties’ spending caps.

There should be one independent Crown agency to oversee, monitor and enforce all election laws.

I think this is reasonable, in general, though I am not sure about the workability of the third paragraph on strategists etc. How do you decide when someone is being a strategist and when they are doing some other kind of job? How do you decide whether polling is part of normal parliamentary operations, and is election campaigning?

5. Make all public funding of elections fairer and more transparent

Any increase in public funding should only follow much tighter donation and disclosure limits.

Public funding should be linked to a party’s level of popular support and be designed to encourage greater democratic engagement.

The unfair election broadcasting rules should be abolished.

Any increase to current levels of public funding of political parties and electioneering should be transparent. Parliamentary spending should be rigorously checked to ensure it is not being used for electioneering.

I agree with this except I am not sure what they are proposing with respect to election broadcast rules. I support the retention of a publicly funded grant with clear criteria that is shared among the parties with some relationship to their levels of enduring public support.

It is really good to see an independent group of practitioners and independent, credible people prepared to make their views known on this. No doubt there will be disagreement over the details as electoral reform is worked through, but it is much better to have a wide range of people debating it and throwing ideas around, than just leaving things to the political parties.

Good on them for getting this together, and I look forward to seeing the further detail they are developing. I might even give them a (small!) donation!

Comments

[Graeme Edgeler]

Jordan - we'd be proposing taking the money that is currently spent on the Broadcasting allocation and divvying it up in a fairer way.

The current broadcasting allocation which saw, for example National get $900k at the last election (with less than 21% at the previous election and 27 seats), while New Zealand First (with more than 10% and 13 seats) got $200,000 is indefensible - especially when New Zealand First (along with everyone else) aren't even allowed to spend their own money to make up the difference.

A system which allowed Labour to have $1.1m of broadcast advertising, and its central opponent National $900k isn't fair. Maybe Labour should have gotten more public funding, but they certainly shouldn't be allowed more advertising than anyone else (and National shouldn't have been allowed more than NZF etc.)

e.g. how fair is it that the Alliance (which is competing with Labour for certain voters) could only have, at most, $20,000 of broadcast advertising? It was illegal for the Alliance to even *try* to compete on a level playing field with Labour.

[Mainly Politics]

Graeme - did I read your comment right, are you claiming to be a spokesperson for the Coalition?

[Graeme Edgeler]

Chris - yes - one of two spokespeople (the other being Steven Price). How's London?

[burt]

Jordan/Graeme

Would passing retrospective legislation to avoid charges of corruption, or to kill off a standing court case, constitute corruption under the heading "4. Enforce the laws effectively" ?

[Graeme Edgeler]

burt - retrospectively amending the law to avoid charges of electoral law breaches would be appalling. Thankfully, it is something that hasn't happened in New Zealand - let's hope it never does.

You may also have noted that the validating legislation passed last year (which was directed at validating breaches of the Public Finance Act, and had nothing to with electoral law or the Electoral Act) specifically precluded any effect on criminal liability. If someone could have been charged with corruption, or indeed any offence, before the passing of that law, they could still have been so charged, and convicted, following its passage.

None of this means the validating legislation was necessary or good ('though there are some arguments), but its effect has been exaggerated by some.

[pdq]

Paying it back would be a good idea too. Thieves.

[dave]

Nothing on the website says who is behind the coalition. It lists some worthies as patrons but it doesn't seem to say they are active in it.

Anybody can claim to be in support of open government. The campaign against MMP in 1993 springs to mind, a bunch of anonymous big business backers who had the audacity to claim MMP was being promoted by people whose faces were hidden by paper bags.

From posts in this thread I see Stephen Price is involved. When I was a senior journalist at the DomPost, he declined to talk to me in his role as an academic at Vic because he was paid by other media to comment on the subjects I was seeking his academic opinion on to share with the paper's readers. In correspondence about this refusal, he seemed to have a barely veiled contempt for the news media.

The news media certainly deserves vigorous scrutiny and criticism but by and large those who work in it believe strongly in open government.

Who else is behind the coalition, and is there anyone from the media involved, and if so, who?

[Steven Price]

I guess I'd better come in here. Dave seems to be forgetting the other times I was happy to give him (and plenty of other journalists) comment about media law issues. He also forgets to mention that I've only ever been part-time at the law school, and that my other job was as a freelance journalist myself. So, if I'd contracted to cover something for another media organisation, I didn't feel any obligation to provide all my thoughts to Dave on his timetable for his story. I have spent some time trying to convince my colleagues at the law school that they ought to speak to the media, though many continue to be wary of journalists.

As for who's behind the Coalition, we went into that at the press conference when we re-launched the group on Monday. It's a little amorphous, with people coming on board all the time. About half of us who started the thing up again are lawyers - for example, me, Graeme Edgeler, and Shaunnagh Dorsett, who also teaches at VUW. Kevin Hackwell was a member of the orginal COG, and he's with the new group too. Shane Cave, an international consultant on government transparency issues, is on board. And we're pleased to have Nicky Hager involved, since he's spent much of the last few years studying these issues. Of the patrons, Dr Paul Harris, former Chief Executive of the Electoral Commission, is taking the most active role, which is to be expected. We are not aligned with any political party, and we're welcoming support from any quarter.

For my part, the experience with that MMP campaign is what made me realise we need robust campaign laws.

Steven Price

[burt]

On the subject of political party funding.

Why do we have any cap at all for party advertising? I suggest we should have no cap for production or screening of TV adverts, billboards, flyers or election material, pamphlets, pledge cards etc. Let the parties spend whatever they can afford.

I don't believe that we can say a cap is required without accepting that Labour's 72% overspend (Additional $800,000 above the $1.1m) impacted the election result.

It boils down to this: Either the 2005 (and possibly all elections in the 14 year validated period) was skewed in an undemocratic way or there is no need to restrict party budgets in the interests of democracy.

[Graeme Edgeler]

burt - additional $800k above the $3.48m limit ($2.38m on election advertising, and $1.1m on broadcast advertising)

[burt]

oops. My bad, sorry. 22% overrun. No intention to mislead the debate the percentage was really only an interesting detail (which I got wrong), the point was the principal of claiming a need for limiting campaign spending when Parliament has validated (with only one election under the public microscope) quite a few elections that were not regulated.

[burt]

Jordan

Since you are back, would you care to comment on the concept of validating 14 years of unknown spending vs a requirement for rigid control of campaign finance in the interest of democracy?