Former NZ Herald publisher Michael Horton has applied to register as a third party and plans to spend $120,000 campaigning for the repeal of the Electoral Finance Act. Horton spoke to the NZ Herald on his plans. According to the NZ Herald article Horton was prompted into more direct political activism for 2008 by the new Electoral Finance Act, which he said was the "nationalisation of free speech".
"The act requires someone at some stage to have to censor speech and expressed opinion, because they decide whether something is political or it isn't," he said.
Advertisement
"We are going to have a bit of a Soviet Union-style political commissar, an institution sitting there judging whether something is political or not. Do we really want to be having an official Government censor who for one year decides what is acceptable and what is not?"
