Local Electoral Amendment Bill (No 2)

I rise to speak, as other Labour Party members have, in support of the Local Electoral Amendment Bill (No 2), and remind the Committee just how important this piece of legislation is. I am somewhat surprised that here in nearly the middle of June in a year in which we are having local body elections we are dealing with more changes that arose out of the last set of local body elections more than 2½ years ago. We are now, frankly, down to the wire, making changes that will have a bearing upon this year’s elections, at least in relation to candidates’ returns in terms of their election expenses and residential declarations.

We know why this is important. It is because there were aspects of the 2010 local body elections that were, frankly, a disgrace. There are consequences to that election that have been played out not only in the great city of Auckland—the super-city of Auckland, as some have described it—but also in this House because of the conduct of some individuals arising out that election. What has become patently clear is that we now have a Government that, even on important legislation like this, is propped up by shabby and tawdry members who have muddled around and mucked around at the local body level, caused disgrace to themselves and their so-called parties—or what is left of them—and shone a very poor light on the Government of the day. Frankly, the people of New Zealand expect better.

The people of New Zealand expect that in the Government of the day not only the members of the party that leads the Government but also those who support it through agreements, formal and informal, are people of good character, and that they are people who act with integrity and, indeed, with honesty, and act in a way that is befitting of members of a Government. But we have a Government that is increasingly supported by people who can be described only as shonky, as lacking in integrity, and as lacking in credibility, and yet this Government is utterly and totally dependent and reliant upon them.

What sort of shabby Government do we have now? The answer to that question is pretty obvious. The Minister in the chair, the Minister of Conservation, who only this morning defended his role in local government and in relation to housing by enunciating an entirely new philosophy of trickle-down housing philosophy—trickle-down housing philosophy—wants to impose that philosophy on every local government in this country. Well, it just shows you what a pretty pass we have come to—what a pretty pass we have come to.

This bill will make differences to the declaration of campaign expenditure. They are long overdue. We simply should never have been put in the position where a candidate—any candidate in any local body election—can be the recipient of brown paper envelopes stuffed with cash from large corporate donors that can then, apparently, credibly—

💬 Hon Chester Borrows: Union members, sneaking around in the dead of night.

Here we go. Here comes Mr Borrows and the anti-union rhetoric. They are union-haters—the union-haters and union-wreckers opposite. They hate the idea of people acting collectively. They hate the idea of people exercising their freedom of choice to act collectively. That is the nature of this Government. It is not enough to be propped up by the tawdry, shabby people and their informal confidence and supply agreements. It acts as it has always done. The anti-union wreckers and haters of old have come back. Well, if it was not enough for Tau Henare to express the values of the 1950s here earlier this morning, now we have them back again—the “fifty-oners” of the National Government. They hate unions and hate working people who exercise their freedom of choice. That is why they bridle at and resist any attempt to regulate local government.

Mr Borrows of all people knows that, because of the Cold Creek water supply agreement, which we had rammed through this House and rammed through the South Taranaki District Council at his and Shane Ardern’s behest. They know all about local government. They have never shown any respect for it at all, and that is why they uncomfortably and grudgingly pass this legislation, which will tidy up just an element of it and ensure that those who stand for local government and for office in local government at least meet some test of good character, integrity, and probity.

When passed, this bill will ensure that the declarations made by candidates for local government shine a proper light on their expenditure and those who have supported them and that campaign managers cannot be prevailed upon to make declarations that clearly are not credible and that clearly are not honest. When passed, this bill will provide thresholds that, by and large, are meaningful and credible—except, of course, for those campaigning in the super-city of Auckland. My good colleague Phil Twyford will have a Supplementary Order Paper that will deal with the issue of campaign spending limits, which under this bill are set extraordinarily high—at an extraordinarily high level—when that is not necessary and, indeed, when the most recent candidates in Auckland attested that the levels at which they are set are clearly not necessary if they are to run a credible campaign. So those are all good things in this bill.

We welcome the opportunity to tidy up this piece of legislation. Many members who come to this House come through the local government channel. They come through having cut their teeth on local government, and understand what Government processes are. They learn about regulation at a local level. They learn that local government has an important role to play in ensuring good peace and good order in the community, that one ratepayer’s freedom invariably cannot be exercised if it is at the expense of another, and therefore that we have local government to play an appropriately moderating and mediating role when it comes to regulation at a local government level.

