UPDATED: What a difference three words make...

UPDATED: Andrew Geddis from Pundit doesn't like what the Greens are doing either; Boo for my side. Boo! he says...he also notes:

There then is a broader problem with a political party so deeply involving itself in the CIR process. When this was set up, it was designed to be a way in which broader civil society can send a message to parliamentarians on issues that it thinks important enough to mobilise around. (Actually, it was designed to be a sop to public outrage with politicians that might be enough to stop them voting to change the electoral system ... but never mind that for now.)

So to now have a political party effectively bankrolling the process of forcing a CIR represents something of a distortion of its intent. (I note that Labour is somewhat implicated in this as well, albeit without apparently providing the same financial muscle.) Essentially, it is turning CIR's from expressions of the views of a self-organising general public into yet another campaign tool deployed to advance the particular interests of organised political parties that are funded through public subsidies.

Now, again I foresee responses to this. The Greens are simply providing people the opportunity to sign the petition, not paying people to support the cause. If 300,000 people then sign up to it, this itself is an indication that the public genuinely do care about the issue. 

OK. That's fine. But there's still a couple of flow on consequences from this action.

First, it becomes pretty hard to rail against the influence of money in politics when you yourself are spending money trying to influence politics. For example, the Green Party's policy proposal on campaign finance reform reads:

No person or entity can donate more than $35,000 to a political party in any twelve month period. This would need to include rules to make it illegal to split up large donations into lots smaller than $35,000 to avoid this cap.

So why exactly is giving more than $35,000 to a political party to spend on trying to achieve political outcomes A Bad Thing, whilst spending $50,000 (at least) on trying to achieve political outcomes is A Good Thing? Sure, you can maybe square the circle - there's the concern about corruption, or the like - but it becomes a tougher argument to make when you have to start from the position of justifying why you should be able to do something that others cannot.

Doing one thing whilst telling others to do something else; there's a word for that, isn't there?

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Stuff carries a story (belatedly; we reported it on Tuesday!) about the Green Party recruiting people to obtain signatures for the asset sales referendum. Danya Levy's story begins thus:

The Green Party is spending $50,000 paying people to collect signatures for a citizens-initiated referendum on asset sales.

The equivalent of 10 fulltime staff have been hired for the next six to eight weeks in Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin.

The Greens also have a volunteer army of about 2000 Auckland-based "issues assistants" helping with the campaign and have budgeted a further $28,000 for related sundries. 

Unfortunately, Ms Levy has left out three crucial words in the opening line, which should read:

 The Green Party is spending $50,000 OF TAXPAYERS' MONEY paying people to collect signatures for a citizens-initiated referendum on asset sales.

You see, most reasonable people don't like their taxes being spent on political hackery. $78,000 would put another teacher in a school. $78,000 would buy a few elective operations. $78,000 would put another policeman on the streets. There are far better uses for $78,000 of your money and ours than paying people to harass pedestrians to sign a petition which is based on a mistruth in any event; no assets are being sold.

Whilst it's great that this issue has been aired in the MSM, albeit almost 72 hours after it broke in the blogosphere, those three words would have changed the whole tenor of the story and the way it was read by those stumbling across it.

And in the meantime, we understand that the Speaker has been asked to rule on whether or not this is an appropriate use of taxpayer money. We wonder what the Green Party will do if the Speaker rules that it is not.