1.Introduction
The Green Party wishes to make the following submission on the allocation of time and money for the broadcasting of election programmes relating to this year's general election.
Attached please find statutory declarations confirming our membership numbers and that we will be nominating a party list at the upcoming general election.
We would like to be heard in support of our submission at 11.30am on Tuesday 22 March and will be represented by Green Campaign Manager, Russel Norman, and Green Co-Leader Rod Donald.
2.Eligibility
The Green Party is eligible for an allocation as we have been a registered political party for the last ten years.
3.Compliance with allocation criteria (section 75 (2) of the Broadcasting Act)
a.Number of people who voted for the Green Party and its candidates at the 2002 election.
The Green Party contested the 2002 General Election in its own right, standing 58 constituency candidates and a Party list of 65 candidates.
We won 142,250 party votes or 7.00% of the total party vote. This represents 7.5% of the effective party votes for seat allocation. Our candidates also won 106,717 electorate votes or 5.35% of the total electorate vote. Overall, when split voting is taken into account, 191,656 people, or 9.3% of those who voted, supported the Greens with either their party vote or their electorate vote or both.
However, we believe the Commission should only consider the Party vote when assessing this criterion because it is normally only the party vote that determines the number of seats won by each party and therefore the make-up of Parliament. The party vote is also the most accurate indicator of public support for a party, as opposed to support for its individual candidates. In any case it would be inappropriate to take the individual candidate vote into account given that those individual candidates are allowed to spend their own money on broadcasting under the act. Thus the number of votes that they receive should have no influence in the broadcasting allocation for their party.
b.By-elections
There has only been one by-election in this term of Parliament, which, along with all other parliamentary parties, we did not contest.
c.Number of Green Party members of Parliament
The Green Party has a total of nine MPs.
d.Relationships with other parties
The Green Party has no umbrella or component relationship with any other party.
e.Opinion polls and party membership
The Greens are slightly behind NZ first, according to the Molesworth and Featherston rolling poll of polls (5.49% to 5.68%), and we are consistently polling well ahead of the minor parties. Since Christmas our polling has ranged from 4% to 7% with the two most recent polls recording the Greens on 7% and 6%. We have been ranked third or equal third in three of this year's seven opinion polls.
We would however note that opinion polls underestimate the true level of support for the Green Party specifically, and generally for third and minor parties, because a significant proportion of our voters use cellphones rather than landlines and because polling organisations do not prompt voters with a list of parties to choose from. Voter behaviour when polled is therefore not consistent with election behaviour where voters have the benefit of the ballot paper listing all parties. The Commission should therefore weight this criterion in favour of the third and minor parties. There should be no weighting given to electorate vote polling for the same reason given in 2a.
The Green Party membership as of 31 December 2004 was 3027. A statutory declaration to this effect by the Secretary of the Party is attached to this submission.
f.Fair opportunity to broadcast
The Green Party believes it is important for all registered parties to have a fair opportunity to convey their election messages through the broadcast media. We acknowledge this will give smaller parties than ourselves a larger proportion of the appropriation than they would have received based solely on the other criteria. This is desirable in order to balance the limited access small parties have to other media opportunities such as televised leaders' debates.
We therefore suggest that small registered parties receive the same minimum allocation they were given last time but believe that only parties polling on average above 2% or with recognised Members of Parliament should be given opening and closing addresses.
4.Recommendation
The Green Party supports the broad categorisation that the Commission applied at the last election with the following modification. Given the National Party's performance in relation to the Labour Party, we believe the National Party should have its own category between the Labour Party and the significant third parties — a new Category Two.
Using that formula we believe that the Green Party should be ranked with NZ First in new Category Three (old Category Two) for both the financial allocation and the time allocation for opening and closing addresses.
5.Other Matters
a.Opening and closing addresses
Within the constraints of the total amount of time allocated by TVNZ and RNZ for the opening and closing addresses, we believe that the split at the last election was appropriate for the opening addresses i.e. 10 - 12 minutes for each of the two major parties, 8 minutes for significant third parties and 4 minutes for minor parties. Regarding the closing addresses, we also consider the split from the last election was appropriate i.e. 4 - 5 minutes for the major parties, 3 minutes for significant third parties and 1.5 minutes for other eligible parties.
The order of the addresses should be in order of the size of broadcasting allocation for the opening addresses and in reverse order for the closing addresses.
b.Inadequate funding
Broadcasting funding for political parties is inadequate. The total allocation has not increased for the last five elections but more parties are eligible to share this limited amount of money. We commend the recent announcement that funding will be increased.
c.Existing Funding formula
The 2002 broadcasting allocation was reasonably fair to the Green Party, unlike our 1999 allocation. However the current allocation method led to a wide variability of broadcasting funding in relation to actual performance (for category one to four parties), with United Future receiving 55c per vote and Labour receiving 74c per vote at one extreme and National receiving $1.45 per vote, Christian Heritage $2.74 per vote and the Alliance $3.88 per vote at the other extreme.
We believe the current allocation system should be replaced by a more equitable system of funding political parties to enable them to participate in the democratic process. We would suggest a model similar to the Australian one, in which parties receive funding immediately after an election based on their share of the vote at that election. We do, however, support the maintenance of a cap on the dollar value of parties' electronic broadcast advertising. We request that the Commission makes recommendations to the Government along these lines
There should also be a thorough investigation into whether parties should be allowed to spend their own funds on electronic broadcasting up to a spending cap in order to remove the extraordinary advantage currently enjoyed by the two main parties due to the much larger financial allocations they receive from the Commission. We request that the Commission conduct such an investigation.
e.Political Representatives on Electoral Commission
The Green Party repeats its opposition in principle to political party representatives being appointed to the Electoral Commission and supports the Commission's unanimous recommendation to successive Electoral Law Select Committees that political party representatives be removed from the Commission to ensure its integrity and independence. We look forward to the Commission restating its position when it reports on the broadcasting funding allocations.
f.Feedback on the conditions imposed on the expenditure of broadcast allocation in 2002
The condition imposed by the Commission in the 2002 election, of requiring parties to notify the Commission of election programme bookings as soon as those bookings were made, proved to be more of a nuisance than a useful service.
