Image: Tina Tiller/Electoral Commission

OPINIONPoliticsSeptember 30, 2020

Why overseas meddling in the New Zealand election is good for everybody

Guest writer

Image: Tina Tiller/Electoral Commission

With overseas voting in the general election opening today, a new campaign is urging the estimated one million New Zealanders abroad to exercise their democratic right.

Don’t be alarmed when you see Viktor inciting eligible offshore New Zealanders to meddle, meddle, meddle as the nonpartisan initiative Every Kiwi Vote Counts launches today. The foil is intentionally disruptive but what’s driving it is pure: the belief that democracy only works if we are all part of it.

With one million New Zealanders living overseas, global Kiwis represent +20% to our resident population. And yet only 61,452 New Zealanders, a conservatively estimated one in 10 eligible voters, voted in the last election.

Shouldn’t we be concerned? Hint: yes. This is bad for us all.

Which is why you see the Electoral Commission reaching out to the vote ghost, concerned that half of 18 to 24-year-olds didn’t vote in the 2017 election. Because, ultimately, the vision for the future of New Zealand should include the future of New Zealand: our youth. So too should it include overseas New Zealanders.

New Zealanders have been moving around the world and back again since time immemorial. Being adventurers with a global outlook and ambition is part of what makes us us. In recognition of New Zealanders’ mobility, the civilian overseas vote was granted in the Electoral Act of 1956.

Viktor, the star of the Every Kiwi Vote Counts campaign (Photo: Supplied)

The staggering potential brain gain New Zealanders returning under Covid-19 represent is on the radar, but it’s worth noting an average of 35,000 New Zealanders return each year, since 2010. We’re increasingly likely to be “circular migrants”, as I am: living in New York, Shanghai and Amsterdam during my career, each time returning home and putting those skills to good use in New Zealand. While offshore, we fly the flag and make critical inroads for New Zealand, as Kea is a recognition of. We stay connected, we visit home, run businesses and invest in New Zealand.

Global Kiwis have a unique and useful perspective. They represent a quarter of our tertiary educated population. As New Zealand citizens, they have been exposed to different systems, cultures and workplaces. Just as “intellectual diversity” is recognised as a benefit to boards, we would benefit from diversity of thinking in our voters. Their vision for New Zealand is long term, just as the challenges we face as a nation are.

It’s time we faced our future as a team of six million. Covid-19 has exposed the vulnerability of global New Zealanders when we don’t consider ourselves to be so. New Zealanders in Australia on special visas are without a safety net; there was no consultation about the introduction of the economic necessity of quarantine costs; and there are overseas New Zealanders who are unable to vote in this election with the disruption to travel and three year eligibility rule.

My ask of overseas New Zealanders: use your legitimate right to vote in election 2020. Vote because you are us. You are part of team New Zealand. Vote because voting matters. We are living in a time when people are fighting for the right to vote and facing voter suppression. It has never been more important to exert your right to vote.

Vote because you do know the issues. The pandemic and climate change have been a great equaliser. The challenges of the global economy, inequality and planet are universal.

The Spinoff-hosted Policy and Massey University’s Design + Democracy project, On The Fence, have made it simple to find the party that delivers on what’s most important to you.

Vote because your vote counts. One million New Zealanders is the equivalent of the electoral population of the South Island. A conservative estimate of 600,000 eligible voters puts overseas New Zealanders at 10 times the size of Auckland Central, 10 times Wellington Central, 10 times Christchurch Central and most electorates. Consider that.

Vote because participation is the pathway to representation. If you’re voting in the last place you resided in New Zealand, chances are the MP of New Plymouth is not going to bat for you. In the short term, we need a minister of overseas New Zealanders, as Ireland has. Ultimately, you should have political representation, as 11 other countries, including France, Italy and Portugal do. That way, you’d have a global MP who was focused on matters that affect and are important to you. None of that is possible without participation.

Last, but not least, vote because it’s never been easier to. When Kea initiated an overseas voter drive in 2008, it found 90% were interested in voting but lacked information on how to. Once voting involved electoral roll deadlines, international mail and a trip to the consulate, but since 2014, it’s moved online, so there’s really no practical excuse. You can enrol and vote right up to the election, on October 17.

