EPMU, Electoral Commission, and jurisdictional facts

> Electoral Commission: "meeting summary" > DomPost: "Unions able to register as third parties" > KiwiBlog: "EPMU allowed to register - again" The Electoral Commission has registered the EPMU as a third party, after reconsidering its eligibility after the High Court ruled it had misinterpreted the provision allowing registration. The critical provision is section 13 of the Electoral Finance Act:

13 Persons eligible to be third party (1) A person is eligible to be listed as a third party if the person is— (a) a New Zealand citizen or ordinarily resident in New Zealand; or (b) a body corporate that is not an overseas person within the meaning of the Overseas Investment Act 2005; or (c) an unincorporated body of which the majority of its members are persons described in paragraph (a). (2) The following are ineligible to be a third party: ... (f) a person involved in the administration of— (i) the affairs of a party; or (ii) the affairs of a candidate in relation to his or her election campaign.

The Electoral Commission has obviously made the judgement that the EPMU is not "involved in the administration of the affairs of a party". A number of people have expressed surprise at this conclusion, with the EPMU being affiliated in various ways to the Labour Party.

Now, I don't have a particular view either way whether that's correct or not. What I'm interested in is how a supervising court might review that decision, if a judicial review of the decision is taken in the High Court. The appropriate methodology is, I think, surprisingly unclear.

First, though, dealing with a matter which is clear. If the Electoral Commission has made an error of law and has misinterpreted the meaning of words or phrases like "involved in the administration" or "affairs of a party", then the High Court will intervene to correct the error (Peters v Davison). A "correctness" standard applies, that is, the court will focus on whether the Electoral Commission has applied the correct meaning. The courts consider it is "in fulfilment of their constitutional role as interpreters of the written law" to determine what the law means - no latitude or deference is given to an administrative body's interpretation of a statute (Bulk Gas).

Secondly, assuming the Electoral Commission has properly directed itself on the meaning of the section, the factual assessment or judgement of whether the EPMU satisfies the statutory standard is different.

On the one hand, there is an argument that that factual assessment circumscribes the jurisdiction of the Electoral Commission to act and register the body as a third party. Any error made in that (factual) assessment leads to the Electoral Commission exceeding the jurisdiction conferred by Parliament, meaning it has acted unlawfully; this mandates the High Court to intervene and overturn the decision (Zerek, White and Collins, and Khawaja; also (arguably) Discount Brands). Sometimes this approach is described as the doctrine of jurisdictional fact (or precedent fact). It represents a gloss on the usual principle that courts will be reluctant to intervene and overturn an administrative body's fact-finding, judgement, and - in general terms, the "merits" of the decision; such matters having been delegated by Parliament to the administrative body to determine, not the courts.

On the other hand, some of our courts have been sceptical about framing the approach in terms of jurisdictional terms. Instead, the courts have examined whether it is constitutional appropriate for the courts to intervene and substitute its view on a factual conclusion for that of the administrative body, based on a contextual assessment of the appropriate degree of deference to be accorded to decisions of the body (Hawkins). Relevant factors include the constitutional allocation of the function (and discretion) to the body by the legislature, the (comparative) expertise of the courts and body in making that assessment, the other (legal and non-legal) checks and balances that apply to that assessment within the existing legal regime, etc. The upshot of this more deferential approach is that the courts may determine that it is constitutionally appropriate for them not to second-guess the assessment of the Electoral Commission except if it is unreasonable in the traditional administrative law sense (usually, equivalent to "irrationality" but, in some cases, sometimes unreasonableness in its simple and ordinary sense).

For my own part, I think the better approach is to regard the supervision of "jurisdictional" fact-finding as being subject to a variable intensity of review, depending on the context. Elsewhere I've argued that a continuum of standards of review should apply:

(a) non-justiciable; (b) flagrant impropriety; (c) manifest unreasonableness; (d) simple unreasonableness; (e) incorrectness.

(See Dean R Knight, "A Murky Methodology: Standards of Review in Administrative Law" (2008) 6 NZJPIL 117 (forthcoming).)

Based on the particular context, any one of these standards might apply.

In this context, I suspect a contextual assessment of the nature, function, expertise and accountability of Electoral Commission suggests that it should be accorded some deference in relation to the factual assessment has been made, that is, the incorrectness standard (allowing the court to intervene simply because it disagrees with the factual assessment) should not apply. Most likely is that one of the reasonableness standards should apply. Given the significance of the factual conclusion in the overall regime, there might be an argument that it should be subject to the simple unreasonableness standard - that is, the Electoral Commission would be given some latitude, but not a lot, in making this assessment (or, in other words, the factual assessment need not trigger the stringent standard of "the defiance of logic" for the court to intervene).

