Freedom of Speech For Foreign Billionaires

The Electoral Finance Act seeks to make election spending by individuals and groups more transparent and to restrict the ability of cashed-up interest groups or individuals to spread self-serving rubbish at election time and get away with it as the Exclusive Brethren did last election.

I have no problem with that. My speech is still just as free as it was before. I can say what I like and no one is going to stop me or prosecute me. Mainly because saying what you like isn't against the law.

Ok, I can't print off a million of my own leaflets and drop them in every letterbox in the country, but then neither can you. Fair is fair. We each have one vote, one voice. What wasn't fair was all the cashed-up people and groups amplifying their speech in their own interest while none of us ordinary voters had any capacity to reply if they were misleading or full of lies.

But there IS one way to campaign all day and all night for the party or cause of your choice with no limits, no caps and few restrictions.

All you have to do is own a media outlet: Radio network, TV station or network, newspaper....whatever. The rules don't apply to these people.

Almost all of the commercial media in NZ is already owned by foreign billionaires. RadioWorks? Yep. TV3? Yep. APN? Yep. Fairfax? Yep. They are all effectively exempt from campaign spending laws. Foreign billionaires, as a rule, tend to favour political parties they think will enhance their profits. Rupert Murdoch's FOX News loves the US Republican Party. His SUN in the UK loved Tony Blair while Blair was waging war and knobbling the BBC. Now Murdoch loves the Tories again. That's just a couple of examples.

Even under the EFA, if these proprietors and their agents here decide they like one political party over another, it's open slather to voting day. They don't even have to be open about it. They could simply tell you good news about the party they favour and bad new about anyone else. Heroic, gowing features about their favoured leader and sad, grey stories full of questions and uncertainty about the ones they don't like. Job done.

They call it news.

If Kiwis want to enjoy this same freedom, we'll have to create our own media outlets again. Why should foreign billionaires be the only people (not) in New Zealand who can flout the intent of the EFA and spend whatever they want saying whatever they please...and we have no right of reply? They not only can spend what they like, but they also own the means by which anyone might reply. Wouldn't that be nice.

This may seem cynical. The point is there is nothing to stop it being the absolute truth. There is no real competition in media here. Almost every newspaper is a monopoly in its own town and the vast majority of those are owned by one company.

I'd like to see a law that prevents anyone from owning more than ONE media outlet. Take your pick. A newspaper in Auckland? A radio station in Timaru?

It's worth looking at the Australian laws on cross-media ownership and foreign ownership. Much more careful than we have been about who owns what and where.