Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill, Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill

I move, That the Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill and, on behalf of the Leader of the House, the Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill be now read a second time. I thank the Electoral Legislation Committee for its careful consideration of these bills. The committee had representatives from every parliamentary party and, wherever possible, sought cross-party consensus to promote an electoral finance regime that is as fair and transparent as possible to all groups and individuals participating in the electoral process. The other valuable contribution made by the committee, as reflected in its recommendations, was the way in which it balanced those goals with recognition of the practical realities of campaigning.

The committee received 44 submissions from academics, individuals, organisations, and political parties, of which the majority generally supported the bill. Submitters generally supported the intent of the bill as introduced to avoid retrospective application of the regulated period. However, some expressed concern that the Government of the day could gain a strategic advantage by knowing in advance when the regulated period could apply. The committee instead recommended that the default day for the regulated period should be amended to 2 years 9 months from the previous polling day. That will provide all parties and candidates with a backstop date when they need to take greater care with their activities.

The committee also accepted suggestions from submitters to clarify the exclusions from the definition of “election advertisement” to make it clear that it does not include editorial information, broadcasts of parliamentary proceedings, and personal political views published on the Internet for which no payment is made or received. The committee also clarified the definition of “advertising expenses” by excluding non-commercial hoarding frameworks and defining the previous exclusion for travel.

Another amended definition arose from the parallel work by the committee on the Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill—namely, that the definition of “election advertisement” in the Electoral Finance Amendment Bill should exclude the publication of MPs’ contact information that is funded by the Parliamentary Service. The committee recommended changes to further strengthen transparency and accountability on election advertising, including stricter conditions on promoter statements and prohibiting overseas persons and overseas organisations from becoming registered promoters.

The majority of the committee also recommended an expenditure cap for third-party promoters of $300,000. The Government recognises the strength of feeling from submitters regarding the influence that wealth potentially may have on election outcomes. Yet the cap is at a level that allows meaningful participation in the electoral process, assuring freedom of expression. This level is set at more than twice the level under the previous Electoral Finance Act, and applies to a regulated period that is one-quarter of the length.

Third-party promoters who spend more than $100,000 on election advertising will also need to file expense returns. For spending by candidates the committee recommended increasing the limit during the regulated period to $25,000 for a general election and to $50,000 for a by-election. It also recommended that the party expenditure limit be increased to reflect movement in the CPI and, indeed, to $25,000 for the “contested electorate” component.

In respect of donations, the committee recommended increasing the disclosure threshold to $1,500 for candidate donations and to $15,000 for political party donations. Political parties will file a specific return with the Electoral Commission for donations over $30,000. For smaller donations both the number of donations and the total amount of party donations for each so-called band will be disclosed. To reduce compliance costs the committee has replaced the associated entities regime in the bill with anti-collusion provisions. Submitters supported the advance voting provisions in the bill, so no changes were recommended.

The Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill proposes a permanent meaning of the term “funding entitlements for parliamentary purposes” that explicitly excludes funding for electioneering. The extended definition of “electioneering” clarifies that during the regulated period Parliamentary Service funding cannot be used for an election advertisement or for referendum advertising in a Government-initiated referendum. To align with proposals in the Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill the committee recommended adding a definition of “publish”. The committee recognised that the commencement of the regulated period affects whether an advertisement can be funded, so it recommended amendments to the apportionment provision for election advertisements and referendum advertising. The committee also recommended provision for the recovery of payments made by the Parliamentary Service, which it later decided to be outside of the entitlements that can be claimed.

The committee’s recommendations for Parliamentary Service funding provide clear guidance for members of Parliament and ensure that Parliamentary Service funding is not used for electioneering. These bills are the product of a long, incremental, and deliberate process of consultation with the public and political parties. I reiterate something I said at the beginning of this process many, many months ago—that only through agreement from a broad cross-section of the political spectrum can we secure an enduring electoral finance framework. Not everyone will agree with every detail. What is important is the long-term nature of the legislative framework.

I am grateful to all parties across the House for their willingness to embrace this opportunity and to discuss these matters in good faith. Ultimately, these bills will enhance the public’s confidence in the integrity of our elections by balancing fairness with freedom of expression. I commend these bills to the House.

The Labour Party will be supporting the second readings of the Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill and the Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill. We believe that we have reached a workable compromise with the Government over electoral finance laws and the relevant Parliamentary Service funding rules.

I will make just a quick comment about the Parliamentary Service rules. I am pleased that we have managed to achieve alignment between the two bills, so that there can be no question of taxpayer funds being used for any form of electioneering. I think we have clarified very carefully the rules on what sitting members of Parliament can advertise, in terms of the location of their out-of-Parliament offices, electorate offices, and those sorts of things. I think we have achieved a good result.

In terms of the electoral finance laws, there is a side issue that I will mention, just to get it out of the way. I know that there will be campaign managers from one end of the country to the other who will be so pleased that they will no longer have to account for wood used to put up hoardings, because finally we have been able to resolve that issue. I know that that is a triumph for democracy. It is a triumph for the volunteers who do so much to help us. Having to justify to them why a piece of wood or some hoarding material still has a photograph of Mary Batchelor on it, for example, in my electorate has been somewhat disturbing. That problem is going, and I know that everyone will be pleased to see it go.

There is an issue in this package that does not form part of Labour Party policy, and I am referring to the disclosure thresholds, but we will support them as part of a package in order to achieve the degree of consensus that the Minister has committed to finding. I would like to congratulate him, and to put it on the record of House that he has attempted to do that. There has to be compromise on both sides in order to achieve that—disclosure thresholds on the one hand, and spending limits on third parties on the other. We will be monitoring the disclosure rules very carefully, just to see how they work in practice. However, I will say that one of the things that will make it easier for us to do so is the requirement to disclose the number of donations in each band, as will occur under this legislation. That will enable us to assess whether there is a shift to donations to act as an avoidance mechanism of the disclosure rules.

Critical to Labour’s support for the electoral finance legislation was the ability to have spending limits imposed on third parties, to avoid what I have always described as the Americanisation of our political system. There was real debate on this issue, although a lot of the commentary in the submissions came into the territory of the Electoral Referendum Bill. I think the reason for that was that under the Electoral Referendum Bill there will be access to television advertising, and there is no access to television advertising for third parties in election campaigns.

When we get into the question of television advertising, of course the unfettered ability to spend any amount of money on television advertising is of significant concern. I think that is what drove a lot of the submissions to focus more on the Electoral Referendum Bill on that subject, rather than on this legislation. However, there was commentary from submitters on the question, and the majority of people fell on the side of there needing to be some constraint on third-party spending. The amount we agreed at the select committee was $300,000, which represents the bottom end of the range for a medium-level, nationwide ad campaign in the retail sector.

