Who hates free speech and freedom of expression the most?

Trick question: they all do – equally!

Mike Moore: Repeal electoral act … that’s progress.

5:00AM Thursday January 31, 2008
By Mike Moore

 

Dissent is the lifeblood and oxygen of progressive politics. It always has been.

We social democrats trace our history of dissent back through the centuries as we wrung concessions out of the powerful and privileged.

The Magna Carta, the glorious revolution in Britain when it was decided that ordinary men and women had rights, that the monarch was accountable to the law, not above it, and had to seek the approval of Parliament to take and spend the people’s money, makes up this progressive history.

We have our martyrs and heroes. The Levellers, Chartists, all who fought for a more equal, open society and system, are our ancestors.

The Parliamentary Act of Tolerance, to allow freedom of religion, the progressive widening of the franchise to give more people power to vote, eventually women, made British liberal/labour thinking gravitate towards parliamentary action.

Democracy gives the people power. The European radical tradition, which did not have a parliamentary outlet, caused revolutionary reaction.

Trade unions were at the forefront of seeking social justice through parliamentary reform, the right to collectively bargain, the right to strike, struggles fought and still being fought for generations. Progressives have an anti-authoritarian genetic make-up.

Progressive political thinking did not begin with the election of the first Labour Government, or even the progressive liberal governments earlier. There were many Australian-born ministers in the first NZ Labour Cabinet – dissenters, trade unionists, who were hounded out of Australia.

Dissenters throughout history have had a strong, religious backbone. The right to believe, to worship how you wanted, motivated great progressive, and not so progressive, movements.

The Enlightenment was about freedom of religions and freedom from religion. If we were all God’s children, surely then we were equal in His eyes and should be equal under the law. The king did not have divine rights to rule.

Christianity played a huge role in the beliefs of early Labour, we owed more to Methodism than to Marx. Branches of my union, the Printers Union, were called ‘chapels’; the father of the chapel, even in my day, was the chairman of the union branch.

Our first Labour Prime Minister, Savage, was a strong Catholic; Nash, a lay preacher; Nordmeyer a Presbyterian Minister; Kirk a young Salvation Army member; and Lange, initially a devout Methodist. Labour’s relationship with the Ratana Church was the key to holding power in Maoridom for generations.

Early New Zealand Labour personalities dissented. Many went to prison for their principles. Paddy Webb, later a minister, was stripped of his parliamentary seat and lost his civil rights for 10 years because of his opposition to conscription during World War I.

Tim Armstrong, Bob Semple and Peter Fraser were jailed for seditious behaviour. Walter Nash was fined for importing seditious material. That’s two future Labour Prime Ministers with criminal convictions.

Anti-sedition laws in New Zealand were extended by the 1920 War Continuance Act (Sedition) to include the promotion of class warfare. Teachers had to swear oaths of allegiance to weed out those who might have undesirable political opinions.

We didn’t close down dissent. It was the Conservatives who famously jammed a radio station in the 1930s. During the 1951 waterfront dispute, a National Government used wartime legislation, still on the books, to censor the media and make it an offence to assist those declared by law to be strikers.

Years after I was elected to Parliament, I read an interview with my mother who told the story of delivering leaflets supporting the workers at night with me in a pram covered with illegal leaflets. As a boy, I delivered ‘No Maoris, No Tour’ leaflets. More recently we saw splendid dissent during the anti-Vietnam War, anti-nuclear and the anti-apartheid struggle. One current minister was ejected physically from the parliamentary gallery for protesting against the extension of the powers of the Security Intelligence Service.

This short history of democratic Labour and dissent is to remind people of Labour’s traditions. Why and how we stand on the shoulders of others in our historic commitment to human rights; freedom at home and abroad.

Early Labour took unpopular, minority stands, attacking the Government of the day for their imperialist slaughter of Samoans in an early independence uprising. These are the historic planks that made our platform.

Why then the problem now with Christians? Is it because we don’t approve of their brand of Christianity?

Why then this historic blunder of the Electoral Finance Act, which contradicts this fine tradition?

Why the silence of the lambs in the civil rights movement who so publicly condemned me when I suggested we should merge tax and social benefit numbers to prevent fraud?

Geoffrey Palmer was at his thundering best when he attacked Muldoon for his retrospective and fast-track legislation, and for using SIS files on opponents.

