Back in I asked the Electoral Commission to rule on a letter Jim Anderton sent out to voters in Wigram.
They have now responded…by referring Jim Anderton to the Police for a breach of Section 204B of the Electoral Act.
It may be that Jim Anderton’s last political act was to break the law.
I knew it, there is always one fool politician who wants to stage a Commonwealth or Olympic Games. I only backed him because he wasn’t Jim Anderton.
Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker is suggesting that New Zealand should bid to host the 2022 Commonwealth Games with a rebuilt Christchurch City hosting the opening and closing events.
“We have seen how well Rugby World Cup 2011 worked having Auckland as the central venue for what was truly a stadium of four million people. I can envisage the same scenario for Christchurch’s role in hosting the 2022 Commonwealth Games,” says Mr Parker. “I am suggesting that Christchurch would host the opening and closing ceremonies along with both the track and field and swimming events, with other events spread throughout the country.
“To host the 2022 Commonwealth Games would be a wonderful goal for the city. The city needs an aspirational target and in 2022 we will have a stunning new city to introduce to the world. Let us, along with our Government, embrace this challenge. We have to rebuild our sports facilities anyway and will have the greater part of the budget to do this from insurance payouts.”
Good luck insuring a Commonwealth games fool.
Mr Robert Peden
Chief Electoral Officer
By blog and email: enquiries@elections.govt.nz
Re: Letter from Jim Anderton
Dear Mr Peden,
Please find attached a scan of a letter sent by Jim Anderton to voters in Wigram. You will note the letter says “I urge you to give Megan your vote”.
This clearly makes it an election advertisement. The letter says it is authorised by Jim Anderton of 286A Selwyn Street, Christchurch, so he is its promoter as s204F(2) requires the name and address of the promoter of the election advertisement.
Under s204G(1) any advertisement encouraging voters to vote for a candidate must be authorised in writing by the candidate. I do not know if there is or is not written authorisation, but that issue may be one the Commission wishes to verify.
The main purpose of the letter is to complain that Mr Anderton is not eligible to promote an election advertisement, and it appears has committed an illegal practice under the Electoral Act.
S204(B)(1) states a person can be a promoter if they are a party secretary, a candidate, a registered promoter or an uregistered promoter.
Mr Anderton is not listed on the Electoral Commission website as a party secretary or a registered promoter. Mr Anderton has also confirmed he is not a candidate in this election, indeed he says as much in his letter (attached).
This means that Mr Anderton can only be a promoter if he is a unregistered promoter. However s204A defines an unregistered promoter as someone who is NOT a person involved in the administration of the affairs of a party. A party under s3(1) means a registered political party. The Electoral Commission website lists the Progressive Party as a registered political and Mr Anderton is the leader of that party, and hence heavily involved in in the administration of the affairs of a party.
Under Rule 5.1 of the Progressive constitution the Leader is a member of the Party Executive which has full power to administer the party between conferences.
So as Mr Anderton is ineligible to be an unregistered promoter, and is not a party secretary, candidate or registered promoter, I believe one can only conclude Mr Anderton has promoted an election advertisement without being eligible to do so, and has committed an illegal practice under s204B(3).
I look forward to your decision on this matter
Kind Regards
Cam Slater
www.whaleoil.co.nz
Exhibit A:
Oh look….
Labour Candidate Megan Woods door knocking with Progressive (former Alliance Party) Leader, Jim Anderton. But Labour doesn’t do deals with other parties…
Jim Anderton is whining that increased youth unemployment causes increased youth suicide:
Youth suicide rates will peak over the next two to four years because of “shockingly high youth unemployment rates”, a Christchurch MP says.
Progressive MP Jim Anderton said high suicide rates followed high unemployment “as sure as night follows day”.
“Teenagers in New Zealand face high levels of unemployment, crime and depression and that is materially worse on all these scores than the average in other developed countries.”
He said New Zealand had more than 500 suicides each year.
“In the nineties, four peak years of youth unemployment were followed by the highest youth suicide rates in the Western World.”
The country would soon see a repeat, he said.
Perhaps he could explain why it is that he voted for the removal of youth pay rates that has demonstrably led to the massive increase in youth unemployment.
When he is done doing that he could then explain the correlation between kids killing themselves and having a shithead for a father who beats their mother on a regular occurrence.
Labour and others have been expressing faux outrage over deals in electorates and somehow take candidate insistance that a strong party vote campaign is somehow gifting a seat to one person or another.
Clearly they have forgotten that it is the party vote that counts and so all candidates should be looking to maximise the party vote anyway. The media is now running silly stories like the one about Ohariu:
National has done a deal with the United Future Party and will campaign for the party vote in the Wellington electorate of Ohariu to help leader Peter Dunne retain the seat.
National Party president Peter Goodfellow said it was up to the voters of Ohariu to make their own decisions about what they did with their electorate vote. However, National would be running a strong party vote campaign.
“In Ohariu, as in all local campaigns, we will be emphasising that the National Party needs strong support if it is to form another John Key-led National Government. If that’s what voters want then our message is simple, give National your party vote.”
There is nothing new here, the whole set up of MMP is designed to allow shady back-room deals from all sides. It is all about making the system work for you. National are simply using Helen Clark’s play book and she was supposedly a master of MMP, cutting deals with Jim Anderton in Wigram, Winston Peters in Tauranga and also Peter Dunne before, keeping him nicely ensconced in a ministerial car far beyond his abilities.