But we need to make sure that those who stand for public office, even at that local government level, do so under a system, a framework, that is appropriate and that ensures integrity, credibility, and honesty; that we do not have people who are sponsored by corporates or the rich and the wealthy; and that we do not allow Tammany Hall politics to infect local government in this country. We do not want the situation where local government can be controlled by a small elite, a plutocracy, or an oligarchy. We need to allow proper freedom and democracy to operate at the level of local government, so that people who stand for public office open themselves up and open up their spending to a proper process of scrutiny. This bill will allow that in its provisions. It is for that reason that we support it.

It is a pleasure to rise and speak in the Committee stage of Part 1 of the Local Electoral Amendment Bill (No 2). Just picking up where my colleague Andrew Little left off, the Labour Party is pleased to be able to support a piece of legislation, which, within Part 1, has the goal of limiting the amount or value of anonymous donations; refining the definition of “anonymous” and “donation”; enhancing the obligations of candidates for the disclosure, reporting, and recording of electoral donations; and introducing penalties for non-compliance for those matters. This is the kind of transparency that has been missing from local electoral law. Sitting alongside that is the importance of making this consistent with the Electoral Act 1993. I think that is welcomed by all members of the House because there have been serious issues in this area that need to be addressed. In fact, the driving force behind some of the changes here is the issues that have arisen in this House and elsewhere around donations to local body election campaigns. I think it is important to illustrate why the changes in Part 1 are important by aligning them with specific and real situations.

In that regard, I want to talk about the definition of “anonymous” and the definition of “donation”, because we have certainly seen in the past the grey area of this being exploited. I think the obvious situation that we have to refer to here is Mr John Banks and his situation in the Auckland mayoral election campaign of 2010. I want to specifically refer here to the question of the definition of “anonymous” and “donation”.

I wonder whether members of the Committee would consider the following type of donation to be one that could be regarded as anonymous. This is where an entity—in this case Skycity—agreed to make a donation to a mayoral campaign for John Banks. I have in front of me here the formal written statements of a staff member of Skycity and of the chief executive of Skycity, Nigel Morrison. Mr Morrison recalls attending a meeting with John Banks in his office, and this is what he said in his statement: “This meeting lasted only about 10 minutes during which time I handed to John Banks the cheque in a SKYCITY envelope,”. That is what it says. That is what it says in the witness statement from Nigel Morrison, the chief executive of Skycity. He handed Mr Banks a cheque in a Skycity envelope. John Banks declared that donation as anonymous. He said he did not know who gave him a $15,000 cheque. A $15,000 cheque was handed to him in a Skycity envelope. It will have been one of those white envelopes—those DLE envelopes—with the Skycity logo on the left-hand bottom corner. I am sure that will be the envelope that Mr Banks received the cheque in. Nigel Morrison said that in a sworn affidavit to the police.

Another staff member from Skycity also indicated that his organisation had received a receipt from Team Banksie—a receipt from Team Banksie—for the said $15,000 cheque. So let us just be absolutely clear here. The situation we have got is that a $15,000 cheque is handed to Mr Banks in a Skycity envelope, his treasurer from Team Banksie receipts that, and Mr Banks declares it as anonymous—Mr Banks declares that donation as anonymous. That is the kind of cover-up, the kind of evasion of the law, that we on this side of the House have come to expect from Mr Banks, and that is why this law is needed.

However, the problem we have got is that John Banks has not been fully held to account for that. John Banks has not been fully held to account, because, although the police were able to find him guilty of having breached the law in one particular part of his donation regimes—that is the fact that he signed a false return—the time period in which he was able to be convicted for that had expired. So although they said that he absolutely broke the law in that regard, the time period for that conviction has expired. John Key, of course, had said that he would sack John Banks if it was discovered that he had broken the law, but he backed off from that very, very quickly once he realised that, and refused to read the police report.