I watch for any judicial review application with interest.

ONE News Colmar Brunton Poll: July 2008 - TVNZ response

> LAWS179: "ONE News Colmar Brunton Poll: July 2008" A prompt and self-explanatory response from TVNZ and its pollsters below. It's a little trap to be aware of if one is re-calculating the poll numbers based on other assumptions. For example, I know that David Farrar's Curiablog has been re-calculating the seats in the House based on the published figures and has similarly ended up with different figures to TVNZ. I've asked if TVNZ's pollsters could make the more precise figures available - but we'll see. ------------------------- Subject: RE: ONE News Colmar Brunton Poll: July 2008 The reason Dean gets a different result is due to rounding. As you know within the report, for Party Support, we round figures up or down that fall above 5% and for anything below this, we present the percentages to one decimal place. In the rubric at at the front of the report we do mention this: "...For Party Support, percentages have been rounded up or down to whole numbers, except those less than 5% which are reported to 1 decimal place...". So in the last report the figures were as follows: - National 51.8% (which we rounded up to 52%) - Labour 35.2% (which we rounded down to 35%) - Green Party 5.9% (which we rounded up to 6%) - New Zealand First 2.4% - Etc When we calculate seat allocation, we in fact use the actual number of respondents stating a preference for a party, rather than using percentages (either rounded or unrounded) so we can be as precise as possible. See tab 'CB Calc'. In the following tab, in the attached Excel document, 'On line calc', you will see three sets of computations taken from the Elections New Zealand on-line seat calculator. These are: - Result A - Seat allocation using the actual numbers - how we normally do this calculation. This gives us the same result as on tab 'CB Calc'. - Result B - Seat allocation using unrounded percentages. On this occasion it gave the same result as A) - Result C - Seat allocation using rounded percentages. This is how, I think, Dean did it - and it is the use of these rounded percentages (that fall above 5%) that gives us this variation, on this occasion. In short, the issue is 'rounding'. ... -------------------------

ONE News Colmar Brunton Poll: July 2008

Below is a self-explanatory email sent to Guyon Espiner today about ONE News' opinion poll results from last night: -------------------- From: Dean Knight Sent: Monday, 21 July 2008 1:32 p.m. To: guyon.espiner@... Subject: ONE News Colmar Brunton Poll: July 2008 Kia ora Guyon I'm writing to seek some clarification about the results of the recent poll as reported by you. Based on the raw party support percentages reported in your item and assumptions reported by you, the Electoral Commission's Sainte-Laguë calculator produces different results for the "seats in the House" snap-shot, namely: - National 65 - Labour 44 - Progressive 1 - NZ First 0 - Green 8 - United Future 1 - Maori 4 - ACT 1 Total 124 In contrast, your item only gives the Greens 7 seats and gives ACT one extra seat. I would be grateful if you could clarify the basis of your calculations. I suspect the differences may arise from the rounding of the party vote percentages by your polling company; however, it is not apparent from your item or material on TVNZ's website whether the differences are due to more precise computations or a mere error. Although such differences or errors may be arithmetically minor, the results of the polls are significant due to their ability to influence voters – particularly due to their ongoing currency in other media and commentators. The BSA recently upheld a complaint against 3 News for errors in reporting opinion polls (Knight v TVWorks Ltd (2008-023)). Regards --------------------

Electoral Finance Act and the CLO advice

> KiwiwBlog: "The Electoral Finance Act threesome"

In a comment elsewhere, I ventilated some more of my views on the EFA and the CLO advice. I thought I'd repost them here for general consumption:

If I can expand on my rather bald statement that people are discussing.

A number of people think CLO just screwed up the value judgement.

Personally, I take issue with the advice on a different basis. I think they applied erroneous methodology (albeit methodology which I understand they routinely apply) - although I’m not sure other scholars necessarily agree with my criticism.

My concern is this statement in their advice:

In reaching my conclusion I have taken into account that the regulation of the electoral system ultimately depends upon political judgments and is an area in which a wide margin of appreciation is afforded to Parliament.

While that is undoubtedly correct, I’m not convinced it should be applied, on an ex ante basis, to advice feeding into that process where those political judgements are to made. Yes, the courts will respect and defer to the judgements made by politicians, but that respect needs to be earned. If politicians grapple with the balancing process required in the judgement, then the courts will defer to them and accord their judgement a reasonable degree of latitude, especially when its a matter on which there is not one “correct” solution or answer (and that means the judgement of the Human Rights Commission is not necessarily any better than CLO’s, the AG’s, the Nats’ or yours or mine…)

The risk of incorporating “off the shelf” deference into the vetting process is that it gives the politicians the impression that the legislation is fine and they need not grapple with the Bill of Rights implications. That’s not the case in my view.