Andrew Little has also expressed faux outrage over the National strategy on Epsom this week.
The Great Depression
Prohibition
The Rise of Adolf Hitler
1932 The National Socialist Party became the largest party of the Weimar Republic
Mussolini’s Imperialism
Kristallnacht
The New Zealand National Party formed
Japan Invades China
The Start of World War II
Springboks win the 1937 series in New Zealand 2-1
The Six O’Clock Swill
Jim Anderton was born
To celebrate this tragic era the National Party is having a fancy dress 1930’s theme for their conference dinner. The only real question is whether iPredict will offer odds of the media showing silly old people dressed in dumb clothes to take the piss out of National Party when they should be talking about issues that win them votes.
Labour are playing out attacks on John Key for using a helicopter to avoid 3 hour traffic jams. Trevor Mallard is playing it up the most and he is being a bit silly.
Kerre Woodham lambasts Labour for their pettiness and rightly so especially over transport arrangements for the Prime Minister. It was while I was researching my previous post that I came across this:
The trans-Tasman anger was enormous. At one stage, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, on her way back to New Zealand from the Middle East, found her aircraft blockaded on the Melbourne airport tarmac by laid-off Ansett workers, who refused to allow the jet to take off. Eventually, an RNZAF Orion maritime reconnaissance aircraft had to be sent to fetch her.
It shows an appalling hypocrisy from Labour when their own leader summonsed a plane across the Tasman to rescue her from picketing Ansett workers. John Key could have probably made 1000 flights between Auckland and Hamilton before he even came close to the cost of a full crew, presumably a back up crew and an Orion and fuel to save a feckless Prime Minister stuck in a picket at Melbourne airport.
If that wasn’t so bad the news reports show an even worse position for Labour and Helen Clark.
A group of Ansett’s aircraft loaders had turned up at Melbourne airport for the early shift, but when they heard the news, they used heavy moving equipment to blockade an Air New Zealand plane in protest.
They didn’t know it but Helen Clark was supposed to be boarding that plane to fly back to New Zealand from a trip to Europe. Instead she was trapped at Melbourne airport for five hours.
In a day of high farce, Victoria police eventually came to the rescue, airlifting Ms Clark from the airport in a helicopter just before lunch.
Using a police helicopter to save yourself from embarrassment. But wait it gets worse:
Helen Clark was flown out in the end on an [RNZAF] Orion – sent over by Acting Prime Minister Jim Anderton. He said he’d acted as a sovereign state to defend our Prime Minister, and accused the Ansett workers of criminal acts. Ms Clark said she was disturbed by Australian Kiwi bashing which she described as absolutely unreasonable.
I’ll tell you what is unreasonable…exactly what Kerre Woodham describes:
A prime minister going by helicopter to an engagement is probably a better option than being in a speeding motorcade and hanging your driver out to dry when you’re found out – as history would note.
Worse when that same Prime Minister who hung out her staff called upon the air force to save her at huge expense in Melbourne. If you are going to point the finger make very sure that your side is squeaky clean before you do.
UPDATE: Of course there was also this incident when Clark wanted to make it to Grey power meeting:
The Prime Minister commandeered an Air Force plane to whisk her to an appointment with Grey Power in Invercargill yesterday.
High winds closed Wellington airport and like hundreds of others, Helen Clark could not get a commercial flight out. Her office made a phone call to Defence Force headquarters, and she was driven up to Ohakea air base where a seven-seater King Air plane was waiting.
She was flown south to keep her appointment – a speech to Grey Power Southland at the Invercargill Workingmen’s Club.
Arriving an hour-an-a-half late, the Prime Minister was warmly received by the 150-strong crowd who had waited patiently.
Not only commandeering a flight but also a massive drive from Wellington to Ohakea, presumably at great speed. Labour really do look silly now.
The left-wing continue to politicise the earthquake with the current meme that the government isn’t helping the poor of Christchurch’s eastern suburbs. The leftwing lap-bloggers repeat the lies incessantly and Labour MPs get on TV and the Radio complaining about everything.
About the only thing the leftwing have a monopoly on with the earthquake is complaining. Others just seem to muck in and get things done without having to try and carry around a media entourage.
Lianne Dalziel is one MP that moans a lot. Just two days ago she was accusing the government of ignoring the eastern suburbs and complaining that there were no portaloos.
“The problem is that we are treating ourselves as a First World country, when the east is experiencing Third World conditions.”
Ms Dalziel called for an increased police presence and restrictions on movement after dark in areas that were without power, to ease residents’ concerns about criminals “casing” their houses.
She was also concerned about health risks in the areas caused by contaminated silt and poor sanitation.
Well this map from Civil Defense shows all the utter falsity of her whining.
We understand that it is crap, we understand that it is tough….but if you tell lies then we will prove you wrong. Imagine though how the residents of Napier coped back in the 30′s when there was no such thing as a portaloo.
You haven’t seen Aaron Gilmore carping to the press, or Clayton Cosgrove, or Amy Adams or Jim Anderton. They are much too busy on the ends of shovels doing something other than whinging.
In 2010 I created following chaos and mayhem:
