Local Electoral Amendment Bill (No 2)

I just want to take a brief call on Part 2, and in particular the new “Return of electoral donations and expenses” in schedule 2. I just want to reflect on a couple of elements of this new return form. As with the rest of the bill, the Labour Party certainly supports the changes that are being made here. In particular, obviously, this reinforces the fact that any donation that exceeds $1,500 now has to be declared, and that is, obviously, a useful and important change. The donation form then goes on to talk about what has to be said about the donor who is making that donation of a greater value than $1,500. The things that need to be written down are the name of the donor; the address of the donor; the amount of the donation or, in the case of aggregated donations, the total amount; and the date the donation was received or, in the case of the aggregated donations, the date that each donation was received.

As I discussed in my contribution on Part 1 of this bill, the Local Electoral Amendment Bill (No 2), it is useful to put these new clauses alongside the practice that has come up in the past and see why such change is needed. Let us take the example of the donation from Skycity in 2010 to John Banks’ mayoral campaign. How would Mr Banks go about filling out this form? The name of the donor—well, John Banks knew the name of the donor, Skycity, because he went to a meeting at Skycity, where he met the chief executive of Skycity, and that person handed him an envelope, with Skycity’s logo on the outside, with a cheque for $15,000 from a Skycity bank account. So I think we can tick off the first of the requirements under the new Part A in schedule 2 of the Act, set out in schedule 1, which is the name of the donor. It was Skycity.

The address of the donor is the second requirement. We can make an assumption that Mr Banks would have known where he was. That is a big assumption, because he does have some issues—

💬 Denis O’Rourke: In a helicopter.

—that is right—remembering exactly where he was. He did not go there in a helicopter, Mr O’Rourke—

💬 Hon Tau Henare: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I am just wondering whether I could get a steer from you. Currently the Hon John Banks, and so on and so forth, is before the courts over this matter, so I am just wondering whether we are not covered by the sub judice, blah, blah, blah.

That is a perfect legal term.

💬 Hon Tau Henare: The last bit was “blah, blah, blah”.

Speaking to the point of order—

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): I will hear Grant Robertson.

This matter arose yesterday as well, during the Committee stage, I think it was, and it was clarified. I was just looking for the Speaker’s ruling. It was a ruling from Speaker Terris, and it made clear that reference can still be made to the matters that are concerned, but not any judgment on it.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): The point of order is a valid one, in that we need to be very careful about what we do. It is my understanding that certainly a private prosecution is taking place and the subject matter pertaining to that is off limits. There is a police complaint, I think, that the member was referring to as well, which at this stage has not moved to a court proceeding. But the member’s point is well made and we need to be very conscious that we do not transgress into areas that are sub judice, so I will continue to monitor the member.

As I said, we were looking at a practical example here of new Part A in schedule 2. So we have the name of the donor established. That is Skycity. Could Mr Banks have reasonably known where he was? Well, as we have said, he does have some issues with that, but it is a very large tower in the middle of Auckland and I reckon he would have got there, so he could have fulfilled the second criteria, the address of the donor.

The amount of the donation—there is no doubt here whatsoever. Skycity, in its statement in the police report, is very clear it gave $15,000 to both mayoral campaigns, to that of Len Brown and that of John Banks. So there was no confusion there about the amount of money that was on the cheque. They communicated that. The treasurer of Team Banksie was able to write back a receipt to Skycity for the amount of $15,000. So Mr Banks would be able to fulfil the third criteria, the amount of the donation.

The date the donation was received—this is an interesting one, because the donation was clearly received on a particular day. Could Mr Banks reasonably be expected to remember what date that was? I am going to cut him some slack here, because we have seen some fading in his memory over time and he may not have known what day it was. However, the people at Skycity certainly did, and when they requested that receipt they no doubt would have communicated to Mr Banks the fact that he had received a donation.

So there we are: in those four criteria for donations that exceed $1,500, we can now see that John Banks should have been able to fill out a form that said “Yes, I got $15,000.”, and he failed to do that. What is not at issue in any current proceedings is the question of whether or not the police found that Mr Banks had signed a false return. They actually said in their report that Mr Banks did do that. The difficulty they have was that the time had elapsed within which they were allowed to mount a prosecution. There is actually no doubt about that. This form change is a good thing, but it just highlights the fact that if someone like Mr Banks wanted to come along and rort the Local Electoral Act, which is exactly what he did, that was open to him. These law changes will thankfully mean that people like Mr Banks cannot get away with that any more.

Part 2 agreed to.

Schedule 1

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

Amendment agreed to.

Schedule 1 as amended agreed to.

Schedule 2 agreed to.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Bill reported with amendment.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 12.36 p.m. (Wednesday)