We saw this in some respects early on when the CLO advice was trotted out to summarily repel arguments about the Bill of Rights. However, I think we also saw - later on - more genuine attempts on behalf of politicians on both sides of the House to come to terms with the balancing process and to grapple with where the line should be drawn. Thankfully the initial comfort given by the CLO opinion did not taint the entire process. And, in many respects, the debate about the EFB was probably the most sophisticated and intense debate about its Bill of Rights implications. Ultimately, a success, rather than the failure of the Bill of Rights.

One way I’ve been thinking about the methodological questions is in terms of traffic lights. That is, I wonder if the role of the MoJ/CLO and AG is to vet the legislation according to 3 categories:

1. Green light: legislation which clearly does not raise any Bill of Rights implications, such as where the measure is clearly justifiable.

2. Orange light: legislation which has Bill of Rights implications but is in a zone where its justifiability is finely balanced and significant political evaluation of the proportionality of the measure to the rights breaches is needed. If this is done, then the courts are likely to defer to and accept these judgements.

3. Red light: legislation which raises serious Bill of Rights implications which are so inconsistent that they are not capable of being justified.

I thought the EFB(Mk I) was either in the orange or red light zone, probably the latter.

But I’m happy to go on record in saying that I think the EFA (Mk II), as passed, fell very much in the orange light category. There are strong public objectives being achieved by the legislation. While the legislation of course places limits on rights, these within the zone of justifiability. The legislation is not quite as I might have drafted it but the measures are within the discretionary area of judgement such that its the legislation is not inconsistent with the Bill of Rights.

Of course, there are still some quirks and anomalies in the legislation we’re still working through in the “shake down period” (nothing new when dealing with new legislation). But these will be resolved to give some certainty. The legislation will be interpreted benevolently to give effect the purpose of the Act and, as much as possible, ensuring compliance with rights. The ludicrous hypothetical interpretations that people have been dreaming up won’t result - consistent with standard interpretative practice, the EC and the courts will strive to ensure they don’t result!

In any event, the culture of triviality where people are dobbing in each other for the most minor of breaches shouldn’t distract from the fact that, at its heart, the legislation has a sound, pressing and substantial foundation. It would be nice to continue to debate that philosphical foundation, rather than being distracted by side-shows about whether balloons or tattoos need promoter statements…

Nine to Noon: the Electoral Finance Act, the Bill of Rights and the Attorney-General

> NinetoNoon: "Legal" [or podcast] This morning I was talking with Kathryn Ryan on Nine to Noon about the Electoral Finance Act, the Bill of Rights and the role of the Attorney-General. The audio links are above. Below I've set out some of the things we discussed, in an expanded and referenced form. Background Recently there has been some litigation about Electoral Finance Act, including various decisions made by Electoral Commission: - A ruling from the High Court that the Electoral Commission was wrong to take the view the EPMU wasn't a "person" and therefore was not prohibited from being a third party because of its alleged involvement "in the administration of the affairs of a party".[1] - An unsuccessful challenge from the National Party to the Electoral Commission's decision not to refer an illegal leaflet (a Labour Party "We're making a difference" pamphlet, without the required promoter statement) under the insignificant provision to its reporting duty (ie, the "offence is so inconsequential that there's no public interest in reporting to the New Zealand Police").[2] However, I want to concentrate on one particular legal challenge that was rejected a couple of weeks again that raises broader questions about the Bill of Rights and the role of the Attorney-General, Boscawen and others v Attorney-General.[3] What was the case about? Late last year, a number of people (John Boscawen, Garth McVicar from Sensible Sentencing, (the late) Graham Stairmand from Greypower, Rodney Hide from ACT) sued – by way of judicial review – the Attorney-General arguing that he breached his duty to advise Parliament that the (then) Electoral Finance Bill was inconsistent with the Bill of Rights. Based on advice from the Crown Law Office, the Attorney-General did not issue a (so-called) section 7 report on the Bill, taking the view that the Bill was not inconsistent with the Bill of Rights. Even though the EFB prima facie restricted people's freedom of expression protected under section 14 of the Bill of Rights, the Crown Law Office advice was that any restrictions were justified. However, the did note that this conclusion was was "finely balanced". I'll come back to that advice and that question later. What is a section 7 report? The obligation to issue a section 7 report comes from section 7 of the Bill of Rights:

s 7 Attorney-General to report to Parliament where Bill appears to be inconsistent with Bill of Rights Where any Bill is introduced into the House of Representatives, the Attorney-General shall,— (a) In the case of a Government Bill, on the introduction of that Bill; or (b) In any other case, as soon as practicable after the introduction of the Bill,— bring to the attention of the House of Representatives any provision in the Bill that appears to be inconsistent with any of the rights and freedoms contained in this Bill of Rights.

