This advertisement Electoral Finance Act will run in Wellington’s Capital Times weekly giveaway arts newspaper over the next two or three days.
It is a set of “postcards”. It was prompted by planning to be National’s candidate for Wellington Central. I realised that the $20,000 limit for the whole of election year would let me post one postcard to each elector, once, and one more to half of them, in the whole year.
For practical purposes that prevents communication directly with electors. Accordingly my communication will be have to be through the media filter.
Perhaps for this one election that filter will not be hostile. The New Zealand Herald’s stand against the Electoral Finance Bill is promising. But it is absolutely wrong that electors should be forced to rely on the fairness and adequacy of journalists. None of us wants the election skewed or decided by a few journalists.
The risk now will be that instead of canning this terrible law, its authors will try to fix this consequence by amendments to direct and limit media coverage, and to force uncensored publication of their propaganda. Control of the media would be a logical extension of their rhetoric against the EB and against paid advertising.
I’m encouraging people to join the party of their choice…hopefully National so that we can toss out this arrogant government. But I defend anyone’s right to vote and join whatever group appeals most. New Zealand need parties to have more members.
National, which once had over 10% of the population, is still by far the largest so it has thousands of “normal” people. But many parties are now homes primarily to the kinds of weirdos who like the idea of telling others how to live their lives, especially others who would never listen to them in real life. They get their revenge on normal people. Because sensible people have ceased to join these parties, the weirdos choose who is elected to make the rules for us all.
National is an increasingly active party. Do join as every member will count. If you are in Wellington Central that’s even better as it will help me with selection. Go to www.national.org.nz and click on Get Involved/Support National or go directly to Join National
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Very Good Stephen.
And if you’re in Manurewa, join up please. We need more members so we can select our own candidate and, as Stephen says, so we can let you know what’s happening.