I thought it would be worthwhile talking about why we have our position on spending limits. I will go back to the 1986 Royal Commission on the Electoral System. I thought the commission’s summing up of spending limits was very useful. The commission stated: “It is neither fair nor conducive to an informed electorate if wide discrepancies in access to resources mean some parties or groups are denied the chance to communicate their views effectively. Nor is it fair if some in the community use their relative wealth to exercise disproportionate influence … it is important that the electorate is fully informed both about significant sources of political finance and about the uses to which it is put.”

I think that sums it up very well. Whether or not there is actual influence—and, as submitters said, the influence could be either way—some people might be switched off by the degree of negative advertising that is promoted by a third party. But I think the royal commission was saying that it was equally concerned about—not the fact of, but the perception of—undue influence or disproportionate influence being attracted to those who had more money to spend than other members of the community.

The legislation as introduced provided that any group or person who was not a candidate or party could publish an election advertisement, as long as it contained a promoter’s statement, which included a name and address, and as long as the total advertising expenses did not exceed more than $12,000. If those expenses totalled more than $12,000, they would have to register. That was all the legislation provided for.

I want to now talk about why we wanted this change, and I want us to go back to 2005. In 2005, for the first time, major campaigns were waged by parties and their supporters to do one of three things: to avoid the regulated period, to remain outside the existing advertising rules, or to hide their true identity. All three aspects were features of the 2005 election campaign.

Labour has been more than happy to support reform, but we were concerned that changes would simply legalise the harm that we were trying to remedy with our attempt to change the electoral finance laws back in 2008. I do not believe that the right to freedom of speech equates to the right to pay for advertising. That is not freedom of speech; that is freedom of paid advertising. It is paid speech, not free speech. I think it is a fair distinction to make between the two. It should not govern who has a say on real matters of constitutional importance. Of course people should be able to speak out freely, but I do not see that that matches what is being proposed here.

It would be worthwhile for everyone with an interest in transparent democracy to read or reread a book called The Hollow Men: A study in the politics of deception, and reflect on who sits in the House now and was identified as playing a role in a coordinated advertising campaign scripted by an organisation called Crosby/Textor. The advice given was to stop attacking the then Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Helen Clark, on her weaknesses—few that those may have been—but to attack her on her strengths. A billboard campaign that used a distorted photo of the former Prime Minister, positioning her against the smiling face of one Don Brash, was designed to do just that—and it almost worked. “Iwi/Kiwi” was one of the more infamous messages from those billboards. So when someone tells me that a lack of spending limits is about free speech, forgive me for my cynicism.

Then we had the disgraceful actions of the Exclusive Brethren, which not only sought to discredit the Government of the day, and the Green Party, in targeted brochures that failed to disclose the true identity of its promoters but also was deliberate in its attempt to do so. The Exclusive Brethren had been to the Electoral Commission with its pro - Don Brash brochures, which had his pictures on them, and on finding that the brochures would have to be authorised by the National Party, and that they would count against National’s campaign spending limits, it designed those utterly misleading attack brochures against the Government of the day and the Green Party, picking the issues of defence, health, and drug law reform. The Exclusive Brethren has done that not only in New Zealand but also in Australia and other parts of the world.

💬 Dr Russel Norman: Steven Joyce, I believe.

Well, we can name Steven Joyce; I will accept the interjection, because that was exactly who I was referring to earlier, in terms of the design of the billboards that were the set-up for what was to happen later. I think that we should never forget why this legislation is necessary, and why we are happy to support it now that there are spending limits on those third parties.

It is a great pleasure to stand here and take a call on the second readings of the Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill and the Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill. I will start my contribution by thanking the Minister of Justice, for the way he has brought the Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill to the House, which is in sharp contrast to the previous iteration of electoral finance reform in this House. There has been a long, deliberative consultative process, and an overarching desire to ensure that the solution we come to as a Parliament will be an enduring one. That is worthy of this House’s support, and I certainly want to congratulate the Minister on it.

I will also take a moment to thank my fellow members of the Electoral Legislation Committee. In Parliament we tend to get fairly political on many occasions, but this committee approached this matter in that same sense of needing to reach a sensible and enduring solution.

I think all parties that were represented on that committee—and that was every party in the House—worked very constructively and collaboratively, and they can take some credit for the state of the legislation that we have now brought back to Parliament.

Finally in this introduction, I congratulate and thank the officials and the committee staff, because we were not always an easy committee to work with. The officials were certainly excellent in the support they gave the committee. The state of the bill now, as it is before this House, is in large part due to their work.

There is a lot in this bill, and there is a lot that one could make a contribution on, and I am mindful of not taking up too much time. The points that I want to talk on very briefly in this contribution—and there will obviously be more time in the Committee stage to go into these points—are, firstly, the regulated period; secondly, the electoral spending issue; and, thirdly, the issue of spending caps.

The regulated period is one we spent quite a bit of time discussing, and the tension we were balancing there was the need to ensure that no one in this House was faced with being in a regulated period without realising it—that need to avoid retrospectivity was certainly one of the driving factors for our committee—and, equally, our wish to get as close as possible to a situation where the regulated period would be around 3 months, without acting to curtail the Prime Minister’s discretion in calling election dates. It was certainly my view that that sort of change to how elections are called and when, and discretion around that, is a major constitutional change that is best left for another forum. In this instance we did not want the regulated period to wag the dog in terms of how elections are called, but we certainly wanted to come to a situation where, more often than not, the regulated period was around the 3-month period that we were very comfortable with. The default trigger of 2 years and 9 months from the previous election and the other triggers that are built into the legislation are a pretty good compromise in terms of the issues we were dealing with.

I will touch briefly on this issue of election spending. Here again it is a matter of balance, of making sure candidates for Parliament can adequately communicate with their voters. Coming from a large rural electorate myself, I know very well that in an electorate of that size, it is very difficult to get out and communicate who one is and what one stands for while staying within the spending cap as it is. Certainly, we were mindful of the need to make sure that the limit allowed a meaningful discussion with voters, while obviously recognising that we did not want it to be a contest in which the candidate with the biggest pockets won. We have raised the limit up to $25,000, as the previous speakers have indicated. Arguably it could have gone higher, but that is where we got to with the support of the House.

As Ms Dalziel commented in her speech, we have at long last got rid of the vexatious issue of second-hand timber. I know that many campaign committees around the country will be very pleased not to have to count nails any more and worry about whether they can reuse last time’s timber and how that will be costed. It was a nonsense and a waste of everyone’s time, and it is certainly very good to be rid of that.

