Wednesday, August 22, 2007



Election funding: easily fixed

Yesterday in the House, National's deputy leader Bill English pointed out that the definition of "election advertising" in the Election Finance Bill could cover newspaper websites and journalists' blogs. This is correct. However, as I've pointed out, it is also easily fixed; the definition can easily be amended to apply only to material which seeks to influence voters, and (for good measure) websites could be included in the "newspaper and periodocal" exemption. Strangely, though, English didn't promote that solution. In fact, he promoted no solutions at all, instead adopting a position of mindless opposition. Yet another example of National's bad faith on this issue...