Dr Bob's Blog

The Electoral Finance Act

The passage of the Electoral Finance Act through the Parliamentary process in late 2007 provides a good opportunity to assess the political landscape in New Zealand nine to ten months out from the general election.

This was a controversial piece of legislation which sharply divided the political parties and the country. However, opinions were divided along a clearly identifiable issue of who has the most rights the individual or the collective – human rights or civic rights, private autonomy or public autonomy, “I the individual” or “We the people”.

Those who supported the legislation accorded sovereignty to the people, those who opposed the legislation trumpeted human rights or freedom. Those who supported the legislation claimed to be seeking an election system that was transparent, and not captured by those with wealth. The actions of the Exclusive Brethren in 2005 in publishing material in favour of National and to the detriment of Labour and the Greens, and trying to do so anonymously, but probably with the knowledge of the leadership of the National Party, was one of the major catalysts for the legislation. Whether you are an individualist or a collectivist it needs to be acknowledged that the action of the Exclusive Brethren in trying to remain anonymous does undermine transparency in the election process.  

On the other hand those who opposed the legislation in the Third Reading debate based the bulk of their attacks on the priority of human rights. They argued that parliamentary democracy was threatened by the legislation because it placed barriers in the way of human freedom to participate in the election.

The divide between proponents and antagonists was sharp and clear. The proponents of the legislation made no attempt in their speeches to acknowledge the potential dangers to individual freedom, or how the legislation included safeguards (which it did) to those freedoms.

Similarly the opponents of the legislation never mounted any debate discounting the claims that individual freedoms had been protected in the final form of the legislation.

Much of the criticism of the legislation stemmed from the unfortunate wording of the original Bill when it was presented to Parliament. This unfortunate wording did threaten many “third party” organisations effectively carrying out their functions and many of these organisations made strong arguments about the inadequacies of the wording of the Bill in the public submissions part of the process.

If you follow the legislative trail it seems that in the final draft of the legislation the problems in relation to third parties were largely taken care of. This is at least the view of Peter Dunne of United Future. He had supported the legislation at the first and second reading stages. However, in the third reading he voted against the Bill, not on the grounds that either individual freedoms or civil rights had been violated, but because of the perception among the wider society of the dangers inherent in the Bill. In other words the furore caused by the measures had created such widespread concerns within the wider society that the wisest course, according to Peter Dunne, was not to proceed with the legislation.

With the exception of Peter Dunne none of those who spoke in the final debate sought to try and reconcile the respective rights of the people against individual rights. There was some discussion that the legislation was developed in a partisan way. It was felt by some that there should have been a bi-partisan approach to the process. Whether this would have resulted in “better” legislation is an open question. Surrounding the whole issue has been a claim that the proponents of the legislation had a score to settle and that the whole process for this reason was flawed. According to Peter Dunne there was widespread concern among the wider society.

We will have to wait and see whether the election to be held later this year is transparent and fair and whether the rights of individuals have been unfairly compromised. However, I want to spend a little time considering the implications that underlie the political orientation that accounts for the division among those who accord priority to civic society and those who accord priority to individual rights.

People on the left of the political spectrum tend to favour civic rights and those on the right tend to favour individual rights. Each end of the spectrum is legitimate, but when the chips are down the protagonists seem to rally around which end of the spectrum they favour, and reasonable compromise goes out the door. This split takes over and it’s as if the players themselves are the instruments of impersonal forces and they lack the capacity to stand back and assess the relative issues in an objective and dispassionate way.

It’s not only the principle actors in the political process who have to resolve the tension between individual rights and civic duties. If you favour individual rights then you will probably have concerns over the legislation. If civic duties are more important for you then you will probably support the Electoral Finance Act. We are all in the power of these unconscious beliefs and they tend to have us rather than the other way around. The result is that the legislators and we the public lose our objectivity.     

There are a whole series of challenges that we face, all of which involve the relative rights of civic society over individual rights. (I'll spell out later what I think these challenges are.) It is rather disconcerting to see the main players in the political process taking such entrenched positions over the Electoral Finance Act and both sides accusing the other of bad faith. History shows us that if legislators or leaders in any situation privilege civic rights over individual rights or vice versa, then injustice is inevitable. In the same way if we support civic rights ahead of individual rights or vice versa we run the risk of becoming co-conspirators in injustice.    

 We desperately need political leadership and political awareness that is able to reconcile the relative interests of civil society and individual rights and that is able to find solutions that all can sign up to. The Electoral Finance At demonstrates that we do not appear to have that form of leadership among the leadership of the main political players in our society at this time. Given the enormity of the challenges we face we need to reflect upon the lack of political awareness that resides within the main players in the political process and we the wider society. As the great Einstein said we cannot solve the problems with the same level of awareness that created them in the first place.