This week is the biggest to date for the odious Electoral Finance Bill. Is she going to get away with it? I wouldn't bet against it - she has an enviable track record for getting whatever she wants. That public opinion is against her in tsunami proportions hasn't seemed to faze her at all. Granny gave up her entire front page yesterday to an editorial flaying Labour's destructon of democracy - very out of character. All this notwithstanding she spent yesterday answering queries as to whether she would be swayed from her course in the simplest possible way - no. As John Armstrong nicely puts it this morning, full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes.
One can't help but feel that there is an element of spite as well as desperation in what she is about. She needs both the EFB and the new laws allowing government departments to spend whatever they please on adverts to be in place by the end of this year to have tilted the playing field so far in her direction that she thinks she will be safe going to the country in a few months. She is piqued because it is her perception that National has bottomless pockets with which to fight a cash strapped Labour Party. Just consider the numbers for a second. The thing that started all this was the $1.2 million that the Brethren threw at National a couple of years back. Inland Revenue has spent north of $3 mil promoting Kiwi Saver in the last year alone. Total government department spending on advertising for 2006 was in excess of $60 million. No money from the EB but go for your life Government departments. Level playing field my backside.
As we have discussed before, Helen is a career politician and is very good at what she does. She must have calculated that she can get away with this ten or eleven moths from the election. She has to get one of these calls wrong sooner or later. Lets not forget that New Zealand's parliament is unique when compared to other so called similar democracies. There is no second house. The only real restraint we have on what happens in the Beehive is having elections. This degree of moderation has already been hamstrung by MMP. You don't want your sitting MP so you give him the flick at election time. He also happens to be at, say, number ten on his party's list and there he is back where you didn't want him. Just tell me where Margaret Wilson's constituency is. You'll struggle because she ain't got one. Not wanted by Tauranga but still in the big comfy chair.
In a perverse way I hope the EFB gets through with as little modification as possible. I also hope that government departments are given carte blanche to spend what they will on promoting Labour's agenda. Let them push both items through under urgency to make them look even more desperate. Surely that lot will be blatant enough for even the terminally stupid to realise that they have been shafted and give this lot the flick. They'll bounce back on the list, of course, but at least they will not be on the Government benches.
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