There’s a cost to disagreeing, as I found when I published an article comparing all this to Muldoonism. The response was furious and focused. Civil Rights groups have been eerily silent. The Human Rights Commissioner, bravely and almost alone, has spoken out.

Is it all a cock-up or a conspiracy that we have enacted such a repressive, unworkable, flawed law to cover election year activists?

Bit of both. Traumatised by the Brethren, who the Government believed were prepared to use private detectives to check out family members and spend millions, the Government has used the hammer of the state to smash a few nutters.

We are all affected by the heavy-handed response. The consequence has been legislation that will be tested in court and be found to be unworkable. Good.

Why should you have to register with the state if you want to oppose or support a political party, or promote public policy? Lawyers have suggested that cartoonists who seek to persuade readers could be covered, even theatre.

You may have to ask permission of a candidate to email or write a letter in their support, but not if you rubbish them. A private poster on your own wall is covered – is graffiti?

Someone could set up a free giveaway paper, lose a million dollars, go broke, and that’s not covered. Even MPs who voted for the legislation can’t work out how to spend their own electorate allowances.

People are going to test this law, perhaps get a terminally-ill person in a hospice to be an agent. A heroic defence was suggested, that is the law of common sense. Unique in world jurisprudence – tell that to the judge or electoral commissioner who closed down an anti-Government webpage. The blogger wouldn’t give his address because he lived at home and might upset mom. Is this silly or sinister? Both.

My plea to the party I love is to just repeal the act. Accept it’s wrong in substance and principle before it hurts us further and does the exact opposite of what’s intended by encouraging big money to circumvent this law. J’Accuse.

Don’t Vote Labour: The video.

http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=XpDzpWZugSc

Press Release: 31/1/08: “Strike 3″ for People Power.

Mt Roskill Labour Electorate office makes it “Strike 3” for People Power New Zealand.

The Mt Roskill Electorate office of MP Phil Goff was the third successful strike for People Power New Zealand today, as the independent citizens initiated lobby group continue their active protest against the Electoral Finance Act.

“Labour-Leader in waiting Phil Goff was an enthusiastic champion for the passage of the Electoral Finance Act becoming law, so is a worthy recipient of a visit from People Power NZ”.

“It is a mystery to us why the citizens of Mt Roskill would continue to vote for a local MP who actively restricts their freedom of expression, and who actually resides in Clevedon, not Mt Roskill, however in a few short months, Mr Goff will be settling into the Opposition benches within Parliament, so it won’t matter for too much longer” said a spokesperson from People Power.

“Mr Goff will also have to think of some other campaign ideas in his Mt Roskill Electorate, aside from his tried and tested trick of getting one of his electoral lackeys to park his van in a Mt Roskill street, attach a sign that reads “visiting Electorate – back in 5 minutes”, when all the while Mr Goff isn’t even in the suburb at the time!

Labour is gone, and Goff is off, and it will all be thanks to the citizens of Mt Roskill exercising “People Power”.

ENDS
 
People Power – “Power to the People”
 
www.peoplepowernz.wordpress.com

“Don’t vote Labour” website re-established.

www.dontvotelabour.net

Cluck! Cluck! Cluck! Shadbolt folds (again).

30/01/2008 7:24:01

A campaign to defy the Electoral Finance Act is changing direction.

 

Invercargill’s mayor Tim Shadbolt wanted to test the new law by publishing advertisements telling people to vote for National and its Invercargill MP Eric Roy. The advertisement would focus on funding for the Southland Institute of Technology and would not meet the legal requirements of including the full name and address of any authorising statement.

 

Mr Shadbolt says the Act holds the agent of an organisation responsible for any breaches, rather than the person who places the advertisement. He says in this case, Invercargill City Council’s CEO could be charged with breaking the law and not him.

 

Mr Shadbolt says he will continue to challenge the legislation by taking a draft advert to the Supreme Court. He wants a ruling to decide whether he should be allowed to publish the advert.

Press Release 30/1/08: Clark’s speech won’t save her, says People Power.

Clark’s speech won’t save her, says People Power:

A second attack on Prime Minister Helen Clarks Mt Albert Electorate office was carried out by People Power New Zealand on the morning of her “State of the Nation” speech, in protest against the Electoral Finance Act, and in active opposition to suppression of freedom of expression by the Labour Government of ordinary New Zealand citizens.