The other point that is worth making in that context is that those figures, along with the spending cap figures, will now be CPI-linked, thereby ensuring that we do not once more end up in a situation where we have a figure frozen in time, which gets less and less relevant as time goes on.

Very briefly, to finish, I will touch on the issue of spending caps. We have heard from the Minister and previous speakers that this is a compromise position, and that all parties feel we have a workable and enduring solution. Our starting position, obviously, was not to have a spending cap. My own view—and I am quite happy to go on record saying it—is that the limit could have been, and potentially should have been, higher. But we had to balance the need and the entitlement of every New Zealander to meaningfully engage in the election process with ensuring we did not get a situation in which big-money players could come in. I do not think we have really seen that in New Zealand to date, but we certainly have seen it in America and other jurisdictions. Therefore we ensured that there was some sort of limit across the board. Every other player in election spending is limited: candidates are limited in what they can spend, parties are limited in what they can spend, and in that sense it is only right, in my mind, that anyone who wants to play in that park should also have some controls on them.

Finally, I will touch on the Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill, the second reading of which we are also debating. I just reflect what the Minister said about the importance of ensuring there is now absolutely no basis on which taxpayer funds can be used for electioneering activities, as happened with the pledge card. That can never be allowed to happen again, and with these changes it will not happen.

I commend the bills to the House.

I will just start off my speech on the Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill and the Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill where the previous speaker, Amy Adams, more or less left off. When one runs for office in this country, whether one is the general secretary of a party or a candidate in a seat, one is limited by the amount that one can spend in the period leading up to the election. Those limits are all set down in law, and they are all pretty well policed. If anyone breaks those limits they lose their seat, or they go to jail, or both. That is to say, electioneering is a highly regulated activity. But if one is not standing in a general plebiscite, or if one is not the general secretary of a party involved in a general plebiscite, until now—or at least until 2008—there were no limits on what a third party could do. That, of course, was dumb, and it was rendered dumb not in the first instance by the Exclusive Brethren in the 2005 election but in earlier times. I think Michael Laws might have been the first one I came across. I think he got the SPCA to endorse him, or something equally unlikely. That might have been the 1990 Hawke’s Bay election.

💬 Hon Member: Ha, ha! Ironic.

It would be ironic if that were the case. It certainly involved Michael Laws, I recall, but it was not a big issue. So we sort of hectored and badgered, and grumped and harrumphed, through the 1990s on both sides of the House. National members would say the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union had too much say in the Labour Party campaigns, and on the debate went, argy-bargy, back and forth. But it was all small beer.

Then in 2005 it became large beer, and Lianne Dalziel laid that out in her contribution. I do not intend to go back over those most interesting of times; there is a whole book to be read on it, if one wishes to. It gave rise to legislation in 2008, which was not agreed to in a bipartisan way, about the limit on third parties, about the limit on non-participants in an election, and about people who were wanting to sway an election but who were not standing for an election.

This legislation in 2010, for the first time, represents a bipartisan—not a multipartisan, but a bipartisan—approach to the idea of third-party limits: limits on Federated Farmers, if we want to isolate them, or on the Cooks and Stewards Union. Do we still have one of those? I cannot be sure, but we used to dislike those unionists, so maybe we could still dislike them if they exist. Whomever we dislike—the people we want to hold up as the ones we want to constrain for our own partisan reasons—we now have an ability to do that constraining.

The level of constraint is the point of compromise. It is a point too far, I suspect, for the Greens, and too far in the other direction, I suspect, for the ACT Party. But it is a point that has been reached between Labour and National. I am not sure of the position of the Progressives, the Māori Party, or United Future but, certainly, the bulk of the House is saying that $300,000 will do.

Let me make a prediction: the amount will not stay there. It will go up, or it will go down, or it will have constraints put on it in some other way, because we are doing this in a bipartisan way for the first time. Like every other aspect of electoral law, it will take a while to bed in, and we will find ourselves fretting about the mistakes that we have made. Indeed, I can name and describe the loopholes in the legislation now, but it does not matter. The point is that this House is about to take, I think, the step of saying that the majority of people amongst us are of the view that third parties, like those who are standing for election, should also be constrained in how much they can say.

Lianne Dalziel spoke about the difference between paid speech and free speech, and I would like to say that I have never understood the position of, say, the New Zealand Herald. I do not mean to isolate it, and I do not mean to attack it in any way. I have just never understood why, even when the $300,000 compromise was reached, the New Zealand Herald took a position not dissimilar to the ACT Party, which was that that was mildly or moderately—or even more than moderately—outrageous.

I do not get that; I genuinely do not get it. I am sure that the New Zealand Herald and other papers that have a similar view are not acting in self-interest, and are not trying to maximise their advertising revenue in a plebiscite. I am sure the New Zealand Herald’s view is based on principle rather than on revenue, but I do not understand its principle. I do not understand why our country would be better if it were the case that someone who was rich could go and materially influence the plebiscite by expending a bunch of money. I do not understand why that would make New Zealand a better place. The New Zealand Herald seems to think that it would, and I just do not get that.

I certainly do not think that this legislation introduces a constraint on free speech. Free speech is being able to get on one’s soapbox, to get one’s letter to the editor printed in the aforementioned New Zealand Herald, to arrange a march down Queen Street and be covered by the entire media of the nation, or whatever it might be—that is free speech. Free speech, in my view, is not buying out all of the advertising space of this or that medium of the country in the last week or two leading up to an election. In respect of that aspect, I just do not understand where the New Zealand Herald is coming from.

There are a couple of other things I want to say about electoral law in New Zealand. The first thing is that the report of the Royal Commission on the Electoral System, Towards a Better Democracy, was a cracker. It is now 24 years old, and we have picked up only half of it and we have got on top of only some of its wisdom. The main thing we did pick up was the bit that said we should have MMP, and we all know that in legislation that is coming in front of the House later today, we will be putting that question back to a referendum. But 25 years ago the royal commission said we should do it, and then about 17 years ago we did it. We have had MMP elections ever since, so that change came from that royal commission report.

Lots of other things have not come about yet, and one of them is the idea of third-party limits on spending. The commission got there long before the Exclusive Brethren did—20 years before. The commission said: “Hang on a minute, folks. It’s dumb to constrain this candidate but not to constrain this non-candidate.” It said we should be careful about that. It started to do that thinking back then.

Another thing the commission suggested, which has not come to pass but I think will come to pass, was that there should be some measurable degree of State funding of political parties according to this, that, or the other formula. The commission offered up some formulae and suggested that if we calculated it at $2 a vote—or whatever it was, I have forgotten the details now—we would know what to expect each political party would have. On top of that, of course, political parties would want to fund-raise, and who would not? But I think that issue is something that needs to be examined.

