Posts by Graeme Edgeler
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Tim - I haven't completely thought it through, but I think you're right (or at the very least this clause of the EFB and sections of the Broadcasting Act are in direct conflict).
I'll add it to my list :-)
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The National Party MPs OTOH tried to scaremonger, with Chris Finlayson asking questions such as "did you know a sermon would count as an advertisement under the bill" (which is false, BTW). Unfortunately, they seem to be continuing this approach.
Misleading, yes. But not entirely false. A sermon that takes a position on voting (say from a Catholic priest urging members to consider parties positions on the protection of unborn children when voting, which I think happened at the last election) is an election advertisement. It's just that absolutely none of the regulation in the EFB kicks in until it was published, which didn't include speaking in a church.
Of course, thanks to some hurried drafting, it probably is now included. Arghh!
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As Brent Edwards pointed out on Checkpoint last night, an amendment already signalled by King will actually give third-party lobby groups considerable leeway. It will shorten the deadline for third-party registration to three months, meaning that such groups will be able to bang away on issues for most of the year, then register and switch to a more partisan campaign message for the three months till polling day.
Okay, I'm gonna start by pointing out, I haven't listened to Checkpoint (it's downloading now, I hope the interview is in the "best of" they make available), but I suspect you mis-heard the position (or I've misunderstood your take). Limiting third party spending caps to the last the three months would be pretty major and would shut just about everyone up except the National Party.
It was there, and Brent Edwards (who noticed that it was three-four weeks) got it completely wrong, conflating about four different aspects into one.
An individual/group has to register before they spend $12,000 publishing election advertising (as defined in the EFB) nationally, or before they spend $1000 in an electorate.
People/groups who spend more than this publishing election advertising without having registered break they law.
The law as introduced (and as reported back) forbids people/groups from registering as a third party after the formal beginning of the election period ("writ day"). That is, a third party is forbidden from registering in that last six weeks or so. Anyone who hadn't registered is limited to $12,000/$1,000 (rather than the higher $120,000/$4,000). Nominations don't even open until writ day, so a local group who might have wanted to spend more than $1000 opposing person X's campaign for local MP, would have had to register before that person had been nominated (more likely, it would prevent a residents group from spending more than $1000 attacking a known candidate based on a position previously unknown that they had adopted during the final weeks).
Annette King is proposing to cut the time in which registration as a third party is prohibited from the four~six weeks beginning on writ day and ending at the election, to the approximately three weeks beginning at the close of nominations.
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Fair enough. But it looks like a stupid error in trying to cover the change to align the definition of broadcasting with the one in the Broadcasting Act. (What did the previous definition say? Did it include the use of loudspeakers etc?) I presume they were looking to cover those annoying campaign vehicles with loudspeakers.
A really stupid error. The Greens have confirmed that the intention is as you suggest - they really are/were trying to regulate loud-hailers.
Whilst the word "broadcast" was in the EFB as originally drafted, there was no definition. I think it has been suggested that some people on the committee thought it rather broad, such that it would include PA systems and loud-hailers. That's so broad that it's not even an interpretation I contemplated. I don't think it stacks up - maybe the definition of broadcast generally isn't as narrow as the Broadcasting Act, but thinking that yelling through a loud-hailer was always intended to be covered is way out there.
Even if all that was intended with this change - adding the phrase "or bring to the notice of the public in any other manner" - was capturing buses with loud speakers, you've got to wonder "why?".
Were they really concerned that a National Party flush with cash, but limited to spending $2.4m on advertising (or a group of EB, limited to $120,000), would hammer home their financial advantage by spending millions outside the cap on fleets of megaphoned cars and running their advertising over PAs at public events?
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I can't see how I'd spend the $1000 required for a statutory declaration by shouting into a megaphone
Can you potentially see that you might be at a protest chanting something anti-[some party] slogan, and either not wanting to (or forgetting) to chant your address?
Can you imagine that you might want to sing "Way Better" without obatining the Labour Party's written permission?
The Bill is a massive improvement over what went in, but this really does mar it.
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I can't see how I'd spend the $1000 required for a statutory declaration by shouting into a megaphone
Oh, and they got rid of the statutory declarations bit - the most important change they could make.
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Okay, some facts.
Is the bill worse than when it was introduced? No.
It used to cover just about everything political, not it only covers stuff related to the election. This is a great improvement.
It didn't used to have an exemption for the websites of newsmedia - only the newspaper itself. It notw does (though slightly better clarity around editorials etc. would be nice).
It used to allow money funneled through secret trusts. Now it doesn't. Also good.
But DPF is right, it didn't used to cover oral speech [p.s. DPF: the word you're looking for is "oral" - with speech/mouth, not "verbal" - with words]. It now does. It's stupid, but as he points out, the Select Committee's commentary makes clear that it now intends megaphones to be covered. It pretty much makes meet the candidate evenings completely illegal.
And it also still exempts blogs, but not message boards or YouTube. The lack of exemption isn't quite as bad because it now only covers electoral speech, not political speech, but I really don't think telling people that they should post their home addresses to the whole Internet is sensible.
I might get a you all a little more detail later - they fixed a lot, but still not quite everything.
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Lock Marc Ellis up - he's admitted using an incendiary device - smoke BOMBS - to shock (is that Terrorise?) the community.
Ah, but he doesn't have a political, religious or ideological cause.
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TV1 have picked up the new series of Hustle
Yeah, it followed on from repeats of the third season. With TV Guide still listing it as a (R) repeat!
somehow I'm not so enamoured this series
Neither. The episodes I've seen (and I've not seen them all), have been a little less "fun" than earlier seasons.
And Bring back Micky!
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Surely, though, you train to do something with the intention of doing that thing?
You might have the requisite intention of causing terror while you're training, but without a specific target you might not have that intention by causing death.
Or something like that - like the Solicitor-General said, the law is pretty convoluted.