Darnton offers Libz political party as 'flag of convenience' for free speech

The first truck was driven through the Electoral Finance Act this morning, even before the Governor General had the chance to sign it into law.

Co-trustee of the Free Speech coalition and leader of the Libertarianz Party Bernard Darnton is offering his Party as a 'flag of convenience' for third parties wanting to spend more than the cap imposed upon them by the Electoral Finance Act.

As a registered political party, Libertarianz has a spending cap of $2.4 million dollars, twenty times what is allowed to third parties under Labour's draconian new free speech rationing rules, and Darnton sees a way to use that to promote the free speech this Government would like to muzzle. Darnton announced the new policy, explaining:

"Libertarianz is happy to authorize election advertisements for the third parties that Labour has tried to crack down on. We've never spent anything like $2 million dollars on an election campaign, so we've got plenty of room to spare.

"Free speech is far too important to let the Clark regime and its cronies flush it away. We will fight this law all the way to the election and we'd like to help groups that might otherwise be excluded from the election to do the same."

Darnton invited all third parties who wanted to include their spending under the Libertarianz cap to contact him to discuss the details:
BERNARD DARNTON
Phone: 021 324 466
Email: bernard.darnton@libertarianz.org.nz

UPDATE: The Free Speech Coalition has begun its billboard campaign in earnest this morning against the parties who voted the Electoral Finance Act into law.

"The Electoral Finance Act was correctly labeled by the New Zealand Herald as an "Attack on Democracy" so we think it is fitting that Democracy should attack back," said spokesman David Farrar.

Three billboards are initially going up. One in Auckland targeting Helen Clark (above), one in Tauranga for Winston Peters (below) and one in Wellington for Peter Dunne [or the Greens]. "They are a clear statement," says trustees David Farrar, Cameron Slater and Bernard Darnton, "that we regard their legislation as anti-democratic and unconstitutional. MPs are there to serve the public, not to silence the public...

"We hope the public enjoy the billboards over summer. We only have funding to keep them up for a month but will be asking people to donate to keep them up longer, or to allow us to roll out more billboards in more cities."

You can buy more billboards for the Coalition at their website.