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It’s censorship, John, but not as we know it
By Steven | August 15, 2008
Poor John Boscowan. He’s been censored.
I know this, because he’s got “censored” written across his full-page Sunday Star-Times ad opposing the Electoral Finance Act.
Yes, apart from being one of the few people in the country able to afford to express his views in 850 words in a full-page ad in one of the nation’s biggest newspapers, he’s been gagged.
And that gag is contained in the Electoral Finance Act. That dastardly law muzzles people like him wanting to spend money on political ads. They have to register and are limited to spending $120,000 if they want to publish an ad … like this one. Oh hang on. Not this one. No, this is an issue ad. It’s not caught by the EFA. So it doesn’t matter than John has spent more than $120,000, and hasn’t registered. In fact, his advice is that he doesn’t have to.
So what this ad really does is prove that you can still engage in some fairly nakedly electoral-type political speech without infringing the EFA. And John’s point was…?
Oh yes. “There’s much we dare not say, and you’ll never know what it is! That’s censorship. Pure and simple.”
“Dare not say” … because that speech is banned, and he’d risk prosecution for it? No. “Dare not say” because he’d have to register and be subject to the spending limits. So in fact, he could say pretty much anything he wants, but has chosen not to, in order to keep outside the EFA’s regime, which requires a degree of transparency and some financial checks that he doesn’t want to bother himself with. And fair enough, too. But this doesn’t look like censorship to me.
Fortunately for the good of the country, I am here to say the things that he fears not to. What he wants to say is: “Don’t vote for the parties who voted for the EFA”.
What? You thought that was pretty obvious, despite his transparent attempt to gussie up the ad as a plea to politicians to repeal the law? So again, we can thank John for demonstrating so graphically that the EFA isn’t censoring issue-related speech, even when it has a partisan flavour.
Well done, that man.
Topics: Censorship, Electoral speech, Protest speech | Comments Off on It’s censorship, John, but not as we know it