Free Speech Coalition Donors A ‘Hollow Men’ Roll-Call
National Party activist David Farrar’s Free Speech Coalition has finally explained where it is getting the money for its ‘more big money in politics’ campaign from: the hollow men.
The FSC has raised $27,988.13, roughly the amount it has spent so far on a series of mediocre billboards that even other rightwingers, like Deborah Coddington, are distancing themselves from.
The bulk of those donations, $15152.13, come from just 10 sources:
$5000 from Peter Shirtcliffe, National moneyman and one of the stars of the Hollow Men, who tried to hide National’s sources of large secret donations.
$1000 from Michael Friedlander, another Hollow man and key source of secret doantions to National.
$1000 Doug Myers, another Hollow man behind the Brash coup.
$1000 Paul Baines, Chair of the New Zealand Enterprise Trust, a trust used to funnel donations to the National party, thereby hiding the identities of the real donors.
$510 David Farrar, National Party pollster and activist (that’s $10 more than he paid for a fundraising dinner for Don Brash which was designed to raise funds without letting the public know the identities of donors)
$300 Aaron Bhatnagar, Chair of the National Party’s Remura Branch
$250 Don Brash, former National Leader, the Hollow Men’s pawn before the current one.
$200 Richard Prebble, former ACT leader whose party advised it’s donors to donate $9999 avoiding the donation declaration point by $1 so the New Zealand public wouldn’t have the chance to know who was giving big money to his party
$200 Roger Kerr (and N Kerr), Chair of the Business Roundtable, miser.
$5692.13 Libertarianz, the party who want to close down every public hospital and school, destroy unions and work rights, wipe all environment laws, and hand what’s left to the rich.
These 10 donors gave an average of $1515. The remaining donors gave $113 on average. Make no mistake, The FSC is just another propaganda outlet for the same small group of secretive rich men who tried to buy their way into power in 2005 and will try to do it again this year.
Tags: national, Farrar, Free Speech Coalition, Election Funding, Hollow Men
January 23, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Speaking of ‘hollow men’, why are your close buddies The Very Double Standard offline today?
Also speaking of ‘hollow men’, is it true that you guys were offered Labour party funding but turned it down? I keep hearing that KBB is getting funding from activist groups of the hard left persuasion.
I wouldn’t want to tar you with the same brush as The VDS but…..well…..you know……anon left ‘blog’ and all that.
January 23, 2008 at 1:03 pm
bro, I’m certainly not getting any funding from anyone and I don’t believe any of us are.
We’re just an ordinary blog on wordpress, that’s a free service as far as I’m aware.
I wish the Standard were writing more too, but it is early in the year and there aren’t all that many stories.. unlike DPF, KBB and The Standard don’t do ego pieces to fill space.
January 23, 2008 at 1:07 pm
$5692.13 has the smell of someone closing down a bank account. Do the Libz have an announcement planned soon?
January 23, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Yeah, I was wndering about that number myself. Perhaps the Libs have released campaigning on their own for parilament is a waste of time and money and are throwing themselves in with National’s rightwing.
January 23, 2008 at 1:16 pm
They’re onto us!
January 23, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Have you been hoarding our secret Labour donations to pay for your crack habit, zoster? No fair, you have to share that crack with the rest of us.
January 23, 2008 at 1:18 pm
$28k for what?
Fuck they must be feeling shortchanged.
Especially now that they’ve got the negative publicity too.
January 23, 2008 at 1:25 pm
*NOTICE TO HOLLOW MEN WITH DEEP POCKETS*
Need to somewhere to put your donations that’ll never bite you in the ass? Give it to me and I’ll put it in my “I want a house” fund. You get just as much for your money as the FSC is giving you, with none of the embarassing associations down the track.
January 23, 2008 at 1:26 pm
When you read that list and read the type of comments by the nutjobs. God help us if the Nats get in.
After all you don’t become a National MP to be a centrist do You ?
Sign up for your gated community now
January 23, 2008 at 1:32 pm
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4368741a10.html
“Neither leader is revealing their theme, but the economy is expected to dominate the election campaign.”
I’ve got your themes right here:
Key: “I’ve got so many grand ambitions for NZ… ambitions involving CHANGE!” (Why you’re worse off under labour)
Clark: “We’ve still got so much great work that needs doing - don’t let the numptys f*ck it all up” (Why you’d be worse off under national)
January 23, 2008 at 1:34 pm
I hope some of the donors wish they hadn’t gotten involved with this tasteless outfit.
The billboards appear to be the brainchild of adolescents after a night on the piss.
January 23, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Standard dead is it? it will not load for some reason??
January 23, 2008 at 1:49 pm
BB - I don’t know but I”m guessing they’ll be changing their host.
January 23, 2008 at 1:51 pm
The Standard is loading fine.
January 23, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Someone’s totalled its DNS entries. Possibly trying to move it off the contentious IP block, possibly a snafu, possibly malicious, possible a deliberate removal.
*shrug*
The net moves in mysterious ways.
January 23, 2008 at 1:54 pm
You get that when you talk to yourself! I don’t think anyone seriously imagines we’re getting or need funding from anyone to run this blog…
January 23, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Wat, since you’re back posting, can you clarify the close ties between National and CIS? Or was that just made up?
January 23, 2008 at 2:07 pm
mattb02 - read the Hollow Men
January 23, 2008 at 2:07 pm
I dunno Mardy, free hosting on wordpress doesn’t come cheap.
Oh wait on. Yes it does. Free, in fact.
There remains, of course, the INCONVENIENT LITTLE ISSUE OF THE FEES PAID FOR THE DESIGN OF THE BANNER AT THE TOP!
Seriously - white with a blue background? That’s 10 million dollars in a saatchi&saatchi offshore account right there.