We have always been too scared to implement State funding, as it is called. My personal view is that our democracy would be better off for it. In Australia, where they do have it, they say that it is not high enough. Well, that is a different debate. We do not have it here at all. Of course we do have State funding in the sense that we have some television time allocated to us, as the ACT Party is quick to point out whenever these debates arise, but we do not have it in a way that is transparent. I think transparency is the name of the game here.

The last thing I will say before I sit down is that, understandably, the National Party—and I make no criticism here—said that it would not bind its Prime Minister to a specific date for an election. No Prime Minister in his or her right mind would do that, and I understand that, because I have been around Prime Ministers on the other side who have been disinclined to give that power away. I think it will happen one day that we will move to a set date. Of course we would need to have an ability to move away from that set date if ever the confidence of the House was lost, and that is reasonable, but I do think those changes are forthcoming. With those remarks, I look forward to the passage of this legislation.

I am pleased to speak on the Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill, and to say that the Green Party will be supporting this legislation and its companion bill, the Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill. Later in the afternoon we will also confirm our support for the Electoral Referendum Bill. All three of those bills were dealt with by the Electoral Legislation Committee at the same time.

The Greens have been campaigning for a very long time—and have held it as our policy for a very long time—on the need for New Zealand politics to be honest and clean. A number of different issues arise in terms of honest and clean politics, but one of the means by which those politics happen is through electoral finance. It is quite weird, actually—just on a personal note—but having debated both electoral finance legislation and foreshore legislation this year, it makes me wonder if years spent in Parliament are just like one long day. Having gone through the original process of looking at the Electoral Finance Act in 2007, and then having reviewed both that Act and the changes to it this time, I think that this bill does make some advances, which is great. The bill has kept some of the significant changes that the Greens fought for in the earlier version, particularly in relation to donations, and to penalties for illegal and corrupt practices, and we are very pleased about that.

In addition, this bill has also introduced spending caps, which was a very important issue for us, and one on which our support for this bill depended. People have talked today already about the Exclusive Brethren and the issues that arose in 2005, and there is no doubt that those issues were a clear example of the fact that we needed a transparent process so that the public knew who was doing what in the campaign, what was being spent, and who were the players the public could identify so that the veracity of their claims could be judged effectively. In that case, the veracity was seriously lacking.

The public also need to know the people who are making themselves political players, in order to hold them to account. Of course, political parties and candidates are clearly in the game and are making themselves political players. They are constrained in the way that they can use money to present their position—and rightly so. But it is also critical that others who want to be players in the political game have their engagement subjected to similar rules. There is nothing inherently anti-democratic about that approach. So one of the processes, firstly, honestly identifies who a player is—which is a provision of the registration process in the previous, and now in this current, legislation—and, secondly, makes that player, like other political players, subject to financial constraints in order to make sure that money is not the dominant influence in the public’s mind as to who they would prefer to see in their House of Representatives.

On spending caps, the argument that somehow people will misuse the genuine and right values of free speech and the right of citizens to be engaged in the political process, used particularly by the ACT Party and others like it as a means to defend wealth and the abuse of wealth, and its influence in the political process, is, quite frankly, revolting. It is kind of yucky to hear those arguments being made. None the less, given that free speech is so important, it is important that if those arguments are to be made, they are heard—and we certainly heard them. The majority of the submitters, the public, and certainly members of this House agree that it is quite right that there is to be a set of rules for engagement in this process, particularly a set of rules for money. New Zealand does not have billion-dollar advertising in this industry, because it does not work, but the idea that spending money on advertising will not influence the election campaign is patently ridiculous, despite that being one of the arguments used by political parties in this House. We are very, very pleased to see that National has agreed to the cap. I must say that the cap in this legislation is smaller than the one the Green Party proposed in our submission to this bill, so we are very pleased to see that.

The select committee made a number of other recommendations. One of those we disagree with very strongly, and that was about the donation disclosure thresholds. Most of the disclosure regime that the Greens put in place last time has been kept, but the disclosure threshold has been changed by National. It has increased the threshold at which a party has to disclose who has given it a political donation from $1,000 to $1,500 for a candidate donation and from $10,000 to $15,000 for a donation to the party. We are extremely concerned about this increase in the disclosure threshold for donations. It means that it will be effectively easier for political parties to hide from the public where they get their money from. We have talked about the importance of a financial cap or constraint on players, but it is also critical for the public to know who is funding political campaigns for political parties—parties that will exercise extraordinary economic power once they are represented in this House.

This is part of the process of the right of citizens to be informed and engaged in the democratic process. One of those processes, clearly, is that the public should know who political parties are getting their money from, so the public can assess again whether the interests of parties really do lie with the public or with those who are funding them. It is perfectly reasonable for the public to know that, but National, for some reason, has decided that the public should be shut out from knowing it. National wants to keep the public ignorant about who is funding it, and, by enacting legislation, arguably wants to keep the public ignorant about others. National wants to increase the threshold so that the public are denied their right to know further who is funding their political parties.

In the Greens’ view, the current level of $10,000 is too high; it was already too high. Our position is that the threshold should be at $1,000, and that political parties should disclose, on a regular basis to the public, those who are giving them donations of $1,000 or more. There is nothing wrong with the public knowing more about what is happening with their political parties, and about the power that political parties exercise once they are elected into Parliament.

This set of values—a clean system, an honest system, a transparent system, and a principled system—are the values that the Green Party takes to discussions on politics, on the way our electoral system is functioning, and, indeed, on MPs’ expenses. Today we have seen that the Law Commission has come out in agreement that those are the principles that should be applied to MPs’ expenses, and it agrees with the Green Party that there should be an independent body that sets MPs’ expenses. We now see that both John Key and Phil Goff have followed the Green Party and agreed that such a body should be independently setting MPs’ expenses because of the importance for the public of having confidence in a system where transparency and clarity on the use of public money in terms of MPs’ expenses and in the sense of election funding, is made more apparent to them. So we are very pleased that, finally, the two old parties have followed the Greens, and that we have led that change, once again, with MPs’ expenses. We are very pleased to see that there has been some change in this legislation, but as long as the disclosure threshold remains too high, we will continually oppose the political forces that want to shut the public out from that information, because it is not right to do that. The public have a right to know who is funding their political parties, but this legislation—very unfortunately and for no good reason—will shut the public out from that view.

We look forward to the Committee stage, and we invite support from all other political parties for our Supplementary Order Paper. It will fix this problem and restore a sense of the values of transparency and clarity to this legislation, and it will reduce the disclosure threshold to $1,000 for political parties and candidates, as is only right in a modern, 21st century democracy such as ours. Thank you.

