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Democracy for All?

Entry 639, on 2007-11-12 at 19:07:57 (Rating 3, Politics)

According to the dictionary democracy is "a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives". An implication of this is that everyone should be able to comment on political issues without significant restriction. So how could anyone support a bill which tries to limit the amount of political commentary a group can make during an election year? Its just anti-democratic, isn't it?

Yes, in a way it is. But in other ways it isn't. I don't completely reject the idea because when political commentary is given complete freedom it can lead to some serious distortions. We have had several examples recently where groups with significant amounts of money have mounted propaganda campaigns (call them advertising, or information if you want, but propaganda they really are) which (it is generally accepted) have an appreciable effect on many voters. Its like buying votes and that's not democratic.

America is often accused of having "the best democracy money can buy" because of the influence of rich groups, especially big corporations and the conservative religious right, who can buy the policies and laws they want. Do we really want that sort of system in New Zealand as well? I don't think so.

But do we want to restrict free speech by groups who (currently) have a perfect right to make their opinions known? No we don't, and it seems like this bill would potentially restrict free speech. I don't think its as bad as the rabid rant in today's Herald newspaper would have us believe, but it is still a bad idea which I think should be stopped now.

So we seem to have a bit of an impasse here and maybe a compromise is in order. I was originally going to suggest unrestricted advertising as long as the material involved could be proved to be factual. But that would involve two problems: first, less affluent groups wouldn't be able to afford the legal checking necessary to ensure accuracy; and second, carefully selected facts can be as misleading as outright lies.

A better option might be to eliminate advertising completely. That's right, we would just have no advertising which could be interpreted as being political. If people can't get an accurate idea of what is happening politically through real newspaper reporting, tv news, and Internet sources such as blogs, then they are probably going to vote form a position of ignorance anyway and all the advertising in the world is likely to make them less well informed rather than more.

Most people hate ads anyway, that's why they skip them when they record tv shows and use whatever other methods are available to ignore them. So having less advertising would be doing the average person a favour. It seems like a fair solution to me!

Comment 1 (975) by TR on 2007-11-13 at 21:52:42:

I agree with some of what you say OJB but I don't think anything can make the bill that Labour want to put through OK. I don't care if they are scared of people using lots of money against them, we should still have free speech!

Comment 2 (976) by OJB on 2007-11-13 at 21:56:08:

Well there are two conflicting demands here: the right to free speech and the requirement to stop people with lots of spare cash having too much influence. I agree that the current bill doesn't seem to be a good one but I think we do need something. Getting the right balance isn't easy but the Herald's rant is a classic case which shows how big business can have an unfair say.

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