Sunday, July 13, 2008

Facts about Owen Glenn?

Having read David Farrar's "Some facts about Owen Glenn", it is clear that not all of his facts are relevant to anything, and not all are about Owen Glenn.

Take for example:
He was not born in New Zealand.
He has not lived in New Zealand for over 40 years.
He is not eligible to vote in New Zealand
All of these are as true as they are irrelevant. It is questionable as to why Farrar would even include these "facts". Perhaps another implication of Xenophobia? Why would it matter if Glenn is or is not able to vote in this country?

Farrar here appeals to the Nationalists among his readers, but does not stop at taking shots at Glenn based on his place of birth:
This is the largest known donor ever in New Zealand politics.
Very, very good point. Glenn is the largest KNOWN donor, despite there having been larger donors. Here it is clear that there have been much greater donations to the National Party under the "Waitemata Trust" in 2005, but it is unknown as to who actually donated this money. Thank you Kiwiblog for pointing out the very reason why we needed stronger election laws. New Zealand has had far shadier donors than Glenn, and perhaps they were immigrants too, in case David is worried, it's just that previously we didn't know who they were.
The Labour Party amended the Electoral Finance Bill to specifically allow him to keep donating money, while restricting other foreign donations to $1,000 (by defining a foreign donation as being okay from overseas residents who are NZ citizens even though they are ineligible to enrol or vote)
What I want to know is how exactly David Farrar knows that the Labour Party made a law that specifically makes provisions for "him". It seems far more likely that the reason for this part of the law is that not all people living in New Zealand are eligible to vote. Consider, for example, people living here on temporary visas or work permits. These people cannot vote, but just like companies, should have the right to donate money to NZ political parties. The restrictions on foreign donations just ensure that only people domestically effected by NZ politics can donate, rather than overseas business interests. And why shouldn't a New Zealand citizen be able to influence New Zealand politics from abroad? Sure, they are not able to vote for now, but they still may have party ties/membership and still should have the right to influence party politics from afar. Labour has made the right call here in allowing this to happen.
Labour and NZ First forced through the Electoral Finance Act whose purpose is “to strengthen the law governing electoral financing and broadcasting, in order to … prevent the undue influence of wealth on electoral outcomes and … provide greater transparency and accountability on the part of candidates, parties, and other persons engaged in election activities in order to minimise the perception of corruption”
Farrar here abandons the usual convention of actually continuing on one path of diologue, and rather decides to provide a largely irrelevant attack on Labour and NZ First. Glenn is not influencing electoral outcomes through the shady means of National; it is true that he initially would not confirm/deny claims to funding NZ First but the point is that the made donations himself and not through some third paty trust. His donations were greatly more moral and were declared in a way which clearly indicated him as the donator, unlike National's donors. This law does exactly what it sets out to do; it provides transparency by forcing the National donors to do exactly what Glenn has does done - declaring a donation.

It is clear that Farrar's facts about Glenn are not actually facts about Glenn, but rather a cheap and ineffectual political point.

2 comments:

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Too true.

Owen Glenn has been a little shifty on details about his donating, but his were 100% better than any of the Nats' donations.Quite frankly this is a case of the National Party's hypocrisy.

Good reference to the 2005 Waitemata Trust donation, which more than doubled Glenn's.

We must also keep in mind that Glenn did this before the EFA; a time when the whole game was different. Before the EFA, donors needn't have declared who they were. Glenn not only made legal donations, but his were far more open than those of National.

Looking forward to the greater transparency and fairness that the EFA promises.

- JJ