The other part of Mr Banks’ donation that is relevant to Part 1 here is whether or not Mr Banks knowingly signed off on a false return. The police in the end said that they were unable to come to a decision as to whether Mr Banks had knowingly done that. If Mr Banks had knowingly done that, then he would be subject to a conviction with a prison term of up to 2 years, and I think the people in the Chamber know what that means—that would mean that Mr Banks could no longer serve as an MP. So it is certainly in the interests of the Government not to see that go to its full fruition. One of the reasons I suspect that the police were unable to decide whether Mr Banks had knowingly signed a false return for that donation is because of what Mr Banks might have said to them when he was interviewed. I am in receipt of the police file on Mr Banks’ case under the Local Electoral Act, and all of the witness statements for that case have been provided to me, bar one. The one witness statement that is missing is John Banks’. I am holding the police report about their interview with John Banks. Here it is.

💬 Andrew Little: Oh, one of those again.

Yes, one of those.

💬 Andrew Little: Seen those before somewhere.

Yes, it is very familiar. It is blacked out here and on the back page as well. So Mr Banks, who said he had nothing to fear and nothing to hide, has hidden this because he is very afraid of what it says. He is very afraid that what it will show is that of course those donations were not anonymous. He knew about the donations he was getting.

I have been able in this call so far to refer only to the Skycity donation. There are Kim Dotcom donations—two of them at $25,000 each. Mr Dotcom has given extensive evidence in this inquiry to indicate that he was very well aware he was giving those donations to Mr Banks. Mr Banks came in a helicopter to his mansion and indicated that he would be gratefully receiving of this $50,000. He specifically asked for the donation to be split into two $25,000 amounts, and he did that because he had a number of other $25,000 donations. So what he was doing was using the provisions of the Local Electoral Act as they were at that time. He said: “If you give me this in a $25,000 lot, I can put it alongside all the other donations of $25,000 and magically claim that I don’t know who they came from.”

That is why these changes are required—because people like John Banks are prepared to exploit any loophole in the law that they can find. They are prepared to do anything that is possible not to be upfront with New Zealanders. It is very important to know that it is John Banks—a person who is thoroughly disgraced and discredited, a person who is now in court on these matters—who is propping up this National Government. He is the person propping up this Government. He is the person who has exploited the Local Electoral Act beyond what any reasonable person would believe that these sections should allow. The idea that he could declare these donations as anonymous is not just ridiculous, I would allege that it is also corrupt. He has done this knowingly. We cannot see what Mr Banks said to the police, but Mr Banks has done this knowingly. He knew he did this. He used the Local Electoral Act in the form it was in to ensure that New Zealanders could not see who had donated to him. That is bad enough, but then he covered it up, and he has covered it up day after day.

Today I stand here waiting for Mr Banks to allow the release of his witness statement, because if he said he had nothing to fear and nothing to hide, then he should release that witness statement. I know why he does not want it released. It is because it will show that he has lied to the Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister said that if he found that out, John Banks was gone. But the Prime Minister knows he cannot do that, because his Government is propped up by disgraced MPs—MPs like John Banks, who has knowingly breached the Local Electoral Act.

We on the Labour Party side of the House do support this bill. We believe that it is high time that local electoral matters were made clearer, that they were made consistent with the Electoral Act. But although we support this bill, we cannot support the fact that the Government continues to be propped up by somebody who used the loopholes in the Local Electoral Act, and who deliberately misled New Zealanders and the New Zealand public about the donations he received. That is unacceptable, and the changes to this Act are high time coming, so that people like John Banks cannot get away with it.

Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. I am pleased to take a short call in the Committee stage of the Local Electoral Amendment Bill (No 2), which the Green Party is supporting, and that is because the Local Electoral Act is about ensuring a transparent local body electoral process and ensuring that the public can be confident in that process. So we certainly support the thrust of the bill to align the practice at local authority elections with that of general elections and to make those local electoral processes more robust. Certainly, capping anonymous donations at $1,500 is one example of making them compatible, and requiring a third party who receives a donation on behalf of a candidate to disclose the identity of the donor if he or she knows it is another.

