legal disclaimer
Authority
Please note that some of the content items posted on this site, particularly in the news and videos sections, were not produced by The Yes Vote coalition and do not necessarily represent the views of specific coalition members or supporters.
Copyright
All original material on this site is licensed for use under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 New Zealand License.
Legislative Requirements
The Chief Electoral Office has advised us that anyone promoting a yes vote using the Yes Vote Campaign resources (website, flyer, posters etc) or writing articles in newsletters that refer to the Yes Vote Campaign is essentially part of our campaign.
This means that your spending in reproducing and distributing our resources and messages comes within our $50,000 legal spending limit.
We need you to let us know of any spending you do so that we can meet our legal obligation to report to the Chief Electoral Office on the campaign spending within a month of the referendum decision being announced.
We anticipate that printing electronically available material, photocopying and distributing our material in the community and/or passing it on electronically will be low cost for supportive people and agencies.
We suggest costing an A4 printed sheet at 3 cents per page.
If you believe you will be spending more than $100 please contact us to discuss this.
No repayment is available for any costs but we do need to include your spending in our return. Please advise us of the costs you incur supporting this campaign.
If you are going to use or distribute material from our campaign in any way, eg remixed or mashed up, please ensure that your actions are compliant with the relevant legislation, as the Yes Vote Coalition cannot take responsibility for actions beyond our control or knowledge. In particular, you must ensure that your material clearly states the person (a real person, not an organisation) authorising its use as well as that that person’s street address.
See the Chief Electoral Office’s Postal Referendum Advertising Rules for more information.
If you’re in any doubt, contact us or the friendly people at the Electoral Commission for advice.
The bottom line is that we want to play by the rules. We appreciate your support, but please act ethically, thoughtfully, and within the law.
Background note:
Two laws, the Citizens Initiated Referenda Act 1993 and the Referenda (Postal Voting Act) 2000 cover relevant legal requirements. Both have provisions related to advertising and publicity which limit any spending promoting an answer to the referendum question to $50,000. They also require that all material has an authorisation statement on it and that we submit a report on spending after the referendum.
Responding to media inquiries and speaking to the media are exempt. Face to face meetings and discussions are not included.
If anyone is running a totally independent campaign and not using our materials, their costs are not included in our campaign but they will need to send in their own spending report to the Chief Electoral office the after the referendum.
Please contact us if you have any questions.
