John Armstrong: When a little humility could go a long way – As a much-needed antidote to the third-term arrogance which periodically afflicts the Government, Labour could do itself a power of good by acknowledging it occasionally gets things wrong.
The obvious place to start is the Electoral… [NZ Politics]
John Armstrong outlines some options to assist labour avoid electoral embarrasment over their arrogance of trying to ram through the Electoral Finance Bill.
[quote]Had it sought a broader consensus from the beginning – and had National walked away from any subsequent multiparty talks – Labour would be firmly ensconced on the moral high ground.
Instead, the bill has been written and rewritten in the back rooms of the Beehive with Labour's prime motivation being the short-term political imperative of knobbling National's financial advantage in the run-up to next year's election. Labour's self-serving behaviour and departure from the norm of cross-party co-operation when writing electoral law made a gift of the moral high ground to National even though National's objections to the bill could likewise be regarded as self-serving.
The other difficulty of trying to appease the bill's opponents with an inquiry is that it would beg the question of why not simply discharge the bill altogether and conduct next year's election under the old rules.[/quote]
Of course labour won't do that because they have staked so much on their claim that the EB are evil spenders of their own money while at the same time forgetting that the EB's broke no rules and Labour broke several inculding knicking $800,000 of our money to fund its campaign.
If anyone used "big money to buy elections" it was them. They won after all and thus can be the only ones charged with buying the election.