I note that when the police reviewed election spending a few years ago, they decided that there was not a case to look into with the Māori Party because we did not spend anything near the cap. We simply do not have enough money, so we rely heavily on face to face, getting out and about, and talking to people. We do not even think about the big spends that the two major parties campaign with. Like the Greens, we are happy to see that some limits have been agreed to, primarily for the two major parties—and ACT, of course. Those are the only parties that can afford to spend the kind of money that people think of in terms of major political campaign spending.

I am grateful that limits have been proposed. We are grateful that there is greater transparency. We are grateful that there is greater clarification around election advertising, and we will be supporting this legislation. Thank you very much.

I rise in support, obviously, of the Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill and the Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill, which have been a long time coming. Those of us who were part of the previous term of Parliament can recall the fractious nature of the select committee debates on electoral finance and advanced voting. As a part-time member of the Electoral Legislation Committee, I am very pleased to have witnessed a much more cordial relationship across the parties. Maybe it was because those events were not so recent, so nerves were not so wrought.

Suffice it to say that every party in this House has a little bit of baggage. Transparency and openness tend to render the scars visually, no matter who gets up and says it first, whether it be the Green Party, the Labour Party, the National Party, the ACT Party, or any other party for that instance. I am pleased to see that we have an accord and that people are looking forwards, rather than backwards.

I look forward to the smooth transition of these bills through the House. I thank those members of the select committee for the way that they engaged in an honest and open way. I congratulate the chair, Amy Adams, who did a fantastic job of steering it through. Thank you.

Government members who have spoken on the Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill and the Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill have made much of the importance of bipartisan consensus on, and support for, electoral reform legislation. The point I make to them is simply that that goes both ways. It requires a willingness to engage in discussion and to compromise on both sides.

That was not there when the Electoral Finance Act came through the House before the last election. The National Party thought the opportunity to play politics with the issue was too good to pass up. National members were given plenty of opportunities in the lead-up to the Electoral Finance Act’s passage to engage in discussion with the then Government, and they chose not to. They chose not to because they would rather play politics.

Do members know how we know they chose to play politics with it? Because one of the bills we are about to pass through its second reading now, the Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill, and which we are currently debating as part of this package of bills, contains exactly the same provisions that the National Party railed against when they were put forward by the previous Labour Government. What did those members call that legislation? Gerry Brownlee called it “Mugabe-style” legislation—“Mugabe-style” legislation that those members are now passing another bill to continue. It was “Mugabe-style” legislation when a Labour Government passed it; it is all sweetness and light and bipartisan consensus now that a National Government is passing exactly the same provisions back into law.

Gerry Brownlee called it utterly disgraceful legislation, as well. Nick Smith said it was a rort. He said that never in his 17 years had he seen a bill that would bring this Parliament into so much disrepute. That was what he said about the bill that we are currently debating and will pass through the House this afternoon. That is what National members said when they were in Opposition. They are now getting on their high horse and saying that we have to have consensus and bipartisan support for electoral reform legislation. I tell them that it goes both ways. They have to be willing to compromise and to engage in the discussion, and they were not before the last election.

They are not this time round either, in some respects. We have a bill on the Order Paper under the name of Paul Quinn that makes significant changes to electoral law in this country, and it does not have bipartisan consensus and support, yet the Government is using its majority to push it through anyway. It appears that the Government’s willingness to engage in electoral reform only where there is bipartisan consensus has limits. Paul Quinn’s bill appears to be exempt from that. I say that the National Party’s rhetoric on that appears to be just a little bit hollow.

I rewind the clock back to where this all started, back to 2004-05, when we saw the Exclusive Brethren spend a huge amount of money to run a third-party parallel campaign that was unregulated, uncontrolled, and unmonitored, in support of the National Party. The Exclusive Brethren ran that campaign, and senior National Party figures, including some who are currently in this administration, were not entirely truthful in what they knew about the Exclusive Brethren’s campaign. They knew about it, but when asked about it they said they did not. That was not truthful. They should be held to account for that, because they did not tell the public the full truth about what they knew about the Exclusive Brethren campaign.

One of the reasons I think the provisions in this bill on parallel third-party campaigns are important is that I would hate to see New Zealand going down the track of the United States, where there are significant third-party campaigns. In fact, in some cases the third-party campaigns are bigger than the candidate and party campaigns themselves. We are talking about multimillion-dollar campaigns. In a lot of cases, those campaigns are simply dirty. They are smear campaigns.

I spent some time in 2004 in the United States, just before George W Bush’s re-election. I was absolutely disgusted with the third-party campaign that was run against the then Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ran a campaign that was not based on truth. There was no truth whatsoever in a lot of the allegations made. The only thing that campaign had behind it was an awful lot of money—a huge amount of money. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth smeared John Kerry’s character with a massive advertising campaign that the Democratic Party was unable to counter.

I would be very disappointed if we opened the door for that type of campaigning in New Zealand. I think we need to be very clear that if someone is going to do any form of significant political campaigning in this country, it should be open. People should be able to know who is behind it. If we see expensive ads in the paper or on the TV, or anything else like that, the New Zealand public is entitled to know who is paying for them and what their agenda is.

At least this legislation allows that to happen. It says that if someone is going to spend more than $300,000 on a third-party campaign, there will be rules around it.

💬 Amy Adams: No it doesn’t; it says you can’t spend more than $300,000. Read the bill.

I apologise; third-party campaigns cannot spend more than $300,000. The bill also has other requirements on the disclosure of political donations. I think those things are really important.

The donation thresholds are higher than I would like to see. At the moment it is $1,000 for donations to a candidate and $10,000 for donations to a political party. In my view, that is high enough, but, as I said at the beginning, compromise and bipartisan consensus on electoral reform requires compromise on both sides. The Labour Party has chosen to compromise on those donation thresholds in order to ensure that we can have an arrangement governing the third-party campaigns and preventing an independent party from spending huge amounts of money. I think that is a really important compromise, and I support it.

I congratulate the Labour members on the Electoral Legislation Committee, in particular, on the work they have put into this legislation. I know that it has been approached with a lot of diligence by committee members, including by some of the National members on the committee, I am sure. I think that—

💬 Amy Adams: Don’t go out of your way, Chris.

Oh, well, I try not to. I know that the legislation has been approached with a lot of diligence by members on both sides, and I am really pleased about that.

Another provision in this bill that I am very supportive of is the provision requiring political parties to disclose the donations they receive in bands, in respect of the size of donations. That will allow the public and the watchdogs to monitor whether this system is being pushed to its limit, or rorted in a way that was not intended. If the public sees a whole heap of donations coming through that are just below the disclosure thresholds, they might want to ask some questions about that. That is another really important change that has been reached in this legislation; it will increase the overall transparency of the political donation system, and that is important.