January 23, 2008 at 2:07 pm
[...] to blogblog, other Hollow Men contributing to the Free Speech Coalition include Don Brash, Michael Friedlander, Doug Myers, Paul Baines and Roger Kerr, among [...]
January 23, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Ahhh yes, evasion Wat. If you had a point, you’d have made it. You were lying. Thanks for clarifying.
January 23, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Hmmm…funny how secret funding was a-ok with KBB when it was Labour supporting the Standard. This post unequivocally fails to denounce it. And the subsequent correction/back down/adjustment was weak at best and had none of the venom in this post which is about full disclosure!
So again: what’s the principle, fellas? What is the principle that sees the people donating to a cause with full disclosure get slammed, while similarly sized donations made in secret do not?
January 23, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Wile similarly sized donations made in secret do not? WTF
January 23, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Hey its your people (Tane and Lynn) telling us about the extraordinary technologies supporting the Standard, outofbed. They cost somebody money.
January 23, 2008 at 2:24 pm
what extraordinary technologies? The Standard has been getting hosting from Labour for 23 days - cost a few bucks… I’m surprised National is so concerned about the Standard that they would try to make a big issue over this.
January 23, 2008 at 2:27 pm
First off: “Unequivocally fails to denounce”?
How delicious emotive in comparison to… ohh, say: “Fails to endorse”.
Second: Failure to clarify proves guilt? At least read the book!
Third: “Similar sized donations”? WTF? You reckon Labour has given TheStandard $28k worth of server time over the last 4 weeks?
And it wasn’t exactly “in secret” - whois gave NZLABOURPARTY for the server, if that’s your idea of subterfuge it’s a good thing you’re not a spy.
Fourth:
—
Watt said “Bad look for the standard”
Icky sid “I think you make a reasonable point, Matt….. You may be right that we have let The Standard get a free pass…. you may be right…maybe we are being a bit less critical of The Standard”
—
Not exactly saying it was “a-ok” really
Finally - this post has nothing to DO with full disclosure, clearly the FSC has MADE full disclosure, there’s nothing to attack in that regard. The comment is on the personalities involved.
January 23, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Lynn wrote:
In the routing tables that allows us to send via two seperate routes to two seperate servers. There isn’t a lot of point in having a single IP pointing to two seperate machines - that only covers you for having a server box failure. It doesn’t cover you for a link going down.
The way the system is setup at present (after we finish configuration) the single point of failure is at the db. I’m planning on setting up database replication at a seperate server to cover for that as a tertiary fallback.
I like multiple redundancy - stops those early morning wakeup calls
That’s a lot of hardware, time and effort right there. They cost somebody money.
January 23, 2008 at 2:29 pm
mattb02, that was my post and the point was to make it clear that KBB is an entirely independent entity and was a response to someone suggesting we were hosted/funded/directed by Labour.
January 23, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Second: Failure to clarify proves guilt? At least read the book!
No. Accountability is not served by directing everyone who doubts Wat to read an entire book to check up on him. If Wat was telling the truth, he, having read the book (one presumes), could easily be specific. He doesn’t simply assert facts elsewhere, such as the relationship between growth and inflation, he goes to the trouble of presenting the evidence. So do it here. Absolutely his evasion indicates guilt.
Re: similar sized donations. Frankly its hard to know what the Standard’s the costs are (having not been disclosed, and all). For billboards, it is $1500 average donation per person and $28000 is the total. Its not hard to imagine the Standard’s assistance fitting into there somewhere, given the hardware, time and effort Lynn indicates in his posts. We can have an argument over what ’similar’ means but its not play money.
Yep - you found the correction/back down/adjustment. Weak eh. Aaaand it was a-ok in the initial post and only a little short of that subsequently. Semantics. Yawn. Are you honestly even remotely suggesting even-handedness in the treatment of the Standard and its secret backers and billboard supporters?
And finally, yes, I understand the distinction. And the inconsistency is this: you have money secretly backing the Standard and at best a piss weak tut tut for the Standard and nothing bad to say about its backers that I’ve seen. You have money backing billboards and full disclosure and KBB taking a poke at them. Plainly, an inconsistency.
January 23, 2008 at 2:49 pm
If the Standard is saying that I was lying by asserting that some of the Standard’s bloggers are employed by the Labour Party, an affiliated union of the Labour Party, Parliamentary Services, or Ministerial Services, then I can take that as the Standard saying that none of the Standard’s authors are employed by the Labour Party, an affiliated union of the Labour Party, Parliamentary Services, or Ministerial Services.
If my “lie” that some of the Standard’s authors are employed by the Labour Party, an affiliated union of the Labour Party, Parliamentary Services, or Ministerial Services is incorrect, then I withdraw and apologise unreservedly.
But if it isn’t incorrect, then it’s not a lie. The Standard should be upfront and identify whether it’s a lie or not. The Standard has already accused me of lying. They should have the decency to back it up.
It appears that the Standard is currently offline. I wonder which of the Standard’s anonymous, undeclared, secretive backers put that into train?
January 23, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Is there a network engineer in the house?
January 23, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Hey, my friends. Here’s the low-down, I don’t give a bollocks if a blog got a few bucks worth of hosting and some pro bono help from a Labour techie.
How about responding to this? The FSC is just another propaganda outlet for the same small group of secretive rich men who tried to buy their way into power in 2005 and will try to do it again this year.
January 23, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Matt, if it is the case that the Standard are simply astro-turfing for Labour, you’ll have a point but I’m not convinced of that whereas I am for the FSC; their list of donors makes it absolutely clear.
And by the way, it’s not an issue of magnitude for me, I agree it is a matter of principal.
January 23, 2008 at 2:54 pm
IP, although it’s fine that you’re asking some of these questions here, I don’t believe any of our writers know the answers. I don’t.
