Defunding the police is not Green Party policy. At a panel last month Paul said police resources could be used more productively, and suggested other agencies and organisations were better placed to take on some of police’s functions.
I can only imagine there would be a transfer of funding to those organisations at the same time, surely?
Woah woah woah… We can do this?
I can make a billboard that says “legalise shooting poor people, vote Act” and that’s legal so long as I put a disclaimer in tiny writing at the bottom?
What about Facebook advertising, we know micro-targeting happens where people get ads that only show them policies they are likely to support. Can I pay for ads that show real Act policies, like “remove all building regulations, vote Act”? And target them at people likely to be non-billionaire Act voters?
Honestly, if you were careful with your phrasing, you probably could.
ACT are in favour of less health and safety regulations in the building industry, for example.
I guess I just assumed there were strict political advertising rules. Every political ad says something like “authorised by Act party [etc]” so I assumed this meant political advertising had to be authorised by the party. But perhaps this is just so you know that ad was actually published by them (otherwise it would be false advertising I guess).
Man, this would open up so many opportunities if I had the money to spend 20 cents per view on facebook ads!
This was done by the sensible sentencing trust so it’s third party expenditures. It doesn’t count as campaigning. You are going to see a lot more of this stuff. Farmers groups, business groups, churches etc are going to be going all out to make sure NACT gets another term to continue to push for deregulation, dismantling of environmental protections, privatisation, cutting of services, and pushing a more christian fundamentalist agenda on to the public.
In this case the advertisement is an out and out lie. Apparently you can buy a billboard to push any lie you want in the political sphere.
I suspect this is just the beginning. When the election rolls around the various right wing groups will spend hundreds of thousands buying billboards and advertising on social media peddling all kinds of lies just like they did in the US.
They know that the right wing voters can’t and won’t distinguish between a lie and the truth and don’t even care about the truth. They just want to be told how evil greens and labour are and NACT are certainly willing and able to tell them what they want to hear.
Mark my words, there will be our versions of pizzagate and adrenochrome blood harvesting conspiracy theories being spread around.
We are so fucked. We have a gullible population that trusts what they read in the media, we have a media unwilling to challenge the the lies, we have deep pockets who want tax cuts and privatisation and we have parties willing to give them everything they want in exchange for golden parachutes after they leave parliament.