The public of New Zealand are entitled to know, when they go to vote and when they receive information trying to encourage them in the way that they cast that vote, who is behind that information and who is funding it. We do not want to see big money in New Zealand politics buying influence and buying access to power.

Let us be honest about this. Not many people donate significant amounts to political parties without wanting to get something out of it. They could simply want access to people in authority. They may have a particular agenda and, therefore, donate moneys to the parties that have policies that are consistent with that agenda. That is OK, providing it is transparent, because then the public can make their own judgments about whether they think somebody is trying to buy influence by giving donations to a political party. Those transparency requirements are important.

One reason that the Labour Party is willing to set aside its disagreements over one or two of the issues, including the donations disclosure thresholds, is so that we can get the bipartisan support required to pass this legislation through the House. Overall, the Labour Party will be voting in favour of both these bills: the “Mugabe-style legislation”, as Gerry Brownlee called it, that the National Government is now trying to pass in the Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill, and the Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill. We will be supporting both of those bills further. Thank you.

Tēnā koe. Otirā, tēnā tātou huri noa i tō tātou Whare. I am pleased to stand and take a short call on this legislation. I have been a somewhat peripatetic member of the Electoral Legislation Committee, having had other calls on my time that were particularly pertinent to this legislation. All of us in this House who are involved in electoral activity get to know about the very sharp end of how any legislation applies on the ground.

The National-led Government’s electoral finance proposals have now been subject to four rounds of consultation, which began in April last year, and it has been a commitment of this Government to have a consensual approach. So it is somewhat of a pity that Chris Hipkins, the member who just spoke and who has just left the House, chose to introduce an unnecessary element of rancour, I thought, into the otherwise multiparty consensual approach that has characterised the consideration of these bills in the select committee. As someone who has recently had the experience of participating in a by-election, I am absolutely delighted at the progress that this legislation represents, because many little details can slip up even the most committed campaigner, inadvertently. I think that this legislation has gone a considerable way towards ensuring that there is both clarity and common sense in the way that we consider and apply electoral legislation.

In that regard I join in commending the Minister of Justice for taking the approach, which he has taken from the outset, of being committed to ensuring that we get consensus on this electoral legislation, because it needs to be durable, it needs to have integrity, and it needs to have commitment from all the members of this House. I think the Minister’s conviction in this regard has been important in the approach to, and carriage of, this legislation. I also commend all the members of the select committee who participated in the consideration of this legislation. I too enjoyed the contribution of experienced members such as the deputy chair, Lianne Dalziel, and also of the very long-term member of Parliament Pete Hodgson, who provided his particular rapier-like insights during a number of the discussions. I commend the members of the select committee for their approach to this legislation.

In closing, I particularly commend the chair of the select committee. My colleague Amy Adams approached this legislation with the same rigorous and analytical approach that she brings to all her tasks. She was very even-handed in the way that she assigned time to the consideration of the legislation by members of the select committee, and also in terms of the hearings that we held around the country and of the submitters who had the opportunity to put their views in writing on it. She maintained a very even temper as well, which was sometimes required in the consideration of these issues. I applaud her navigation of this complex area. In that regard, I compliment Amy Adams, the select committee, and the Minister. I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora tātou.

I rise to support the second reading of the Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill and also the Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill, which we are considering cognately together this afternoon. Before I begin my remarks, I acknowledge the speaker whom I have followed, Hekia Parata—tomorrow to be legally honourable—and I wish her all the best for her—

💬 Amy Adams: She’s always been honourable.

That was part of the joke, I say to Mrs Adams. That was a subtlety lost on her, I can see. But obviously being a member of the Electoral Legislation Committee has been very useful for Hekia Parata, because it has enabled her to rise to much higher status with her new ministerial elevation, so I offer my congratulations to her as she takes up her new duties.

Having praised her, now let me move to immediately criticise a couple of things she said. It is true there has been a high degree of cooperation and working together on this legislation, but when she criticised my colleague for pointing out some of the inconsistencies that have occurred, as though that was somehow unfair of him, I think that was pushing the barrow out just a little too far. It cannot be the case that when National is in Opposition it can say anything it likes about matters to do with electoral law, and then when it is in Government everyone else should just play nice. People should just play nice, and play along with the rules of the Government of the day, and pointing out any previous positions that have been held is just not cricket, was the impression I got from the member as she spoke. It is true that although we ought to—

💬 Hon Christopher Finlayson: Darren, the Australians lost, by the way.

Well, that was beyond doubt. If the Attorney-General had to check whether the Australians had lost the cricket to the English, then it just shows how out of touch that man is. This has been clear for days and days and days, but he has done a Google check to find out that this has happened. He must have a function out in the community tonight, where he has to talk small talk with people, and he thought he must check whatever happened in that cricket. He has taken the chance to do that, and I congratulate him on it.

Obviously, matters of electoral law are ones where we would much prefer to see things settled. I recall my colleague Pete Hodgson, the member for Dunedin North, pointing out when he was speaking that it was 24 years—almost as long as John Carter’s career—since the royal commission reported on the electoral system, and these are debates that have been going on for quite some time. When there has been a period of settled agreement across Parliament, I think that is where things have worked well. Whatever the merits or otherwise of the Electoral Finance Act, when the then Opposition made an overt decision not to cooperate or comply with that law in order to attempt to derail that law, of course that became difficult, just as this law would become unworkable if the Opposition of the day decided that we were going to mount a campaign about making it as unworkable as possible. There has to be a degree of acceptance and cooperation, and a willingness to submit to not only the letter of the law but also the policy prescriptions in it.

In that spirit, I do join in the cacophony of praise to the Hon Simon Power that we are hearing. That has been a feature of the debate. We all have to line up, take our turn, and praise Simon Power. He pretends he is not listening to these things, but I know they are being noted down. There will be another forum or another occasion not too far from now where I am sure these matters will be discussed in much greater detail, and I look forward to that occasion. But, in all seriousness, Mr Power has set out with the overt strategy of getting the agreement, being prepared to give and take on some things, being prepared to signal things on which the Government was not prepared to move but accepting there was difference, and allowing the Opposition the space to do the same thing. Mr Hipkins made the point that in respect of the disclosure for anonymous donations at electoral levels, the current rate of $1,000 is fine. This bill moves it to $1,500, which was part of a genuine negotiation between all sides of politics, and I think that has been most useful.

