Putting your home address on an authorisation statement is risky, and it was always intended to be intimidating. We all know the types that do this sort of thing.
From Family First’s email:
Last Saturday night, four women dressed in black came to our family home in South Auckland and placed almost 1,000 plastic knives into our front lawn. They also taped an intimidating note on our front door relating to the knives (anonymous of course!).
I am very thankful that my family and I were in Tauranga over the weekend and my children didn’t stumble across the display. The police have taken away evidence and are testing for fingerprints etc. and our neighbours kindly helped removed the offending items. My neighbours are wondering what sort of friends I have!!
Unfortunately, under the Electoral Finance Act, any material put out by Family First has to have an ‘Authorisation Statement’ which contains the residential address of the person authorising the material. Therefore, because of our VALUE YOUR VOTE campaign, it is fairly easy to figure out where we live.
BUT the need to publish important information relating to these family issues and the upcoming General Election is too important to stay silent on. (We are aware of other groups who have had second thoughts on speaking up because of this requirement.)
I knew that ‘speaking out’ would draw criticism and labelling (and we have been certainly called a number of ‘colourful’ terms!) rather than debating the actual issues being raised – but I always hoped that the debate wouldn’t hit home as it has.
THE BOTTOM LINE IS THIS – we will not be silenced . Whenever we speak up on issues like marriage, the breakdown of family, the anti-smacking law and the role of parents, the pornography industry and public nudity, prostitution, pro-life issues including abortion and euthanasia, and many other topics that families are concerned about, we are going to make enemies . I’m the first to admit that we don’t always get it right, but we cannot afford to walk away from the opportunity we have to speak up from a family perspective on these crucial issues.
Let us hope and pray that those who performed this act of wanton intimidation are found and held accountable.
Bob speaks for me and my wife, and thousands of others. My ability (and those of my fellow Family First supporters) to support the issues that I want raised has been severely curtailed by the severe spending limits that Bob, my representative, is placed under. It directly attacks my freedom of speech, and is now being used to threaten Bob’s family.
This is what our government has resorted to, in it’s quest into retain power – opening up it’s critics to direct attacks and threats.
Update: Ah, the good old “we were joking” excuse that always seems to follow bad PR for some people.
I see you didn’t take our little prank as it was intended,
just as a little bit of harmless fun, just some plastic and
spare time, I hope you could see the funny side of it…Never-the-less were truly sorry if this has in anyway, offended
or scared you emotionally physically or mentally…Were Sorry,
Something should go here, maybe later. 
It is certainly disgraceful. We have been careful to use PO Box numbers instead of addresses wherever we can get away with it, but that isn’t often. With the EFA, pretty well anything you publish now needs a residential address. At least my blog still doesn’t.
Maybe a number of right-wing lobby groups and parties should all get together and build a fort, and use that as the residential address. Or maybe just rent a state house that has already been kindly kitted out as a fort by a gang…
The fact I even wrote that shows the law is completely crazy!