January 23, 2008 at 2:58 pm
mattb02,
It’s only a lot of hardware for The Standard if it’s single use. Everything I’ve seen from Lynn implies that he’s hosting a bunch of bits and pieces on a chunk of well architected equipment.
The marginal (or even proportional) cost of having The Standard on there has got to be pretty trivial.
January 23, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Mardy, re: your post being about something else, that really is disingenuous mate. Qualifying your dead-set love for the Standard would not have been remotely out of place in that post.
January 23, 2008 at 3:01 pm
And by the way, it’s not an issue of magnitude for me, I agree it is a matter of principal.
That’s a relief, I thought we might descend into Oxford dictionary definitions of ’similar’! Good that we’re agreed on that.
January 23, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Anita, you are correct and if that’s what he’s doing then that’s important. I haven’t seen the post that says that, though. And it seems like a central point, if not the central point, that would have been made clear by now. But I may have missed the post.
January 23, 2008 at 3:08 pm
My post was about the parallels being drawn between us and them. Zos posted directly on the issue, I didn’t. I was mostly pissed off that there’d been a typically stupid post making accusations at us. I don’t qualify my admiration for their writing though I want this issue resolved. I take it your concern for transparency means you share our concerns about the FSC? You’ve been conspicuously quiet about that?
January 23, 2008 at 3:15 pm
mattb02,
Try http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2008/01/the_standard_hosted_by_the_labour_party.html#comment-396670
It’s a bit confusing because of the decoupling of h/w and network addresses, so it’s not clear what’s sharing h/w and what’s sharing address space. Either way he’s definitely got a variety of stuff on a variety of things for a bunch of people doing assorted stuff
He’s clear that the intention was for The Standard to share something with some other things, and it may well always have been doing so.
January 23, 2008 at 3:16 pm
mattbo2,
PS You made me read that thread on kb - well done, I now need a shower
January 23, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Matt - Fair enough, you call it a lie, I call it an unsubstantiated statement. I cite sources I can’t remember all the time, the facts themselves take up enough space in my head without the page numbers too.
Even if it is single use it’s not a hell of a lot of hardware. At its most basic level a server is unix-geek speak for “My computer, bought cheap on trademe, which has lots of ram and no screen and I never turn off”.
Fair point on the money - I still think the cost would be minimal and contributions of some enthusiasts time don’t count (in my view) anymore than the time contributed by those writing articles, but yes, my argument as to the actual scale being significant was flawed - you’re right that it should be the principle that counts. That said it’d be a bit sad if we got to the level where people were counting every borrowed paperclip.
As to the absence of a truly vociferous condemnation of TheStandard from KBB - cut them some bloody slack. Of course they’re going to react a bit differently, at least they had the good grace to react in the same direction though.
You’d react a bit differently if your friend you had around for dinner broke a glass than you would if a burglar cleaning out your flat broke the same glass.
January 23, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Mardy,
I for one don’t share your concerns about the funding of the FSC. They are not required to file their donor returns with the electoral commission until the end of the year. Instead they have voluntarily chosen to disclose their donors long before they were even required to do so as a third party by the Electoral Finance Act.
You might not like some of the donors, but the FSC has voluntarily chosen to disclose their donor list so that New Zealanders can make judgements for themselves about the motives of the FSC as a whole.
The same cannot be said of the Labour Party, or its relationship with the Standard. This is not just about gifting a few IP blocks at a rate of $300 a month. The Standard does not allow people to make judgements about how valid the political connections of the Standards’ authors are. They simply want us to trust them that their motives are right.
Well, you can’t have it both ways. And neither can the Standard. You cannot hammer the FSC and DPF for voluntarily disclosing far more than they needed to, and then ignore the potentially explosive association between paid Labour Party, union, Parliamentary Services and Ministerial Services employees publishing an anti-National baiting blog.
The Standard could very easily have made the same disclosure that kiwiblogblog was courageous enough to give about Kiwiblogblog’s contributors. I haven’t seen anybody doubt the sincere statement of disclosure that Kiwiblogblog made.
Instead, the Standard have chosen to lie, obfuscate, fudge, smear, and do everything in their power to conceal their political connections. I note that the Standard have been offline for the last hour. Technology is evidently not the problem the Standard has. I wonder if it was because Mike Williams or Andrew Little made the call, suggesting the site be shut down until things cool off?
January 23, 2008 at 3:26 pm
IP,
I’m sure I’m going to regret this, but it’s been bugging me for days…
The Standard’s front pages says (and has said for as long as I can remember):
The New Zealand labour movement used to have its own newspaper. A group of us thought that now might be a good time for it to be digitally reborn: The Standard v2.0
Isn’t that clear? We all know what the NZ labour movement is, we all know what “a group of us” means. Isn’t that the disclosure statement you keep saying isn’t there?
January 23, 2008 at 3:41 pm
“is it true that you guys were offered Labour party funding but turned it down? I keep hearing that KBB is getting funding from activist groups of the hard left persuasion”
funny isn’t it how rightwingers simply CANNOT COMPREHEND a group of people doing something without pay.
watch-out for a troll-swamping strategy here guys, they’ll being feeling strengthened after their attacks on the Std, and you know how much they hate the idea of volunteers operating on a free blogsite jeopardizing the millions they’ve paid on paid PR strategies and operators.
January 23, 2008 at 3:41 pm
No, Anita, that is not a disclosure statement.
Saying that a group of you named your blog after the defunct newspaper of the old union movement is not a disclosure of political interests. It suggests a group of left-wing amateurs, without particular political affiliations, have decided to set up a blog.
Kiwiblogblog, if we are to take their disclosure at face value–and I do–have said that their authors are not employed by the labour party, by an affiliated union of the Labour Party, by a third party, a think-tank, or Parliamentary or Ministerial Services. That is full and complete disclosure statement.