Also, just to continue with the theme of people who have played a role, the Justice and Electoral Committee worked very, very well. Amy Adams, the chair of the committee, deserves congratulations on that work, because she was, as a new member, able to chair the committee on a very challenging topic. She did so very competently, fairly, and in a way, I think, that if submitters went away saying that they had not been listened to, it would be an unfair conclusion to draw. A genuine attempt was made to hear submitters. I can confirm that she read every submission, because she had the first two questions to every submitter. It was absolutely clear that the chair had been very diligent in her approach, and we appreciated that, as we did having the chance to make our point. It is important to reflect on the goodwill at the committee and to be able to place that on the record of the House.

The area that the select committee reported back to the House as being different from the first reading was primarily in relation to third-party caps—the limit of expenditure for third parties to participate in the democratic process, either in parliamentary elections or for those involved in referendums. I do think this issue is very important. Mr Hodgson made the observation that freedom of speech is a very important thing for every citizen to be able to enjoy. It is the basic principle of democracy. But it cannot be exaggerated into a position where people can purchase unlimited speech to the detriment of other political players and of people who want to have their voices heard fairly and equally, because, as we know, our system says that every vote is equal. That is demonstrated in the way in which ballots are counted. So it makes sense that there be a common-sense regime for the amount of money that can be spent. Having just watched the mid-term elections in the United States, I saw that there was a phenomenal amount of money spent. That amount of money would make the eyes water of even the National Party’s trustees of the Waitematā Trust. A large amount of money was spent even by the candidates who were not elected. The GOP nominee in the gubernatorial race in California spent over US$150 million on her campaign. Whether she received the endorsement of the Minister of Justice is unclear; I will need to check that in her electoral returns at the appropriate point. But there was a lot of money spent—to lose. Mind you, as we have seen in this place, sometimes if someone loses an election, that person celebrates as if they won it; but that is a debate for another day.

💬 Hon Christopher Finlayson: That’s certainly my approach in Rongotai.

Speaking of defeated candidates for Mana, I hear the Attorney-General pipe up. Defeated in Mana and Rongotai—who knows where he is off to next. He is the Richard Prebble of electoral defeat. That said, we look forward to where he may well be heading. Maybe he could stand in one of the Māori seats. He enjoys inflicting electoral defeat on himself so much that he could be a candidate for Te Tai Tonga or Te Tai Hauāuru.

💬 Hon Christopher Finlayson: Watch Rongotai next year.

The Attorney-General says Rongotai is the seat to watch. I am sure the deputy leader of the Labour Party, Mrs King, will have a reasonably firm view on that matter.

In respect of the caps, I make the point that it is important to make sure a fair and understandable amount of money can be spent on these things. That is why we spend a lot of time talking about the equivalent of a retail campaign. I do not think the cap should be so large as to allow the kind of mass retail marketing that, say, Briscoes might allow. Voters would be absolutely sick and tired if they were subjected as much publicity as that for a constant amount of their time. So putting the caps in is important.

The regulated period was an area on which there was a lot of disagreement, and that is one of those things where there is political difference, depending on which side of the House someone happens to be occupying. But I think that in the longer term, the only way around that is to have a debate in New Zealand about the length of the parliamentary term. That issue was last considered by the country in 1990 with the referendum on a 4-year term. An issue also debated was whether a fixed date would be a more sensible way of handling our parliamentary arrangements. Our move to proportional representation 14 years ago has not resulted in an unstable Government; there has been government where different people have had different views on the policy agenda, but we have stable government under MMP. Those who had previously argued against fixed terms had thought that our proportional system might not lend itself well to such an arrangement, but I believe it would, and that is something we should come back to.

Finally, I will mention in the remaining minute that we are passing the second reading of the Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill. The bill seeks to amend the definition of “funding entitlements for parliamentary purposes”, which was designed by Dr Michael Cullen, and which was roundly ridiculed by the Opposition at the time. Mr Brownlee picked it up as Leader of the House last year. We were determined to get not an interim but a long-term definition of “funding entitlements for parliamentary purposes”, and this bill does it. It is very, very important that we have now resolved the issue about the use of parliamentary funding for legitimate constituency and parliamentary political party work, and also the issue of not being able to use taxpayer resources to campaign either positively for one’s own party, or against another. So we have the third-party situation sorted, and we hope we never see the Exclusive Brethren situation ever again in New Zealand. We have a sensible regime around the referendum, and now we have the Parliamentary Service funding worked out. I think those are all worthwhile reasons to support the second reading.

The ACT Party will be opposing and voting against this legislation. I will focus most of my speech on the issue of third-party expenditure limits and the restrictions that are being placed on the rights of ordinary New Zealanders to speak out and be involved in the election campaign.

Before I do that, I reiterate some of the comments that have been made in this House this afternoon. I congratulate Amy Adams, the chair of the Justice and Electoral Committee, on doing a very good job. I say that very genuinely to Amy. I also acknowledge the contribution of Pete Hodgson. He said things in this House this afternoon that I totally disagree with. However, I have to say that having been involved in that committee over 2 or 3 months, I got to know Mr Hodgson better and I thought that the comments and contributions from the other side of the room, so to speak, were very positive in a general sense. I also acknowledge the officials.

One person spoke this afternoon who was not involved in the sittings of the committee, and that person was Mr Hipkins. I found his contribution this afternoon disappointing, because he ridiculed National for its efforts initially to reach a multipartisan approach, and then to reach a bipartisan approach. There are huge advantages if we can get a bipartisan or multipartisan approach. Amy Adams this afternoon talked about the overarching desire to reach consensus. Yes, a consensus was reached, but I ask at what cost.

Mr Hipkins drew the comparison between this legislation and the previous Labour Government’s Electoral Finance Bill. I remind Mr Hipkins of some of the provisions of that bill when it was first introduced. It put a requirement on any New Zealander who wanted to speak out and criticise any party or any person seeking election to first of all go to a justice of the peace and sign a certificate if they wanted to spend so much as a single dollar. Labour’s contribution to this debate was to put a proposal out to the people of New Zealand that required every single person or third party who wanted to participate to go along first of all to a justice of the peace to seek approval to spend so much as a single dollar. Treating the people of New Zealand with such utter contempt drew widespread protest throughout the country.

I go back to the submission from the Human Rights Commission on that bill. It said: “A human rights approach to democratic government requires genuine participation. Genuine participation, in turn, requires an informed electorate. By limiting freedom of expression and creating a complex regulatory framework in the way it does, the Electoral Finance Bill”—that is, Labour’s Electoral Finance Bill—“unduly limits the rights of all New Zealanders to participate in the electoral process”. The commission concluded by saying: “The bill in its current form represents a dramatic assault on two fundamental human rights that New Zealanders cherish, freedom of expression and the right of informed citizens to participate in the election process.”