Don’t let Russia be more interested in influencing general elections than we are. Let’s create a positive online influence. Let’s get to it.

Tracey Lee is a brand strategist, sociologist and return Kiwi who has spent 15 years voting from overseas and written a thesis on return migration.

Keep going!

Winston Peters addresses a meeting in Invercargill in July. (Photo by Dianne Manson/Getty Images)

OPINIONPoliticsSeptember 30, 2020

Nothing to do with the NZ First Party? Seriously laughable

Andrew Geddis

Contributing writer

Winston Peters addresses a meeting in Invercargill in July. (Photo by Dianne Manson/Getty Images)

Winston Peters claims complete exoneration, but the idea the fundraising activities of the NZ First Foundation are unlinked to the party just won’t wash, writes electoral law expert Andrew Geddis.

The Serious Fraud Office’s announcement that it has charged two people with “obtaining by deception” after its investigation into the New Zealand First Foundation is both really big news and also pretty unsurprising.

It’s big news because we’re only days away from voting opening in the 2020 election, and criminal charges have been laid in relation to the operation of a fundraising vehicle used by the party of the country’s deputy prime minister. Sure, that party may be languishing at 1% in the most recent poll and appeared to have little-to-no chance of returning to parliament even before this news broke, but it’s still an unprecedented development for New Zealand politics.

At the same time, however, anyone who has had a close look at how this NZ First Foundation was operating knew that big trouble was coming down the tracks. The Electoral Commission concluded that it had failed to handle donations in accordance with electoral law. The burning question then was, had anyone involved with it committed any prosecutable offences? And the length of time that the SFO was looking at that issue shortened the odds considerably in favour of an affirmative answer to that question.

We can’t really comment on that question at the moment, as the two defendants have name suppression. But what we do know is that they are not “a minister, sitting MP, or candidate in the upcoming election (or a member of their staff), or a current member of the New Zealand First Party”. Does that then mean that, as Winston Peters claims, the NZ First party has been “exonerated” by the SFO’s charging decision?

If it has been, then the NZ First party has a funny way of showing it. Because it turns out that it has spent the last few days fighting furiously in the courts to stop the SFO from announcing its charging decision to the public. Those cases rightly failed – but if Winston Peters really is so happy that “after months of this cloud hanging over the party … we have been fully cleared”, why exactly was he trying so hard to stop the public finding out that this is the case?

Of course, Winston Peters also is claiming that he is being “Comeyed” by the SFO; trying to liken its charging decision to former FBI head James Comey’s announcement in 2016 that Hillary Clinton was being investigated for misuse of her email system. To which I give a hard eye-roll. Comey’s announcement was that an investigation was merely being started – one that ultimately led to no charges at all (because there was no evidence of any wrongdoing). The SFO’s announcement is that it has now found enough evidence to justify bringing quite serious criminal charges against individuals.

And what was the SFO really meant to do once it had done so? Sit on the information even as people go out and vote, then tell them about it after the results are announced? How relaxed do you think the public would be about that happening – especially if NZ First was returned to parliament, much less holding the balance of political power?

So, Winston Peters can vent and moan about the SFO if he really wants. He can even file a somewhat curious looking claim alleging that the organisation has acted in breach of some nebulous statutory duty. That’s a classic attack-the-messenger tactic, with offence being the best form of defence and distraction being the name of the game.

And what it is aimed at is moving eyes away from the fact that the NZ First Party board agreed to set up an entity – the NZ First Foundation – specifically to take in money to help the party. That entity then raised hundreds-of-thousands of dollars in donations apparently without following the rules set out in the Electoral Act. It then used that money to pay for a whole variety of things connected to NZ First.

As a result of this fundraising and spending practice, two people now are facing quite serious criminal charges. To say this then has nothing to do with the NZ First Party, or that the SFO somehow is to blame for pressing charges based on the evidence it has obtained, is arrant nonsense. This is a bed Winston Peters and his party made. And it’s their fault if it turned out to be one made of nails.