But I would like to speak to Supplementary Order Paper 215 in my name, which would provide for greater consultation when decisions are made to adjourn elections. Clause 21 of the bill inserts new section 73A in the principal Act, and it would enable electoral processes to be adjourned in the case of a local or national emergency so that electors are not denied the opportunity to cast a valid vote to nominate a candidate or to accept nomination. The current Act allows elections to be postponed for 14 days, and this bill proposes to extend this to 6 weeks and allow that to be rolled over. It is a very serious decision to deprive citizens of the right to vote, or to postpone it, and we have seen that in Environment Canterbury with the lack of an ability to vote for councillors, and with the fact that elections have been postponed indefinitely, it seems. The bill as drafted provides for the decision to postpone a local authority election to be made by the Minister of Local Government by Order in Council after consulting the affected local authorities and the affected electoral officer. The Supplementary Order Paper retains this provision, but it requires that each affected local authority and its electoral officers must have agreed to the decision to postpone the election and must have advised the Minister of their agreement before an Order in Council can be issued postponing the election.

We need this Supplementary Order Paper because Ministers under this National Government have been far too ready to take and keep power to themselves, and to wade in and direct councils, so that decisions important to local communities are being made increasingly by Ministers rather than by the local councillors whom that community elected. We have certainly seen that in the very sweeping powers that the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery continues to hold in Canterbury, and he, not the councils, ends up signing off on final decisions on a raft of plans, programmes, and strategies that are critical for the rebuild of Christchurch. We have also seen it in the broken ministerial promise—and I am pleased that the Minister in the chair, the Minister for Conservation, is the same Minister who was involved in removing democracy in Canterbury—to reinstate elections for Environment Canterbury this year, and the decision to introduce legislation that further postpones those elections.

So this Supplementary Order Paper provides a check on this ministerial power, and it underlines the importance of not depriving our citizens of their right to vote without a very, very good reason. This Supplementary Order Paper, with the requirement that councils agree to elections being postponed, represents a partnership approach to local government, which the Green Party believes is absolutely crucial to a healthy and functioning relationship between central and local government, unlike this Government, which has got a bullying relationship with local government and seems intent on directing local councils to do what Ministers please. So this Supplementary Order Paper, which makes sure that councils actually agree to postpone elections, brings much more of a partnership approach.

Talking briefly about some other clauses in the bill, we certainly support the proposed insertion of a requirement that voting papers must include a warning that it is an offence to interfere in any way with anyone who is about to vote. We often take it for granted that there will not be interference with voting, but it is appropriate that it is in this bill. But it is very ironic that the Government is sponsoring this bill, a bill that highlights that it is an offence to interfere with a person who is about to vote, when it has been National and ACT who have so grossly interfered with the right of Cantabrians to vote for their regional council by cancelling that opportunity and extending the term of appointed commissioners. One of the disappointing aspects of the bill is that the Government Supplementary Order Paper 198 does not take the advice of the Justice and Electoral Committee to strengthen new section 103A in clause 27 and ensure that it catches cases where an individual or a company provides discounted advertising to one candidate and then charges everybody else the regular rate, and ensures that such donations are disclosed.

One of the big gaps in the bill where the Green Party has a concern is the bill’s failure to regulate and modernise the rules governing third-party spending on local body elections. In its report, the select committee noted that the bill as introduced did not cover these third-party donations and expenditures, and that left a potential gap for third parties to receive donations and use the funds to promote a candidate, and potentially to denigrate other candidates, without appropriate regulation and without the candidate’s permission. At the moment third parties can spend an unlimited amount to campaign for or against certain candidates, and the bill does nothing about that. The select committee concluded that there was not time to implement the changes before the local body elections in October, but the Green Party remains disappointed by this major gap in the legislation and commends a member’s bill in the name of my colleague Denise Roche, the Local Electoral (Finance) Amendment Bill, which would impose a $5,000 cap on donations by any person or group. It would regulate third-party donations and it would ban overseas donations.

But the Green Party is supporting the Local Electoral Amendment Bill because it does make some improvements to the principal Act, and we commend Supplementary Order Paper 215 to implement much more of a partnership arrangement with local government in relation to any postponing of elections. Thank you.

Although the Local Electoral Amendment Bill (No 2) does some very good things and will be supported by New Zealand First, it is far from perfect and it is incomplete. However, it is just enough and just in time for this year’s local government elections.

Clause 15 inserts a good new section, section 61(2)(ca), requiring a candidate profile statement to include whether or not the candidate’s principal place of residence is in the local government area in question. That is a desirable provision because voters ought to have that information, but it does not preclude a candidate from living outside the area and does not preclude him or her stating what connections he or she has with the area. Of course, some people who do live within the area may, in fact, have very little genuine connection with it, so voters need to be aware of that too.

