Rodney Talks Principles

Labour is trying to scam the country into accepting state funding of political parties.

ACT leader Rodney Hide is not fooled.

There’s a huge reluctance in New Zealand politics to talk principles. We burrow down into the technicalities, and who wins and who loses, and debate the lofty motives of bad policy, but never the driving principles.

Our electoral spending laws are an affront to free speech. People should be free to say what they want. They should be free to spend their own money promoting whatever cause they choose. Period.

We now have Labour proposing to clamp down further on freedom of expression through our electoral law. Through this debate there is never any mention of any principle. I would have thought freedom of speech and political expression were things worth talking about ... and trying to defend.