Basically it requires the Attorney-General to "bring to the attention of the House" any Bill or provision that "appears to be inconsistent with any of the rights and freedoms contained in this Bill of Rights" when in it introduced to Parliament. What's the rationale for this reporting role? This obligation goes back to the moderate role intended for the bill of rights. Unlike Canada and the United States, our courts are not entitled to strike down legislation that is inconsistent with the Bill of Rights. Instead, we have a "parliamentary bill of rights" where processes are put in place to ensure that the Executive and Parliament pay attention to the Bill of Rights when designing legislation. As Sir Geoffrey Palmer once said, the Bill of Rights was designed to be "a set of navigation lights for the whole process of government to observe".[4] The Attorney-General's obligation to draw Parliament's attention to the legislation which appears to breach the Bill of Rights is the cornerstone of this model. The obligation to "bring to the attention of the House" any inconsistencies means theoretically Parliament consciously endorses and mandates any limitations placed on rights in the pursuit of countervailing government imperatives. How does the Attorney-General bring it to the attention of the House? The reporting role has now been formalised in Standing Orders.[5] The Attorney-General tables a formal report in the House setting out a detailed explanation of why he or she has formed the view that the legislation is inconsistent with the Bill of Rights. How common is a section 7 report? By my count, 20 government Bills and 23 non-government Bills have been indentified by the AG as being inconsistent with the Bill of Rights. (As an aside, usually Bill of Rights implications of government bills are teased out through the internal governmental processes. In contrast, Member's Bill and Local or Private Bill are sometimes a bit more raw!) Who actually assesses whether a bill complies with the Bill of Rights? The Ministry of Justice advise the Attorney-General on the consistency of all Bills with the Bill of Rights Act. In the case of bills developed by the Ministry of Justice, the Crown Law Office takes over this responsibility. All advice since 2003 has been made publicly available on the Ministry of Justice website.[6]

However, the ultimate responsibility lies with the Attorney to determine and assess compliance. Whether there is any independent judgement is not something we know but would be rare. It is presumed, however, that the Attorney-General acts in their independent capacity – separate from the political and Cabinet process – when undertaking this role. What are they looking for? What does "appears to be inconsistent with any of the rights and freedoms contained in this Bill of Rights" mean? In practice, the Attorney-General only reports when they consider the bill actually breaches the Bill of Rights. By that we mean:(a) the bill prima facie limits one of the rights contained in the Bill of Right, and(b) the bill is not justified as a reasonable limit under section 5 of the Bill of Rights ("the rights and freedoms contained in this Bill of Rights may be subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society".) All the action is in section 5, assessing whether the Bill is a reasonable limit on a right. The Attorney-General and courts (as interpreters of the Bill of Rights) have developed a relatively sophisticated "proportionality" test or calculus for undertaking this assessment. In simple terms, is the bill necessary, suitable and appropriate? More formally, questions like: - How important or significant is the government's objective behind the bill? - Is the bill rationally connected to that objective? - How much does the bill limit the right? Does it limit it more than is reasonably necessary to achieve that objective? The key thing to realise is that assessment is very much a complex value judgement, for which there may not be an obvious, "correct" answer. Its an evaluation that is capable of reasoned disagreement! So, obviously the EFB restricts people's right to publish advertisements and therefore limits right to the freedom of expression. However, when CLO and the AG assessed the EFB, they took into account of the fact that spending limits and transparency are designed to ensure fair elections, promote participation in democracy, etc – in themselves important governmental imperatives. (Arguably, arising also from or implied from the right to "vote in genuine periodic elections" protected by section 12 of the Bill of Rights.) Their value judgement was that the provisions were generally proportionate and justified, recognising that, if this question arose in court, the courts usually defer to the political value judgements on this point, especially about whether or not there are other less rights-infringing means of achieving the same outcome. That's the assessment that was the target of the plaintiffs' claim; that conclusion meant the Attorney-General didn't report any Bill of Rights inconsistencies to Parliament. Now, it must be remembered that, at that stage, when the Bill was assessed and proceedings were filed, we were talking about the First Reading of the EFB – the more egregious version. Very few commentators and scholars thought the initial value judgement was particularly robust. However, many of the restrictions were watered down by the Select Committee and the Mark II version of the Electoral Finance Act that was actually passed did not limit the freedom of expression to the same extent. Arguably, questions of consistency with the Bill of Rights were in the zone where reasonable people could differ. The plaintiffs originally tried to get their claim heard under urgency in order that it could be ruled on prior to the Select Committee report and in order that it be capable of influencing the parliamentary process. But that was urgency application was rejected. As a result, the plaintiffs' claim morphed somewhat before it was heard in May this year: (a) they were forced to argue that the Attorney-General had a continuing duty to report inconsistencies with the Bill of Rights (which made their argument harder); and (b) they sought a "declaration of inconsistency" in relation to the EFA that was passed by Parliament. Declarations of inconsistency are a relatively controversial and uncertain remedy. It basically asks the court to give an opinion that legislation is inconsistent with the Bill of Rights, even though – as a matter of law – the court has no power to strike down the legislation. So what did the Court say about their claim? Actually, nothing on the merits of the claim or the consistency of the EFB with the Bill of Rights. There was a bigger hurdle the plaintiffs needed to get over first: parliamentary privilege. The Attorney-General applied to strike out the claim pre-emptively on the basis that that reviewing the actions or non-action of the Attorney-General in the Parliament breached article 9 of the Bill of Rights 1688 (UK):[7]