Most important, however, are the provisions, which are long needed, concerning anonymous donations. The need for those, of course, was well demonstrated by the John Banks issues in relation to his last unsuccessful Auckland mayoralty campaign. This is an important issue for transparency and democracy in local government. The bill addresses the matter that the John Banks electoral return from the 2010 local body elections highlighted. It revealed a gap in the existing legislation that allowed candidates to call donations “anonymous” that they knew, or ought to have known, were not, in fact, anonymous donations.

New section 103(F), inserted by clause 27, says: “If any person involved in the administration of the affairs of a candidate in relation to his or her election campaign knows the identity of the donor of an anonymous donation exceeding $1,500, the person must disclose the identity of the donor to the candidate.” Many New Zealanders will welcome that new provision. I worry a little that it will be necessary to prove actual knowledge, which may be difficult, and perhaps we ought to have added the words “or ought to have known” in the section as well. Nevertheless, it is a satisfactory section as it is, and it will help solve the Banks problem, at least as far as legislation can go.

The bill provides in new section 103(H), inserted by clause 27, that anonymous donations may not exceed $1,500 and that “If an anonymous donation exceeding $1,500 is received by a candidate in relation to an election campaign, the candidate must, within 20 working days of receiving the donation, pay to the electoral officer responsible for the conduct of the election to which that campaign relates the amount of the donation, or its value, less $1,500.” I think that will also be a welcome provision to most New Zealanders.

New section 103(I), inserted by clause 27, provides for offences relating to contravention of section 103(H): “A person who enters into an agreement, arrangement, or understanding with any other person that has the effect of circumventing section 103H(1) or (2) commits an offence ...” and so on. That is a very important provision as well.

I also want to mention new section 103CA, proposed to be inserted in clause 27 by Supplementary Order Paper 198, which is also supported by New Zealand First: “This section applies to a donation (other than an anonymous donation) that is made up of, includes, or is wholly or partly funded from 1 or more contributions. … the donor must, at the time of making the donation, disclose—(a) the fact that the donation is funded from contributions;” and disclose the details around it. This, of course, applies only to contributions over $1,500. New Zealand First will support that, but we would have preferred to see it apply to all donations, or at least be limited in the way that Holly Walker recommends in her Supplementary Order Paper 200, which New Zealand First will also support.

The bill also provides for postponement of a local election—and Eugenie Sage has just spoken about that—so that in the case of a natural disaster or an emergency there can be an Order in Council for postponement of up to 6 weeks at the discretion of the Minister. But I note that new section 73A(6), inserted by clause 21, says: “Before recommending the making of the Order in Council, the Minister—(a) must be satisfied on reasonable grounds that the order is necessary … and (b) must have consulted every local authority and electoral officer that will be affected.” I think subsection (6) does sufficiently limit the Minister’s discretion about postponement, and that this would preclude the Environment Canterbury situation, which many of us are so concerned about. So New Zealand First could not support Supplementary Order Paper 201 or 215 in the name of Eugenie Sage. Supplementary Order Paper 201 gives postponement power to an electoral officer, and we think that would be an excessive power to be administered by an official. Supplementary Order Paper 215 requires the agreement of local authorities, in addition to consultation, and New Zealand First feels that that would be excessive and unnecessary, and would unnecessarily limit the overall thrust of the section.

However, there is one very serious defect in the bill by omission. As I have said, the bill does need to do more than it does. The bill that we see now does not cover third-party donations and expenditure, and we in New Zealand First think it should. There is a potential gap for third-party campaigners to receive donations and use funds to promote a candidate without the candidate’s permission, and appropriate regulations should be necessary for that. We accept that it is a complex policy area, and one that, perhaps, we do not have time to deal with in this legislation. It is one that New Zealand First wants to see in future legislation on these matters.

Overall, the bill is a good one and does deserve support, but we think it is still a work in progress, in the way that I have described. For that reason, New Zealand First will be happy to support the bill, and we hope that other parties in the House will all do the same.

I move, That the question be now put.

