Greens Breach Electoral Finance Act... Again

They had the power to stop the Electoral Finance Act from being passed into law.  But the Green Party continued their support for the Government's bill whose intent was to drastically restrict the freedom of individuals and organisations from campaigning for or against a political party in election year.

Sure enough, they broke the law soon after it came into force, with an illegal billboard.

Section 5 of the Act clearly states that an election advertisment is any form of words or graphics or both, that can be regarded as either encouraging voters to vote or not vote for a specific party.

And section 65 of the Act states that an election advertisment must be (a) authorised in writing by the financial agent of the party and (b) contain a statement that sets out the name and address of the promoter of the advertisement.

And now they have broken the law that they made yet again, this time with a campaign website that encourages people to vote for the Green Party.  Strangely enough, the website carries no authorisation statement - a requirement brought in with the bill.  Below is a screenshot of the website www.votegreen.org.nz as at 11:30pm, 25 August 08.

This is absolutely hypocritical and disgusting.  When I launched the Don't Vote Labour website, the Electoral Commission said I had to put my home-address on my website - or else.  But the Green Party have no problem with blithely ignoring the very same piece of legislation that they forced upon me, and which I so vehemently opposed.

---

Update (2pm 26 Aug 08): Vote Green website gets authorisation statement. Just over 12 hours since I exposed the Green's latest breach of their Electoral Finance Act, they now have the following authorisation statement on their website: "Authorised by: Jon Field, 73 Eden Street, Wellington ". Here's Google's cache of the website, showing no authorisation statement.