The quotes on the white brick read as follows:

“Repeal the EFA”

“No to Labour”

No to Fascism”

Retrospect THIS”

Viva Le Referendum”

“Your speech won’t save you”

The insidious nature of the EFA has already been exposed in the shutting down of the “Don’t Vote Labour” website, an action of citizen oppression more familiar to, and practiced within China, North Korea, Fiji, and Zimbabwe, as opposed to New Zealand.

And as for the “State of the Nation”?

Increased crime – reduced police powers and sentences.

High inflation / interest rates – reduced home ownership.

Increased Government election expenditure – reduced third party election participation.

Increased youth dysfunction – reduced powers of parents to discipline their children.

Increased bureaucracy – reduced service provision at the front line.

People Power NZ sincerely hope that more democracy-loving New Zealanders will eventually awaken and realise that the time has come for active civil disobedience and resistance to increasing state control, and take some democracy-defending action of their own.

“Citizen apathy in New Zealand has paved the way to a growing totalitarian state – if we do nothing to oppose this situation, then frankly, we deserve everything we get this coming election” said a spokesperson for People Power NZ.

ENDS

People Power – “Power to the People”
 
www.peoplepowernz.wordpress.com

New anti – Labour website launched.

Found at: www.dontvotelabourcartoons.com/

 

---

 

---

 

---

Let’s hope NZ is not heading further along this way in 2008?

Spinning govt yarn costs $47m!

The Labour-led government is being dubbed the “most-spun” government ever, as its workforce of spin doctors balloons to almost twice the level it was five years earlier.

Government agencies have hired more new communications staff in five years than all the journalists working at Television New Zealand, Radio New Zealand, the Sunday Star-Times and the Dominion Post newspapers put together.

In the five years to July 2007, government agencies employed 210 additional communications staff and contractors, taking the total communications workforce to 448. That included 37 staffers in ministers’ offices.

The total bill was $47 million, according to answers to parliamentary questions put by National.

National state services spokesman Gerry Brownlee said Labour was gearing up to use the government publicity machine as part of its re-election campaign.

“This is an extraordinary expansion of the government’s ability to deliver its message. This must make Labour the most spun government in history,” he said.

With the passing of the Electoral Finance Bill, the government had loaded the deck in its own favour. The bill limits advertising by political parties for the whole of 2008, and puts a cap of $120,000 on spending by outside groups. However, government communications and advertising campaigns are not constrained.

“The big spend is now going to be with the government, and they have made sure they have the infrastructure to deliver on that. Here we have a small army employed at a cost of nearly $50 million, all pushing positive government messages,” he said.

Government Duty Minister Rick Barker refused to be interviewed directly. He issued a brief comment through a spokesman.

“This is more huff and puff from Gerry Brownlee and the National Party and it is simply posturing. The State Services Act makes it clear that departments are required to act in a politically neutral way,” he said.

The Ministry of Social Development topped the list with 54 communications staff and contractors, making it bigger than Radio New Zealand’s entire workforce of journalists.

Ministry spokeswoman Bronwyn Saunders said many of those staff were not media staff, but were meeting a growing public demand for web-based services through the ministry’s 18 websites. The ministry had also taken on new functions such as Working for Families and the campaign against family violence and youth gangs.

“It is worth remembering that in its work, the ministry will at some stage touch the life of every New Zealander,” said Saunders.

Only 15 of the 54 communications staffers dealt with media or public relations issues.

Another 20 were web and publications staff responsible for brochures, corporate documents, staff communications and management of events. She said the high number of communications staff also reflected that the Ministry of Social Development was the biggest government department, with 10,000 staff.

The biggest spender on communication contractors and staff was the Ministry of Education, with 70% of the $6.6m it spent going on contractors.

Canterbury University journalism school head Jim Tully said government and corporate public relations staff were growing as newsrooms were shrinking.

“The growth is indicative of a much greater determination to put the best possible spin and to influence the media generally,” he said.

There are 10 times as many government communications staff as there were 25 years ago, despite a smaller public service.

Until 1984, communications staff for all government departments and ministers were provided by New Zealand Tourism and Publicity.

Former PSA representative at NZTP Bethany McLennan said in the early 1980s there were fewer than 50 press officers in total.