I want to talk to my Supplementary Order Paper 252, which is on the Table. It proposes an amendment to the Local Electoral Amendment Bill (No 2) that would change the formula for determining the campaign spending limits. It would have a very specific effect only for Auckland, for the Auckland mayoralty. It would have the effect of reducing the campaign spending limit for the Auckland mayoral campaign, which is currently at about $580,000, down to, on the current figures, $376,000. So I want to speak to that Supplementary Order Paper and, really, invite members in the Chamber today to look seriously at this amendment and consider giving it their support.

When the Auckland Council and the Auckland super-city were established, in that legislation the campaign spending limits were set at a level that I believe is way too high. For a contender in a mayoral contest to be able to spend more than half a million dollars—in fact, close to $600,000—in the last 3 months of the election campaign, I think, sets the bar far too high. It sends a signal that our democracy in Auckland is for sale. The Auckland mayoralty has, I think, been recognised as one of the most powerful positions of elected office in the country, and to deter possible candidates who do not have pockets deep enough to spend that kind of money in the last 3 months is, I think, bad for democracy. It is a blemish on the legislation and the rules that surround the Auckland Council and electoral arrangements. Labour members argued then that that figure was far too high, and we said at the time that it would be much better if a lower limit had been set. What we suggested was a limit of around $380,000. That would have been approximately the total of all the campaign spending limits from the legacy councils that were dissolved to make way for the new Auckland Council.

This bill has some really important provisions in it. Although it is not perfect by any means, Labour is supporting this bill. There are important principles of disclosure, transparency, and limits on political donations. Those are all fundamental principles important to a healthy democracy, but it is also important that we have limits on campaign spending. We do have them for parliamentary elections—both at the national level and at the electorate level—and not only is it appropriate, it is essential that for an office like the Auckland mayoralty there are some limits, so that the office of the Auckland mayor is not just up for sale to the highest bidder. That would be, I think, a travesty of our democracy.

The amount currently that a candidate could spend in the last 3 months of an Auckland mayoral campaign is $580,000. That is just too much. It is not reasonable to expect that the full range of candidates that we would want to see contesting the Auckland mayoralty would have to raise nearly $600,000 to run their campaign. That is bad for democracy. My Supplementary Order Paper proposes a new formula. It uses the current structure that you see in the current legislation, but it reduces the amount. The formula is based on both population and the number of electors, and my Supplementary Order Paper would reduce the amount in the formula to $70,000 plus 30c for each elector. If you apply that to the number of electors that we have in Auckland at the moment, it would basically allow candidates to spend about $376,000. Coincidentally, that is approximate to the total of the spending limits for the seven legacy councils that made way for the Auckland Council.

I want to note also in this debate that in the last Auckland mayoralty race, both candidates—the successful candidate, Len Brown, and John Banks, who features so large in this debate—advocated for campaign spending limits substantially less than the limit that is in the current legislation. Len Brown argued that the limit, instead of being nearly $600,000, should actually be in the region of $150,000 to $200,000. John Banks told Michael Field of Fairfax that he would have preferred a threshold of $100,000. So John Banks, who has many years of experience in local government, who was a mayor of the former Auckland City, and who was the unsuccessful candidate in the last Auckland mayoral election, proposed a threshold of $100,000. He said: “The problem is that if you put the threshold of expenditure too high, you put the elections out of the reach of candidates.”, and that “The problem is that I want to encourage as many people as possible to stand for the Auckland mayoralty. It is in the best interests of the democratic process.”

So I call on Mr Banks to vote for this amendment, to be consistent with what he said in 2009. John Banks is a politician who knows a thing or two about redemption. He has been transmogrified—he has been transmogrified, reincarnated. He is the master of political reinvention. I put it to Mr Banks that supporting this amendment would be a way of snatching redemption from the jaws of disgrace.

There is a question, if we believe in limits, of whether it should go lower. I believe that my amendment strikes an appropriate balance. It is important that in an electorate the size of Auckland, a city of 1.4 million people, candidates are able to spend the resources that they need to put up billboards, to print direct mail letters, and so on. But the limit must not be so high that a rich candidate with deep pockets can simply buy their way into the mayoralty by spending millions of dollars on television advertising and the like. It is important that we strike a balance between putting limits on big money in politics, but it is also important that we ensure that we do not disadvantage future challengers in the mayoral race. It is true that there are certain benefits of incumbency, particularly for popular mayors. They have staff, they have the name awareness of having spent time in office, and they have a media profile. It is important that challengers can spend enough money on their campaigns to make an impact and register their candidacy with the public.