The legislation before the House this afternoon is a lot better than Labour’s bill. I acknowledge that it is significantly better. Labour sought to eventually put restrictions on third parties and individuals to limit them to spending no more than $120,000 in the year of the election. It is New Zealand’s electoral history that elections generally fall towards the end of the year, in September, October, or November. Labour sought to put restrictions on third parties by allowing them to spend no more than $120,000 for, essentially, the full year.

One may think that $120,000 is a lot of money. One may even think that the National Party’s so-called bipartisan proposal to allow third parties to spend $300,000 is generous, particularly when that $300,000 is limited to only the last 3 months before the election, but let me put that $300,000 in context. What do we as politicians get to spend? To use Lianne Dalziel’s terms, what do we get to spend on paid speech? Lianne Dalziel would criticise people’s going out and spending their own money, as if it were dirty money—as if it were dirty for people to fund-raise and be involved in the political process in the way that the Human Rights Commission says they should be encouraged to do.

What do we get to spend? The rules for what a party and its candidates can spend are laid out in this legislation. Essentially they prescribe a formula that will enable the two major parties in this Parliament, National and Labour, and their candidates to spend more than $5 million. That is right: under this legislation they will be entitled to spend more than $5 million each. What do these two parties say to people in New Zealand? They say that they are allowed to spend $300,000, which is one-sixteenth of what they can spend. They do not want their fellow New Zealanders to criticise them on the election trail or to put up arguments against their policies; they want to limit their rights. Lianne Dalziel had the audacity to stand up in Parliament today and say that she does not want to restrict people’s right to speak out—they are entitled to speak out—but they cannot spend their own money, or, if they do spend their own money, they need to be restricted to spending less than one-sixteenth of what the major parties spend.

Lianne Dalziel, I, and the other politicians in this Parliament this afternoon have a very special privilege. We can speak to the people in the gallery and to the people at home watching television. Who knows how many people are involved in listening to this debate right now? There could be a few hundred or there could be a few thousand. What about the rights of ordinary New Zealanders? We have rights and privileges that no other New Zealanders have. We have the right to be in this debating chamber and to go around the press gallery.

I look at a press release put out this afternoon by Family First, which is a so-called third-party organisation, criticising this bill. Does Family First have the right to come into this House? Does Family First have the right to speak to the people watching television right now? No, it does not. It relies on the media to pick up press releases such as this one, or it relies on the financial contributions of its members to fund the advertisements to go in the newspapers, which it seems the Labour Party and also, sadly, the National Party would choose to deny them.

I pay tribute to Mr Bob McCroskie of Family First, who joined me on the campaign trail against Labour’s Electoral Finance Bill. I will do something in this Chamber right now that he cannot do. I will read part of his press release. I will read the story that the politicians in this Parliament would seek to suppress. What does he say? He says: “The politicians are effectively restricting non-political groups to $300,000 while they can spend millions of dollars and get free television advertising as well … This is not a triumph for democracy. It is an act of arrogance and paranoia on behalf of the politicians and shows utter contempt for voters who may be members or supporters of non-political groups who wish to highlight certain issues during an … election year.”

What does a political party get to spend? The formula prescribes that we can each spend $1 million—in fact, $1,030,000 under this legislation. For every candidate we put up, we can spend a further $25,000. For a party like the Labour Party or the National Party, which would stand a full slate of 70 candidates, that is a further $1.75 million. If we add that together, it comes to $2.75 million. On top of that, each of those two major political parties will get $1 million each in broadcasting—that comes to $3.75 million—and on top of that, the individual candidates who stand for each of those parties can spend a further $1.75 million in total. All up, that comes to $5.5 million. What are the politicians in this House prepared to allow ordinary New Zealanders to spend? They will allow them $300,000. As Mr McCroskie says, Family First will not spend anything like that, but this Parliament is restricting the rights of New Zealanders to participate.

Mr Hodgson cannot understand why the New Zealand Herald would stand up for the rights of ordinary New Zealanders to speak out in an election year. I pay tribute to the New Zealand Herald. I have here a scrapbook of clippings, under the heading “Democracy under attack”, from the months when the Labour Party tried to impose its will on New Zealand. It is a tribute to the New Zealand Herald and the other members of the media who stood up for the right of free speech. It is a pity that the politicians in this Parliament are not prepared to do the same. The ACT Party will oppose this bill. Thank you.

I rise as a member of the Electoral Legislation Committee, which considered this legislation, to round out the debate with a brief speech. I start by thanking the committee members who were involved, and the Minister for bringing the legislation to the House.

I make the point that in November 2008 the new Opposition leader Phil Goff said it had been a mistake to ram through the controversial Electoral Finance Act without widespread support, and Labour would like to take part in a review. He then went on to acknowledge publicly that the Labour Party had made mistakes. So I was somewhat disappointed when I came into the House 15 or 20 minutes ago to hear Chris Hipkins on his high horse, talking about National ramming through Mugabe-style legislation, when in November 2008 his leader had clearly acknowledged that Labour had rammed through electoral legislation without widespread support.

What we see in the House today is totally the opposite of what Mr Hipkins—

💬 Hon Simon Power: A 2-year process.

Exactly. As the Minister says, we have been through a 2-year process that has sought cross-party support. I accept that there are a few members in the Chamber, such as those in the ACT Party, who are not fully in agreement with where we have got to, but to say we do not have majority support is anything but the truth. Through the Minister, Amy Adams, and members of the Labour Party, we have reached a consensus here on what I believe is a fair and transparent process.

What I also like about the process is that we brought into it some of the realities of electioneering. Often when we put these debates in front of officials, they have not been out there and had to deal with raising finance. They have not had to deal with putting up election hoardings; they have not had to deal with all the issues that go with running an election campaign. So I think that having people like Darren Hughes, me, and Pete Hodgson, who have been through a couple of elections, brought a sense of reality to the process. Without labouring the point, I refer to things like the cost of hoardings. We brought some common sense to that. In relation to the level of third-party promotion, yes, it is not at the level that ACT would like to see, but there were submitters who thought that we should have only a $25,000 level. That would not even pay for a couple of advertisements in the New Zealand Herald. How could that constitute the limit for a national campaign?

There are things like the reduction of compliance around associated entities, which is where I will finish my debate. It had been proposed that people who were making a donation would have to declare, as donors, all the associated entities, companies, or trusts that they were involved with. Quite frankly, that was nonsense; it would have stopped donations in their track. People who had a number of different entities would have said they would not go down the track of declaring every associated entity just so that they could make a donation to a party. So I think we have reached some common sense there. I am really pleased to see that we have reached a transparent process that is common sense and will provide settled law going forward. Thank you.