United Future votes against Electoral Finance Bill

Well, its not often a Minister votes agains a key Government bill and keeps his job.

But well done Peter Dunne - sort of. He has voted against the Electoral Finance Bill, which passed 63-57 wiht support from Greens, Anderton and NZ First.Copeland didn`t vote as he was overseas. His speech is here.I have no idea what the real reason is, given that I have been having an e-mail conversation with him over a while regarding this bill, right up to last week and he has supported it to the hilt, and opposing every amendment that would have made the bill better.

Dunne said after listening carefully to the views and feelings of New Zealanders, "we can no longer support" the Electoral Finance Bill. That is crap. If he took that line he would not have supported the anti-smacking bill.

He was not swayed by the public or his constituents - I am one - he was swayed by his political future.He basically admitted that he should naver have supported the bill up to today because it is a "self-serving attack on the freedom of our electoral process". Yet he was happy to defend it until people like me pointed out the ill logic of his stance on his United Future website and by e-mail right up to last week. Had he been genuine he would have withdrawn his support much earlier. As for Judy Turner, she is just an MP who gives Dunne two votes and may as well be a puppet.

Perhaps Dunne decided that if he supported this bill his party vote will be pretty low at the next election - an election which he wants to say "I did not support the Electoral FInance bill because it was undemocratic." Had the NZ Herald not published those two editorials, informing the wider public of this bill, public opinion would not have turned against the bill to the extent that it did, and I`m sure Dunne and his sidekick Judy Turner would have voted for the bill.

What he should have done was voted on principle against the wording of the bill, not the public perception of it. He should have killed the bill at select committee, of which he was a member. I for one will be reminding him of both until the election - and pointing out to him that if it was good enough to use the "court of public opinion " excuse to vote against the EFB, to be consistant, he should have done so for the anti-smacking bill as well.

At least he has more sense than the Greens or Winston Peters.