As left-wing academic Bryce Edwards has said, it is material if the Standard’s authors are employed as employees of a Labour Party affiliate organisation. If they are, then they are not merely interested amateurs. Whether they are paid professionally to blog, we don’t know.
Kiwiblogblog, and the Standard, have claimed at length that DPF is paid by the National Party to blog on National Party issues. This is despite DPF disclosing all of his professional associations, and being extremely upfront about his political activity.
Yet you let the Standard off too lightly when you expect the Standard to get away with not asking very serious questions about its political connections, and expect all of its readers to just trust them that there are no sneaky dealings going on. The Standard has consistently tried to lie and obfuscate, and spin its relationship with the Labour Party. They have not made any honest statement about their connections. You would NEVER let the National Party get away with that kind of dishonesty.
January 23, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Mardy, actually I have no problem with secret funding at all. The evidence is weak that money buys elections, what matters, at least in US politics, is the (political) quality of the candidate. Money has a positive but very weak effect on voting. My own view is that there is great value in the citizenry rising up to governments, even if it is led by the wealthy, and any attempt by a sitting government, whoever that is, is to be distrusted.
So my concern here is not that Labour was secretly funding the Standard, good on them, I say (though the Standard feigning independence does themselves no favours), it is the hypocrisy of engaging in the very behaviour they attack their opponents for.
I think it is tough to attack the FSC while giving the Standard so easy a ride. The FSC oppose the EFA, but they are still operating under that law whose purpose is to prevent corruption (and correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem to think it achieves that). It appears they are complying with that law and intend to keep doing so. So to me it is hard to see how your opposition to them could persist without coming close to being against free speech entirely.
January 23, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Anita - Sprout raised this on monday, and from memory IP went “Mumblemumble TANE IS A DECEIVER AND THE FATHER OF LIES”.
Some creative license taken.
I do think there’s a conflict between the Standards representation of itself as a non-partisan blog and the disclosure you just cited. But doesn’t that just mean that it’s not actually a non-partisan blog?
I dunno, maybe, like Sprout says, sooner or later you’ve got to pick a side.
Anyway, the point of Wat’s article is that hey, FSC HAS revealed its backers, and we don’t fucking trust them to truly act in the interests of transparency and free speech.
Also, you’re kind of missing the point. It’s not about whether the FSC is transparent - it’s about whether the FSC is acting to ensure transparency on the part of other entities. Clearly it’s not, since supressing such transparency is its main reason for being. Therefore all its backers (as in Wat’s list) are in favour of suppressing transparency. Whether the FSC itself is transparent is irrelevant.
January 23, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Sorry: “…and any attempt by a sitting government to resist that, whoever that is, is to be distrusted.”
January 23, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Matt - Totally agree with your first paragraph, however I have a problem with secret funding if it’s by someone who could be misusing funds - governments are in a GREAT position to do that.
Again though, it wasn’t my impression that the FSC was being attacked on it’s failure to be transparent in its sources of funding - rather on its alliances with those whose motives could be questionable.
January 23, 2008 at 3:47 pm
pretty firkin ironic that this press release from Bill English
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA0801/S00153.htm
ends with a direction to kiwiblog - presumably for an “independent” analysis of the issue from an “independent source”.
funny - i don’t see any disclosure statement on Farrar’s site about his long long history of employment by and contracting for the National Party.
January 23, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Oh yeah, I also have a HUGE problem with people who are secretly funded claiming that they’re independent and non-partisan.
The funding is going to skew their opinions, and pretending it’s not is dishonest.
January 23, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Man this is an inefficient venue for having a discussion. I actually agree with most of what you say Matt, I think we just end up arguing completely different points!
January 23, 2008 at 3:50 pm
limitedfaith,
Good lord, did The Standard claim to be non-partisan?!
It doesn’t bother me at all that they’re partisan (or that other blogs are partisan), after all they’re upfront and open about it. The media can happily call them “a left aligned blog” or “a labour movement blog” and everyone knows where they stand.
January 23, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Anita - definitely not.
Limited Faith: transparency and free speech are not bed fellows. Free speech is harmed by disclosure rules that say you have to tell people where you live before offending them with some outrageous personal view. If nothing else, anonymity forces the debate to address the merit of the argument and away from the motives of who is saying it.
January 23, 2008 at 3:53 pm
i doubt they’ve ever claimed to be non-partisan. they’ve certainly always been pretty openly anti-some parties.
partisanship btw, doesn’t actually necessarily preclude objectivity or accuracy. obviously it often does seriously impinge on such things - but it needn’t.
January 23, 2008 at 3:54 pm
IP,
Do you really think “the labour movement” means “left-wing amateurs, without particular political affiliations“?
To me it’s always meant left aligned politics, often (but not always) Labour party aligned, and encompassing both enthusiastic amateurs and 24×7 paid up members and employees. After all the Labour Party was formed out of the labour movement.
Given their statement I’d've been massively surprised if they weren’t closely aligned with unions, left wing parties, and the Labour Party (which I can barely bring myself to think of as left-ish).
January 23, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Anita,
There is a difference between:
a) being vocal supporters of the Labour Party, but independent of them and free to express views, and
b) being vocal supporters of the Labour Party, and employed by the Labour Party and their affiliates, and claiming to be merely expressing a left-wing opinion.
We don’t know about the Standard’s political connections, because they have been so dishonest about declaring them.
January 23, 2008 at 4:08 pm
IP,
Mm… yes and no
One of the things that does make me nervous is that even though people can say that their employers don’t vet content because it’s written in a personal capacity, the reality is that one does have to keep ones employment relationship in mind when blogging. I’m sure a union employee (or National Party employee, or …
has some things they just can’t say, even in their spare time.
But that’s true for all of us, not just the authors of The Standard.