I do not propose that the limit be set any lower, and I would submit to this Committee, to members, that it be about $376,000 across Auckland. We are talking of an area, a jurisdiction, that is about the same as 20 parliamentary electorates, and members will know that local parliamentary campaigns are able to spend up to $25,000, including GST, on their election campaigns at electorate level. So the limit that I am proposing in this amendment would be of an order of the parliamentary limits. Also, as I have already said, it is about the same as the total of the spending limits from all the old legacy councils, whereas the spending limit that Rodney Hide inserted into the current legislation is almost twice that amount. It is unreasonable and it does not pay enough attention to the important principle of limiting the influence of big money in politics.

If you look at the spending limits from the old legacy councils, Auckland City had a limit of $70,000, Manukau had a limit of $70,000, Waitakere had $60,000, Papakura had $30,000, Rodney had $50,000, North Shore had $60,000, and Franklin had $40,000. There are no other cities in New Zealand that have a limit on campaign spending of more than $70,000—

I move, That the question be now put.

I am pleased to be able to support the Labour people who spoke before me, who have said that we are supporting this bill, the Local Electoral Amendment Bill (No 2), because participatory democracy benefits a lot when there are ongoing improvements to the transparency and accountability of legislation affecting candidates who seek office at local body elections.

I also want to carry on from the point that Phil Twyford made with regard to his proposed Supplementary Order Paper 252, because if we want to continue down the road of participatory democracy, then campaign spending limits actually have a great bearing on that. If people cannot afford to seek office, or if the ways in which their campaigns are funded are not fully transparent, that will have a bearing, I think, on the quality of the candidates who will put themselves forward in local body elections. So for that reason I think the Supplementary Order Paper is a sensible suggestion. It is a suggestion that ensures that the process of candidates putting themselves forward to seek office is achievable and transparent and does not discriminate against anybody.

I listened carefully to the debate and read the Justice and Electoral Committee’s report. I do want to highlight things that have not already been mentioned, and they are some of the issues that have been identified as outstanding matters to be considered that could not be changed for this particular bill in time for the 2013 local body elections—in particular, the efficiency gains to the unpublished roll.

I think there is some merit in continuing to consider having the opportunity of processing, for ease of voting, those who find themselves on the unpublished roll but who could place an ordinary vote at a local body election. It makes sense. It will save money. It can be better streamlined to ensure that on the day people are not kind of left thinking: “Can I or can’t I?”.

There is also the residency disclosure, which is a great amendment there, because when people know that their local candidates are living in or out of an electorate, it will undoubtedly have a bearing on how they cast their vote. For some people it does not matter, but in New Zealand we are a small enough country that in our communities we take a lot of pride in knowing our local councillor, our local board member—knowing who they are, tapping them on the shoulder, being able to rock up and express a view. It is of some concern that in larger cities the people who seek office do not reside in the ward for which they are standing, so I think the residency disclosure will be informative to the discerning voter, and that can be only a good thing.

I think all the issues around anonymous donations and greater clarity in that area, for all the reasons that Grant Robertson raised and many more, are the types of improvements that will ensure again that if we want a participatory democracy where candidates can be assured that there is no kind of secret bankrolling of interests in local body elections, it will only be improved by this type of provision.

We are heading into the local body election phase, so it is really important that the amendments are practical, that they are going to achieve what they set out to do, and that they are going to be able to ensure that people can get on with voting. But I want to make this general statement: it concerns me that there has been an ongoing decline in participation in local body elections over a period of time now. No one person is to blame, but it is certainly a worry when we can see, in both the general elections and the local body elections, the declining rates of participation. It is nothing to be proud of. So the more we can do to ensure that civics education instils in our children and our young people the necessity to cast their vote, have a say in what is happening in their local community, and be assured that there are some robust and transparent processes that assure every citizen that their rights and interests in participating in the voting process are clear, then I think we will see some confidence being reflected back by more people participating.

I move, That the question be now put.

Motion agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 198 in the name of the Hon Chris Tremain to Part 1 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Chris Tremain to clause 27 be agreed to:

in new section 103D(2), replace “subsection (1)(b)” with “subsection (1)”.

Amendment agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 215 in the name of Eugenie Sage to clause 21 be agreed to.