"Freedom of speech—That the freedome of speech and debates or proceedings in Parlyament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parlyament."

That is, the long established principle of the non-interference by the courts in parliamentary proceedings. It's the same freedom the allows MPs to be immune for things that they say in speeches in Parliament.

The plaintiffs basically argued that privilege should be read more narrowly and didn't apply to the Attorney-General's reporting duty; in other words, their claim did not touch the internal proceedings of Parliament. And, more importantly, the whole rationale of the parliamentary Bill of Rights relies on the Attorney-General giving accurate advice on compliance or non-compliance with the Bill of Rights.

The Court agreed with the Attorney-General and struck out the claim. In a nut-shell the Court ruled that action of the Attorney-General was a parliamentary function and therefore was cloaked by parliamentary privilege. Therefore it could not be challenged in the courts.

That is consistent with the couple of other cases that have considered the point. Not many of us were that surprised by that part of the ruling. And, if the case had been successful and the Bill of Rights scrutinisation process was opened up to supervision by the courts, that may have involved a shift in our constitutional balance. If you think of our constitutional checks and balances in terms of a continuum. At the one end, we have political constitutionalism, where political actors are principally responsible for ensuring compliance with constitutional norms and human rights values. At the other end, we have legal constitutionalism where the courts are primarily responsible for this task. Presently, we have a mixture of both types of checks and balances in our system. But if the case succeeded, it would have moved us closer to the legal constitutionalism end of the continuum, where unelected courts have greater power and authority over these matters.

It's also interesting to see the Court also struck out the plaintiffs request for declarations of inconsistency. Not on the basis that a declaration would breach parliamentary privilege but because of uncertainty about whether such relief is available and a question about whether the . I was a little surprised by this one because this part of the challenge appeared to have some merit and wasn't complicated by the parliamentary privilege point.

Where does that leave the plaintiffs? We're not sure if there will be an appeal; the appeal period is still running. A challenge like this that was pushing the boundaries a bit was always going to be difficult. And might have a better chance of success the higher up the judicial system it goes. If the decision is not appealed, the question of the Bill of Rights might arise in litigation or prosecutions under the EFA – but more in an indirect way.

REFERENCES: [1] Kirk v Electoral Commission (CIV 2008-485-756, 21 May 2008). [2] Kirk v The Electoral Commission (CIV 2008-485-805, 9 June 2008). [3] Boscawen v Attorney-General (CIV 2007-485-2418 20 June 2008). [4] G Palmer, "Introduction" in A Bill of Rights for New Zealand – A White Paper (Government Printer, Wellington, 1985) 6. [5] Standing Order 266. [6] Ministry of Justice, "Advice provided by the Ministry of Justice and the Crown Law Office to the Attorney-General on the consistency of Bills with the Bill of Rights Act 1990" [7] Applying in New Zealand through section 3(1) of the Imperial Laws Application Act 1988.

OTHER RESOURCES: - Andrew Butler and Petra Butler, The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act: a commentary (LexisNexis, Wellington, 2005) Chapter 8, "Attorney-General's Duty to Report to Parliament") - Paul Rishworth et al, The Zealand Bill of Rights (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003), Chapter 6, "The Attorney-General's Reporting Role" - Claudia Geiringer, "The Dead Hand of the Bill of Rights?" (2007) 11 Otago Law Review 389