Neither you nor I declare our employment relationships on our blogs, or our comments on other people’s blogs. Neither of us declare a full run down on all the groups we’re affiliated with, our family and friends, and so on. Should we?
Where are you arguing the line should be drawn?
January 23, 2008 at 4:09 pm
LF: I have a problem with secret funding if it’s by someone who could be misusing funds - governments are in a GREAT position to do that.
Yes they are, but then if the citizenry is in a position to discover that behaviour and freely discuss it then they can organise against it. A useful check on that sort of temptation that all governments face.
Sounds like we have been talking past each other. Again. D’oh!
January 23, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Neither you nor I declare our employment relationships on our blogs, or our comments on other people’s blogs. Neither of us declare a full run down on all the groups we’re affiliated with, our family and friends, and so on. Should we?
NO! Seriously, no. If you believe in arguing a point on its merits, which I think any believer in reason should, then the motives and identity of the person saying it are irrelevant.
January 23, 2008 at 4:14 pm
re: non-partisan
I forget where I read it, it may have been Tane’s comment, or someone elses, my opinion is courtesy of second hand information and hence not strongly held.
Matt - Yup, I agree, I’ve said before that I have several misgivings about the EFA for that reason, but I also don’t know much about the act itself.
But when I see the goon squad of special interests shelling out money to discredit it start to wonder if maybe it is a good idea.
“If nothing else, anonymity forces the debate to address the merit of the argument and away from the motives of who is saying it.” - Yup, true. But on the other hand, if someone has been proven time and again to be a self-serving rat bastard then it helps to know where they are rather than letting them start with a clean slate over and over again.
Imagine iterated prisoners dilemma with anonymity preserved (the parallels to the actions of special interest groups should be fairly clear). There’d be no opportunity to recognise behaviour, no opportunity to learn from it, and so you’d be stuck with relying on the strategies that deliver very poor average returns (if you assume that some, nay, any of your opponents are using greedy strategies).
So maybe there’s benefit in transparency for long term best interests? You then rely on legal/police systems to protect the right to freedom of expression without persecution.
January 23, 2008 at 4:17 pm
“Yes they are, but then if the citizenry is in a position to discover that behaviour and freely discuss it then they can organise against it.”
Yeah… and I guess the EFA doesn’t add anything to that ability, simply imposes a legal penalty for secrecy - whereas, as you point out, a political penalty already exists. So long as people are smart enough to realise when they’re being screwed.
January 23, 2008 at 4:19 pm
they haven’t claimed to be non-partisan, in fact last night there was a link to a comment from one of the standard’s authors where they clearly state “some of us are Labour Party members and some of us are not”. I would link to it but the site is down.
IP knows all about it though because he was the one trying to claim that the standard have never declared any links to the Labour party, when they clearly had.
what they are not doing, and why the fuck should they as volunteers writing a blog, is telling IP where they work. As whaleoil tried to embarrass Lynn Prentice to his employer (who turned out to be an ex-employer) and other bloggers have been personally hounded, why would the standard want the right knowing them personally?
January 23, 2008 at 4:32 pm
But when I see the goon squad of special interests shelling out money to discredit it start to wonder if maybe it is a good idea.
But LF this is one form of the citizenry rising up. These wealthy people paying for this have the support, I suspect, of a good number of people who are not wealthy. Certainly they do of me.
And, following from a post to Anita I just made, it actually doesn’t matter if their true motive is to protect their business interests. The question is whether their argument can be sustained. Is free speech valuable? Does the EFA limit it in some way? Should we therefore oppose the government that enacted it?
January 23, 2008 at 4:35 pm
“Is free speech valuable? Does the EFA limit it in some way? Should we therefore oppose the government that enacted it?”
Yes, Yes, No
There are, of course, reasonable limits on free speech, as with any freedom. These reasonable limits are those that allow others to live their lives more freely, our society to opportunity more smoothly, our economy to be more efficent, our resource concumption to be sustainable, and our polity to be more truely democratic, instead of dominated by a few people with lots of money and power.
January 23, 2008 at 4:44 pm
And to try to close the circle for a moment…
You’re quite right, it shouldn’t matter who we are, it’s the validity of the argument that should matter. Part of us each having equal free speech in our democracy is us each being able to be heard equally.
What the EFA starts to protect is the equal right to be heard.
Peter Shirtcliffe and I should be equals in this democracy, he shouldn’t be able to shout louder and drown me out just because he can afford to buy advertising and I can’t.
That is why the list of FSC donors is interesting; they are people who are willing to spend money to make sure that people can spend money to buy airtime and print space to drown out the rest of us, even if our arguments are just as valid (or just as invalid).
It is an interesting list of people who believe that the more money someone has the more political they should have.
January 23, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Is free speech valuable if the cost of free speech is a blinded public who are unaware whether people who have screwed them in the past are about to screw them in the future?
That was the point of my reference to game theory.
“Should we therefore oppose the government that enacted it”
Not if they limited it with good cause in a way that may offer a net societal benefit.
—
cheers bean, that’s clear enough.
January 23, 2008 at 5:01 pm
god it’s a bit of fresh air to hear sane people discussing the issue in an informed and rational manner. the RWNJ troll-war on Std the last couple of days has been a bit tiresome.
January 23, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Wat - the questions were actually rhetorical. But thanks. Your new post nicely demonstrates just how badly you miss the point and love the ad hominem.
Anita - yes, I take the point re: Shirtcliffe vs. you. But of course if no one is buying his argument then no amount of billboards will matter. Fundamentally, he is making a point at least some people have sympathy with. He is giving people like me a voice, and I am grateful for that. Perhaps it would feel more pro-democratic if he was sponsoring a campaign you happened to agree with.
LF: I think you are missing the point that it is harder to blind the public when speech is unrestricted. Whatever the motives, the effect of the EFA will be to raise the cost of criticising a sitting government. That increases the chance of the people being deceived. However much interest you think Peter Shirtcliffe and friends have in who is in power, Labour and National have way more!
