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Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Greens Vote To Outlaw Anonymous Political Advocacy

Verbatim from David Farrar's Kiwiblog

The Electoral Finance Bill defines an election advertisement as pretty much anything in written (and electronic) form which advocates for or against a party. There is an exemption in Clause 5(2)(g) for blogs which reads:

The publication by an individual, on a non-commercial basis, on the Internet of his or her personal politicalviews (being the kind of publication commonly known as a blog).

The problem is, it only excludes blogs. If they had said “(for example the kind of …) then it wouldn’t. Anyway Chris Finlayson put up an amendment to change the exemption to simply say:

The publication by an individual, on a non-commercial basis, on the Internet of his or her personal political views.

Surely no one would object to that? Do we really want personal political views on the Internet made into election advertisements which need a name and address attached to them.

But alas, the amendment was defeated. Those great champions of human rights overseas - the Greens and United Future, voted against the amendment.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

This would never have happened if Rod Donald hadn't died.

7:50 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Good god on the Green Party blog they're gloating over passing the Bill.

9:23 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The Bill did not pass in a form that the Greens wanted.
I want to have a democracy not an oligarchy -as do the Greens.

Don't forget there is plenty of material on the award winning and informative Green Party website. Here is a good place to start http://greens.org.nz/searchdocs/speech11472.html

6:10 PM  

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