Electoral funding row threatens confidence in Harper government – Parallels for New Zealand

In Canada, which has had state funding of political parties in its current form since 2004, the newly re-elected Harper government is only days away from turfed out of office by an “Emergency” Opposition-led coalition, because of a government measure to attack the electoral funding of its principal opponents.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has insisted that his measure, designed to scrap the 2004 legislation which, amongst other things, limited corporate and union donations to a certain percentage for those parties who achieved over 2% of the vote in federal elections, and provided quarterly federal funding to political parties, is in fact, a cost cutting measure. However, since the Conservative government has already increased spending a hundred-fold the size of the expected C$30m expected savings of the proposed measure, when it came to power in 2005, such statements must elude credibility.

The Canadian system has been criticised, even before its inception, as posing a threat to the traditional bases of politics, and imposing a system of state-funded cartel parties, where the parties simply retain power for their own purposes, long since having lost any links with the communities and even beliefs which inspired their inception originally.
But if this argument was to be accepted, is it not simply possible that either business (or union) interests could simply fund both sides of the political arena, leading to big corporate donations to both major parties in return for achieving, and then not fundamentally altering, the type of economy under which their interests would be best suited? In fact, isn’t that what we already have here to some degree – i.e. Telecom New Zealand’s donation to both Labour and National?

The much maligned Electoral Finance Act attempted to regulate the influence of corporate (and union) money in New Zealand politics, especially of those who might have preferred that their names be kept out of the political limelight. Labour’s original preference of State-funding for political parties was not adopted because it could not command a majority in the previous parliament, partly due to the scandals and counterscandals surrounding political party election funding in general, most notably the Exclusive Brethren and the Secret Trusts. Was this, in hindsight, a missed opportunity, especially for one party in particular which would still have access to a much greater amount of funding than its now absence from parliament would nowotherwise attract?

Instead of also regulating speech, as the Electoral Finance Act did, might we be better to solely focus on regulating, and gifting of funding, to parties, in exchange that they do not seek over $500,000 in total private donations, and that any excess donations, would be required to be repaid to the government. Public funding of political parties, to the tune of say $2 per vote, for all those who get more than 2% of the vote, under a 4% MMP threshold say, would give the minor parties a larger voice, and promote a more politically diverse parliament than either the 1993 Electoral Act or current status-quo would engineer.

And it doesn’t have to be a vote-loser – proponents simply need to convince those Joe Six-Packs and Hockey Moms who are like almost everyone else, naturally corruption averse, but unaware of its pernicciousness in some sectors. They need to be convinced that such dishonest and corruptive intention does in fact exist in the political, and business sphere – and that state funding is our only way to safeguard our democracy, an allegorical similarity in how the state-funded police safeguard us against the morally corruptive and physically violent destructive forces in our community.