January 23, 2008 at 5:12 pm
“if no one is buying his argument then no amount of billboards will matter”
a tired and fallacious argument. the billboards are meant to create and steer opinion. there’s a multi-trillion dollar global industry involved in it called advertising and PR. or perhaps all that money’s just spent because it has no effect. or perhaps the anti-EFAers are so rabid because they know political advertsing has no effect but resent not having the opportunity to waste their money on things they don’t beleive have any effect on public opinion.
“Perhaps it would feel more pro-democratic if [Shirtcliffe] was sponsoring a campaign you happened to agree with”
what would be more democratic if the interests and voices of the poor had the same advertising purchasing power as Shirtcliffe’s millions.
“the effect of the EFA will be to raise the cost of criticising a sitting government”
oh really? by limiting the amount of money that can be spent the cost is increased. could you elaborate please matt?
January 23, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Anita,
I’ve said a number of times that I am a member of the National Party, I have made donations to the National and Act Parties in the past, I have held mid-level elected office in the National Party in the past, but have held no elected office in more than five years. I have never been employed by the National Party, or any think tank, lobby group, or affiliated organisation. I have never worked in the public service, for Parliamentary Services, or for Ministerial Services.
None of the companies I have worked for have ever made a donation to a political party, or a third party as provided for in the Electoral Finance Act.
This is a very similar disclosure statement to that offered by Kiwiblogblog.
In my view, it IS relevant if professional communications specialists are authors of a blog, and working for organisations with close affiliations to a political party. It is even more relevant when those authors have campaigned for open disclosure of political affiliations in politics, through their staunch advocacy of the Electoral Finance Act.
The Standard have deliberately chosen to hide and spin their very material and considerable involvement in the Labour Party and its affiliated organisations. It is totally misleading for the Standard’s authors to pass themselves off as merely coincidental left-wing volunteers if they are employed by the Labour Party, or an organisation closely affiliated with the Labour Party.
January 23, 2008 at 6:05 pm
IP,
If it were relevant I’d point out all the significant things your disclosure statement doesn’t say. But it isn’t relevant unless you think that disclosure statements should be mandatory for bloggers and commenters, in which case we should make sure they’re loophole free.
But anyhow.
I agree that if The Standard was populated by Labour (or National) Party and union (or EMA, or BRT) professional spinners pretending to be enthusiastic unaffiliated amateurs it’d be a Big Deal, and be totally unacceptable.
But they’ve never pretended to be unaffiliated, they’ve never pretended to be amateurs. In fact, as I think I said above, the statement on their front page seems pretty clear – and completely counters any sense of unaffiliated amateurs.
If it said “We are personally, socially and professionally involved with political parties, unions and other organisations within the labour movement and on the left of New Zealand politics” would that be enough? Cos that’s how it reads to me.
How much disclosure do you think is necessary?
January 23, 2008 at 6:15 pm
mattb02,
[I should note that I do differentiate between issue and electoral-advocacy advertising - and the EFC billboards are issue ads arguing against control on electoral-advocacy ones]
If people put up billboards about something no-one agrees with then people will still start talking about the billboards and the issue. Whether they persuade or not they will still alter what people are talking about, they influence the debate, the issues on which people do base their voting decisions.
Should people-with-more-money-than-you-or-I be able to influence the political agenda with so much more weight that either of us can?
Out of interest, if you think Shirtcliffe is giving people like you a voice, who do you think is giving people like me a voice? (Given that I have significant disagreements with the EFA) Or the people who will clean the public library toilets tonight? Do you think he cares what they think? Or me? Or you?
The reality is that the FSC is not lending their weight to your voice, they don’t care what you think. They’re expressing their own opinions, that you agree is not what drives them.
January 23, 2008 at 6:41 pm
The debate’s moved on since the exchange between myself and Matt so I’ll not try to respond to each point.
IP, I know you’ve asked some questions but I think I’ve made my views clear. In fact, I think Anita’s post above is pretty much the most clear statement I could make including the questioning of professionals pretending to be otherwise.
My final comment is this: I’m not a Labour Party member though have been. Labour does not directly or indirectly influence the content of this blog although some Labour people have made comments to me about issue that they consider important. This blog costs effectively nothing to run therefore any question about secret-funding is redundant. We are not astro-turfers; we are a group of people who’ve got common political views that we’re happy to discuss on a sensible basis with anyone.
January 23, 2008 at 7:18 pm
Blogs and billboards are inherently different because you have to access a blog. Billboards and leaflets are indiscriminate and are aimed at demanding your attention. To access a blog, someone has to literally type in an address. That very act alone sort of creates a deal that you know what you’re getting into. To get too upset about a blog’s political bias is a bit like being outraged about the sex shown on a R18 DVD called Hot Teen Porno you had to go down to a porn shop to buy, take home, load up on your DVD, read the DVD’s cover with its explicit pictures and censorship statement, flick through the boring start page before accessing the movie and seeing the sex you so desperately didn’t want to see!
January 23, 2008 at 7:23 pm
Sprout - the billboards probably inform people more than anything. I’d bet more than half the population has not heard of the EFA. Advertising’s role in informing people is not disputed, and that is entirely consistent with selling a product. Persuasion is another purpose of advertising distinct from informing. Among those who are already aware of and oppose the EFA, the billboards have another purpose, which is to publicly signal serious opposition and to legitimise and strengthen peoples’ resistance. That is a basis for any political force. There are other ways to achieve it, such as protest marches and distributing literature and holding meetings and lectures. There is nothing special or insidious about billboards.
For those who already know about the EFA and agree with it, those billboards probably stimulate their resolve as well.
