Two big parties fight to protect big money supporters

Green Media release 14th August 2007

Labour and National are fighting to protect their big money supporters in the catfight around the Electoral Finance Bill instead of acting in a principled way to reduce the influence of big money on politics says the Green Party.

"Labour is protecting anonymous donors, the secret trusts and non-citizen overseas donors by refusing to crack down on them in the bill," says Dr. Russel Norman, Greens Co-Leader and Electoral Reform Spokesperson.

"National is fighting to protect their allies, such as the Exclusive Brethren and the Business Roundtable, by fighting attempts to limit the amount non-parties can spend in the election campaign.

"The Greens support measures to crack down on anonymous donations and donations from the secret trusts that are hiding the source of millions in donations to the big parties at the last election.

"We also support measures to make non-party actors such as the Exclusive Brethren act in a transparent way in the next election and to place limits on how much they can spend campaigning. There are spending limits on the parties so if there are no limits on non-parties then all the millions will simply get channelled to the non-parties and the Exclusive Brethren type campaigns will overwhelm the electoral process.

"The Greens pushed to ensure that all parties are represented on the select committee considering the bill and we expect the committee to consider all these issues in a rational manner, so let's turn down the level of hysteria.

"In particular we think it is essential that the select committee considers, with regard to non-party election activities, whether the definition of election activity is too broad, whether the cap on spending is too low, and whether the period covered is too long.

"In addition we need to fix elements of the bill that don't make sense currently, such as the provision that seems to make it impossible for unincorporated societies with 17 year olds as members from registering as "third party" interveners in the election campaign. All these things can be considered by the select committee."

ENDS

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