More than 2000 people marched down Queen Street today to voice their opposition to the Electoral Finance Bill. Photo / Chris Gorman
Queen Street in Auckland has been brought to a standstill today, with a crowd estimated at more than two thousand marching against the Electoral Finance Bill.
Helen Clark is being told her proposals are fascist and unwanted, and is being urged to respond to the broad and growing
opposition to the bill.
Protest organiser and lawyer John Boscawen wants the Prime Minister to kill the Bill, which will put caps on spending by lobby groups during an election year.
Boscawen has been involved with the Act Party for more than a decade, but says people who have lived under communist rule should be just as opposed to the Bill as he is.
Mr Boscawen says the legislation is about peoples' right to freedom of speech.
He says Chief Human Rights Commissioner Rosslyn Noonan also wants the Bill scrapped, despite being a former trade unionist who was appointed by the Labour government.
He says he has already spent fifty thousand dollars protesting against the Bill.
Members of the Law Society, political parties and the Sensible Sentencing Trust are angry Labour's trying to push through the legislation without consultation.
Members of the migrant community on the march say they came to New Zealand to escape dictatorship, and some have likened Miss Clark to Adolf Hitler.
- NEWSTALK ZB