That is the point of these billboards. It is not about tricking people into believing something they otherwise wouldn’t. Essentially, they inform, and they act like rallying points among the like minded on both sides of the fence.
All sounds a bit pro-democratic to me.
>>“the effect of the EFA will be to raise the cost of criticising a sitting government”
> oh really? by limiting the amount of money that can be spent the cost is increased. could you elaborate please matt?
Ugh. Raising the cost = makes it harder. The new rules make it harder to oppose govt. Get it?
January 23, 2008 at 7:28 pm
Matt: The country’s largest city’s daily newspaper went on about the EFA for weeks and weeks. Hard to miss.
Slater’s EFA billboards are just appalling. They diminish any actual argument. Similarly, I think the hi-jacking the ideals of “free speech” for a narrow, single-issue campaign also diminishes the very serious issues associated with free speech.
January 23, 2008 at 7:36 pm
The reality is that the FSC is not lending their weight to your voice, they don’t care what you think. They’re expressing their own opinions, that you agree is not what drives them.
Yes, of course that’s true when you’re talking about you and me. But they are probably thinking that there is widespread opposition out there that will be stirred into action through billboards. And there’s good reason for thinking that. A high proportion of people who knew about the EFB didn’t like it. That was borne out in the split of submissions on it. They could have anticipated a strong response to the billboards and some political momentum out of them. They may well be right.
Out of interest, if you think Shirtcliffe is giving people like you a voice, who do you think is giving people like me a voice? (Given that I have significant disagreements with the EFA) Or the people who will clean the public library toilets tonight? Do you think he cares what they think? Or me? Or you?
There’s any number of organisations that do that. What’s your game? Gay rights? Tick. Worker representation? Tick. Elderly care? Tick. Solo mother’s rights? Tick. Elderly gay solo mother workers rights? Maybe not. But if somehow your cause has slipped through the net, then you are free to organise. If and only if you can find likeminded people will you succeed. And no number of billboards are going to convince people over to your side if you say things they don’t like or don’t care about.
January 23, 2008 at 7:39 pm
mattb02,
Do you genuinely believe the FSC intended the billboards to be inform rather than persuade?
Do you genuinely believe the FSC run the billboards for the purpose of strengthening the resolve of the supporters of the EFA?
If they were trying to simply inform the billboards would be very very different. They are obviously designed to be entirely partisan and expound a particular point of view.
January 23, 2008 at 7:45 pm
Icky, why are telling me the billboards are appalling? What is your point? Is it that free speech should be reserved for those with good taste? Is it that free speech that stupid shouldn’t be allowed? Is it that other people shouldn’t be allowed to waste their money on such things? i don’t know what else you could be thinking.
The one thing they are not doing is hi-jacking free speech. Their very crassness and fact that they are so anti-government demonstrates that free speech is alive in this country.
January 23, 2008 at 7:46 pm
It doesn’t really matter as they are so inane and childish I might even donate some dosh myself the more the merrier I say. Please please can we have one with Hiltler
January 23, 2008 at 7:54 pm
Anita - nope, I expected the authors are putting their money up because they want to create debate and stimulate a political movement against the EFA among people who know about it and disagree with it, and increase political momentum against the government that put it in. Two by-products are that more people will learn about the EFA (the billboard funders probably expect a few of these people to decide the EFA is wrong), and more people who agree with it will possibly develop a counterveiling response. Another is that some will be persuaded - but it can go both ways of course. Billboards cost money and some will undoubtedly be turned off by the money behind these signs.
You don’t need to persuade anyone to explain why these billboards went up.
January 23, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Sorry, I am doing all the talking on this thread, I must go and do some work.
Outofbed - don’t you think its a good thing to live in a country where you can be that rude to the establishment? They may be ugly billboards, but the alternative is worse.
January 23, 2008 at 7:59 pm
mattb02,
Yep, there are lots of organisations working on lots of different issues. The ones with rich backers get print ads and billboards, so they get talked about and get to influence the political agenda.
The one without rich backers work hard and barely ever get noticed, they hardly ever influence the political agenda.
Is that fair?
To go a little further, it means that it’s the issues that are most beneficial/acceptable to the richest NZers that get the most airtime and have the most infuence.
Is that fair?
Why are there billboards about how rich people should be able to buy political influence but none about how poor kids should have free access to university?
January 23, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Matt - appalling as in bad, poor…they’re ineffective, childish and badly designed…you know…appalling.
Free speech in this country is still alive and well…a point I think made by others who suggest that the EFA did not seriously undermine free speech. Election speech has been regulated for a long time. You might quibble about the extent to which this regulation has been drawn - but very few people disagree with the notion of requiring participants in an election to submit to a bit of sensible regulation to ensure the richest person necessarily has the loudest say in a community.
January 23, 2008 at 8:07 pm
By the way, Matt, the EFA doesn’t stop people from having a say…it’s just that if they’re doing it clearly on behalf of someone - it might be counted as part of that someone’s election expenses. Alternatively, if they’re wading into an election then they should declare who they are and make clear how much they’re spending. If people want to spend tens of thousands of dollars to play a role in an election I can’t see how it’s unreasonable for them to make a declaration about who they are. It helps inform electors about the messages they’re being bombarded by.
Let me ask you and BB who are so blunt in attacking the policy basis for the EFA -
Do you believe that during an election period someone should be able to spend as much money as they like without declaring who they are or how much they’ve spent - no matter how sizable the amount of money or the nature of the campaigning?
January 23, 2008 at 8:37 pm
icky:
By your own interpretation of what the EFA is supposed to do, you would agree that the Standard “should declare who they are and make clear how much they’re spending. If people want to spend tens of thousands of dollars to play a role in an election I can’t see how it’s unreasonable for them to make a declaration about who they are. It helps inform electors about the messages they’re being bombarded by.”
