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Policy Quarterly Volume 6 Number 3
Money—where it comes from, how it is gained, and the uses to which it is put—matters a lot in politics. No serious electoral campaign, be it in a constituency or nationwide, can run without it. But at the same time, the role money plays in a democratic polity raises numerous concerns about potential corruption, unequal influence, and debasement of our political culture. These conflicting policy considerations, to say nothing of the self-interest of those politicians who ultimately resolve them, mean that any decision over how to regulate campaign financing will be controversial.
It is against this backdrop that parliament’s specially convened Electoral Legislation Committee currently is considering the Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Bill. This legislative proposal is but the latest chapter in a story stretching back to the 2005 election and the now-infamous Exclusive Brethren intervention in that campaign. Concerns regarding that group’s activities helped spawn the Electoral Finance Act 2007, which the 2008 election campaign revealed to be critically flawed in application. Following this law’s near-universally supported repeal in early 2009, the National Government embarked upon a lengthy process of public consultation over possible replacement legislation. Parliament now has to decide what to do with the fruits of that consultation process.
However, while the issue of campaign finance has a particular history in New Zealand, we are hardly unique in having to grapple with the problems it raises. Every other democratic society has had to confront it and decide on its regulatory response. In May of this year, the University of Otago Law Faculty and the Institute of Policy Studies jointly hosted a symposium at which the experiences of three comparator nations could be considered. The aim was not to uncover a perfect answer to New Zealand’s problems; such an answer (if one is even available) must grow out of and accommodate our own particular circumstances. However, the papers presented on that occasion, which are reproduced in this issue of Policy Quarterly, may aid us in choosing what regulatory options are, or are not, suitable for our conditions. One of those comparators, Australia, traditionally has adopted a more laissez faire attitude to the raising and spending of money by electoral contestants than has New Zealand. However, Graeme Orr describes how Australia’s political actors show increasing interest in following New Zealand’s example and placing limits on the spending of candidates, political parties and ‘third parties’ (which are now termed ‘parallel campaigners’ in the New Zealand context). He also explains how the Australian taxpayer currently provides significant support to the campaigns of individual candidates and their political parties, both directly and through funding for parliamentary and government communications. Joo-Cheong Tham describes the constraints that Australia applies to the fundraising practices of its political actors. Interestingly, he suggests that Australia’s comparatively tight rules on disclosing the identity of large donors to political parties are no longer adequate to remove the suspicion of quid-pro-quo dealings, and that there are some moves towards placing caps on how much donors may give. Should such moves bear fruit, they would leapfrog Australia ahead of New Zealand in terms of the amount of prescriptive control applied to those engaged in electoral activities.Looking beyond our trans-Tasman neighbours, the United Kingdom instituted quite extensive controls on electoral spending in 2000. Jacob Rowbottom explains some of the features of that regulatory framework and draws attention to where they may have lessons for the changes proposed for New Zealand in the present Bill.
Finally, Canada has perhaps the most comprehensive and restrictive regulations on the use of money in electoral campaigns to be found amongst developed democracies. Colin Feasby, whose earlier writings proved very influential in the Canadian Supreme Court’s decision that these measures pass constitutional muster, outlines just how tight a reign the law applies to electoral fundraising and spending. Whether New Zealand would be ready to adopt a similarly intensive regulatory approach is debateable.
Overall, the primary lesson that we can learn from these other nations’ attempts to control the use of money for electoral purposes is that every regulatory choice creates consequences, and that those consequences then demand further regulatory choices. This is not necessarily to say that regulation is futile, or that less law is better than more. After all, a decision not to impose legal controls on campaign financing is a regulatory decision in and of itself. Furthermore, every developed democracy has some form of legal control on the use of money for political purposes, even if only to prohibit the outright purchase and sale of votes or governmental offices.The question, then, is not whether to regulate or not to regulate campaign finance in New Zealand. Instead, it is what particular mix of prescriptive legal controls and laissez faire lassitude will best meet the various policy concerns that arise in New Zealand’s particular political and cultural environment. That is a question on which there will be many differing opinions. It is hoped that the five articles on this topic in Policy Quarterly can help provide fuel for the resulting discussion. This issue of
Policy Quarterly also includes three articles on three very different issues. First, Derek Gill and four colleagues summarize the findings of a recent IPS project, funded via the Emerging Issues Programme, on the subject of "The Future State". The project investigated the challenges that New Zealand’s public sector is likely to experience over coming decades and their implications for our system of public management.Second, David Bromell assesses the findings of a recent book that has attracted considerable attention internationally. The publication, by epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, argues that countries with unequal income distributions perform less well on a range of educational, health and social indicators than countries with more equal income distributions. The reasons for this and the policy implications for New Zealand (which has a relatively high level of inequality) are both worth pondering.
Finally, Paul Brown, Paul Callister, Kristie Carter and Ralf Engler explore the issues surrounding ethnic mobility. Recent studies in New Zealand indicate that a small but important level of ethnic mobility is occurring in official data collections and other surveys. The authors argue that such mobility needs to be better understood by both researchers and policy makers. The article concludes by considering some emerging ideas for handling ethnic mobility when undertaking policy analysis.
Jonathan Boston and Andrew Geddis
ISBN:
Published in August 2010
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The Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill by Andrew Geddis |
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Financing Political Parties in the United Kingdom by Jacob Rowbottom |
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Contemporary Issues in Canadian Finance Regulation by Colin Feasby |
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Public Money and Electioneering: A View from Across the Tasman by Graeme Orr |
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Regulating Political Contributions: Another View from Across the Tasman by Joo-Cheong Tham |
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The Future State Project: Meeting the Challenges of the 21st Century by Derek Gill, Stephanie Pride, Helen Gilbert, Richard Norman and Alec Mladenovic |
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Income Inequality and Economy of Ideas by David Bromell |
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Ethnic Mobility: Is it Important for Research and Policy Analysis? by Paul Brown, Paul Callister, Kristie Carter and Ralf Engler |
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