A rum do but it could have been worse

By STEPHEN LEVINE*

As the campaign comes to an end it is interesting to consider the kind of election we might have had if things had taken a slightly different course.

It was only last November that the Attorney-General introduced a proposal into Parliament that would have made it an offence to publish during an election campaign any untrue statement that disparaged (or defamed) a parliamentary candidate and that was calculated to influence votes.

Anyone convicted of doing so could have been fined up to $5000 or faced up to three months in prison.

This election campaign, though far from perfect, would surely have been much diminished had the Government had its way. As it was, there was a brief flurry of threats to litigate when remarks from National Party leader Bill English over the painting and the Prime Minister's response to the police inquiry were seen by Helen Clark to be too pugnacious.

And what of the Prime Minister's suggestion, since withdrawn, that a poll in Waitakere showing Laila Harre ahead had never, in fact, been taken?

If the legislation had gone ahead we might have had Mr English and Helen Clark in adjacent cells, their caucus meetings held during visiting hours.

While the prospect of politicians behind bars might be appealing to some, the defeat of this proposal spared us an election campaign in which the temptation would always have been there for candidates to turn differences of political opinion into issues to be fought out in court rather than through public debate.

Another bright idea whose time thankfully never came was the proposal to suppress the publication of opinion polls during election campaigns. This would have done nothing to suppress public curiosity about how leaders and parties were doing. Polls would still have been carried out. We just would not have been able to publish the results.

But there would have been rumours, disinformation, leaks. Some of it might even have been true - Peter Dunne at nearly 7 per cent - but who would have believed it?

Winston Peters had wanted to ban reporting of opinion polls for a month before an election, claiming that the results have an influence on voters and that the integrity of the democratic process needed to be preserved. Does he still think that people should be protected from polls?

On election night, when he gives thanks to those who voted for him and to those who worked in his campaign, he should not forget to express his gratitude, perhaps above all, to those who saw to it that his ill-considered proposal went absolutely nowhere.

Unfortunately, some clever ideas do occasionally get through. One such was the woefully misnamed Electoral Integrity Act. It now seems only right that those who were its most vocal proponents should have been utterly undone by it.

Here is a measure that was described by its critics as unnecessary, unwise and unworkable. It was passed anyway, but the critics have been proved right.

The act was designed to compel MPs leaving their parties to resign their seats. In the end, through semantics and subterfuge, they refused to go.

When even those who sponsor legislation show themselves unwilling to be bound by its terms, there is a problem. Some problems are complex. This one is not. Mr Peters could have raised a fourth finger and guaranteed to fix it.

Repealing this act should have been high on at least one party leader's pledge card. It is, after all, one of the reasons we are having this election.

MPs who change parties (or whose parties dissolve underneath them) can be punished by the voters if they are not terribly impressed with their behaviour. That is the way it has worked in the past and, as we look at the likely fate of most Alliance and Progressive Coalition candidates, that is what is going to happen this time round as well.

Of course, the real reason we are having an early election is that the members of the Alliance hated each other more than they loved governing the country. But what led the Alliance to break up, apart from personality clashes, was that some members of the Alliance - like the Greens - found the concept of New Zealand fighting side-by-side with the United States in Afghanistan utterly repugnant.

Other members of the Alliance, and particularly Jim Anderton, saw the Government's choice as both necessary and honourable.

It is self-evident that questions about New Zealand's place in the world are of overriding importance. So are concerns about parliamentary integrity. These issues are part of why we are having an early election.

We have had many issues placed before us this campaign - some expected (education, law and order, immigration), some not (the two gates, painter and corn). But what we might benefit from, as well, is debate on the character of our next Parliament and the choices facing our country in an uncertain world.

These issues, too, will not go away when the dust from tomorrow quickly settles.

* Professor Stephen Levine is head of the school of history, philosophy, political science and international relations at Victoria University.

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