There is a very strong argument that the Standard constitutes an election advertisement as defined in the electoral act. It encourages people to vote Labour, and discourages people to vote National.
Some have claimed that non-commercial blogs are not covered by the definition of an election advertisement. Those people clearly haven’t read the law. A blog is defined as: “the publication by an individual, on a non-commercial basis, on the Internet of his or her personal political views (being the kind of publication commonly known as a blog).”
The Standard is not the publication by an individual. It is, by the Standard’s own admission, a publication by a group of people. In no way could the Standard fit within the personal-blogger exemption.
January 23, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Yeah, your point about joint blogging is true, IP. A whole bunch of blogs, including this one, fall foul of the straight read of that definition. Still, I am not sure the straight read would be necessarily the correct read. I could argue we’re a blog of individuals
Mind you, there’s zero cost associated with this blog or others hosted by free services, like nominister, which is hosted by Blogger. Still, it’s something to be wary of.
By the way, Farrar’s blog is likely to be defined as being commercial in nature, so he may need to think about his situation. I wonder about public address too in this regard.
January 23, 2008 at 11:33 pm
Matt - appalling as in bad, poor…they’re ineffective, childish and badly designed…you know…appalling.
Umm yea ok. But how is that relevant? We were talking about free speech weren’t we? What has appalling/good/bad/whatever got to do with it?
I was going to address the rest of your post, but saw the phrase ’sensible regulation’. I mean come on - it is one thing to believe the was a problem that needed fixing, its quite another to think the EFA solved anything. Sensible??
January 24, 2008 at 12:01 am
The definition of election advertisement is very broad in the EFA. Still, the Standard argued point-blank that the EFA was a robust piece of legislation.
The definition of a blog, as I say, is “the publication by an individual, on a non-commercial basis, on the Internet of his or her personal political views (being the kind of publication commonly known as a blog).”
That means it is the publication by one person, who is not paid to blog, of that person’s own political views. Kiwiblog is the publication of DPF’s own political views. The definition of “commercial” is tricky. DPF could argue that commercial means being paid to blog, as opposed to merely receiving advertising revenue to offset costs. It is a grey area, and DPF has covered himself by issuing the statement at http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2008/01/statement_under_the_electoral_finance_act.html
I disagree with DPF’s second assertion that the blog is a news media internet site. The definition in the Act is extremely confusing on that definition, and only invites people to try it on.
Clearly, Parliament’s intention was to ensure that campaigning on the internet, via email communications and the websites of both political parties, and third parties, were covered by the Act. In drafting the law, however, Parliament has knowingly also caught out both genuine media organisations by narrowly defining what they are able to publish, as well as encourage non-media organisations to pass themselves off as media organisations for the purposes of the EFA. On the whole, however, I very much doubt the Court would accept DPF’s claim, or Public Address’ claim, or NoMinister’s, for that matter, that they are set up solely for the purposes of “informing, enlightening, or entertaining readers”.
As I read it, NoMinister, Public Address, NZConservative, NewzBlog, Kiwiblogblog, and The Standard are all excluded from the definition of “blog” under the Electoral Finance Act. Any posts that encourage or persuade a person to vote, or not to vote, for one or more political party, or candidate, or a combination of political parties, or candidates, on these websites will constitute election advertisements under the EFA.
As a result, I have no doubt at all that these blogs will need to comply with the requirements of setting out the names and addresses of the official promoter of the blog.
January 24, 2008 at 12:05 am
Icky:
The issue as to whether it is an election advertisement under the EFA has nothing to do with the cost of the advertisement. It’s about disclosing the name and address of the promoter. It could be argued that only one person needs to be nominated as the promoter of a joint blog–but that person’s name and address needs to be disclosed.
The Standard is being pinged by a law that they encouraged.
January 24, 2008 at 12:31 am
The Standard is being pinged by a law that they encouraged.
No it’s not Prick, you liar. The Standard and the EFA have nothing to do with each other - you’ve just conflated them.
January 24, 2008 at 12:38 am
Supposing that one of the founders of TFSC namely Slater delved into his archives and printed on a billboard one of his disgusting pics of either The PM or James sleep. Would you be happy? Would that be allowable ?
Where do you draw the line ?
No I do not want to live in a country where someone as odious as him can be supported by major figures in business and politics. There is a line and they have crossed it The dictators on those bill board actually KILL people and comparing any of our politicians whatever political hue, to those odious individual is frankly disgusting.
An anybody who has contributed to that or associated with the purveyor of that vileness should be fucking ashamed of themselves.
January 24, 2008 at 12:40 am
[...] Wat has covered the list of Hollow Men who have donated to the Coalition. It’s a veritable who’s who of conservative politics and influence in New Zealand. But I do not see any reference to ‘N Smith’ being listed as making any contribution to the funding of the campaign. This could be because Nick Smith has no involvement in the coalition and the similarity of the Trust he declares a relationship with and the Coalition is purely coincidental. [...]
January 25, 2008 at 4:42 pm
[...] us up as the amateurs we self-confessedly are. In pompous tones, NBR mocked Kiwiblogblog for our article on donations to David Farrar’s Free Speech Coalition from the Hollow Men: $1000 from Doug Myers, [...]
February 15, 2008 at 8:58 am
[...] Farrar has registered the Free Speech Coalition (which has backers including Business Round Table members Roger Kerr and Peter Shirtcliffe as well as senior National [...]
April 13, 2008 at 9:34 am
[...] Free Speech Coalition, registered as a third party unchallenged despite being funded by the same group of hollow men as the National party and David having considerable ties to the Nats himself. And fair enough, the [...]
May 18, 2008 at 12:04 pm
[...] past the post. I see DPF is already running this line. Considering Peter Shirtcliffe was one of the funders of the ramshackle PR fiasco that was Davey’s Free Speech Coalition, one could be forgiven for [...]