'Free Speech' Coalition, David Farrar and Electoral Finance Bill

I am very happy that Parliament has passed the Electoral Finance Bill (EFB), and am proud to be one of the very few bloggers to be supporting it!

The images below are going up as billboards in Auckland and Tauranga (respectively obviously targeting Helen Clark and Winston Peters) against the EFB. They're funny, but the real problem is that the person running this campaign is none other than right-wing blogger and former National Party office-holder (and current party member) David Farrar.

I have nothing against people having their say in public, but like Labour and the rest of the parties who supported the EFB, I strongly believe that campaigns like this where the wealthy throw big bucks around trying to bring down left-wing governments are against the spirit of democracy.

Particularly if the people, like National's David Farrar and ACT party bag-man John Boscawen (the guy who's been running those huge newspaper advertisements against the Bill), try and masquerade as average Kiwis, when in fact they're quite the contrary in terms of their access to big money.



I can't wait till the Electoral Finance Bill kicks in and for the first time in more than two decades, we will go back to having transparency and fairness in Kiwi politics.