Electoral Amendment Bill (No 2)

I move, That the Electoral Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a third time.

I’m very thankful for the very thoroughgoing examination of this bill by the House at the committee stage, and I know members are always uncomfortable—members on this side of the House, certainly, when we were in Opposition, and including members opposite now that they are in Opposition—on matters that go through under urgency. It is very important, therefore, that when we do consider legislation under urgency, we try to keep it confined to very discrete, specific points, and that is what we’re aiming to do here.

The reason why this bill is here in its form and being considered under urgency is because we had expected, or I had certainly expected, that the very thoroughgoing inquiry that the Justice Committee has been conducting into the 2017 general election, amongst other things, might have been completed by now and we might have had the benefit of their wisdom and their report-back that would have informed changes relevant to the 2020 general election. That has not happened, and I draw no conclusions as a result of that—that is just a fact. We are drawing very rapidly to the close of this year, and next year is a general election year. I know from the advice I’ve received from our independent Electoral Commission that any statutory changes that they are required to act under and possibly to administer, they need to have advance notice of well in advance of the election and well in advance of the regulated period. So if we want to make changes that are important, that are significant, and that are necessary, then we have to make them really well in time for the next general election, and I regard that as before the beginning of the year that is the general election year. So that is what has brought us here.

This bill deals with a very real risk. I don’t have to canvass that yet again, but it is known to members of this House that members of the Justice Committee have seen and heard the evidence that has been public—and, in fact, it’s pretty clear they’ve seen and heard evidence that is certainly not yet public—and it is pretty clear that like many democracies around the world, ours is vulnerable to those abroad who would seek to interfere in our democratic processes and influence the outcome. One way of doing that is by financing political parties or candidates and sometimes causes, and so this bill seeks to address that very real risk.

I’ve seen some commentary that says it doesn’t deal with that risk. I’ve seen commentary from some pretty esteemed academics, actually, who say that. Now, I have to say this to the House: they are wrong—they are wrong.

What this bill does, through a combination of factors: banning foreign donations, with the exception of the $50 de minimis threshold; secondly, placing a clear due diligence requirement on party general secretaries that will apply effectively—because the only way of fulfilling that due diligence duty can happen is by applying it to all donations over $50, and party general secretaries will await the guidance from the Electoral Commission about how that will work in practice. But I say to this House that my expectation is that the application of that due diligence requirement will be proportionate to the level of the donation. The smaller the donation, the less evident activity there needs to be, but the bigger the donation, then the more due diligence is required, and it is pretty standard—has been for many decades, as anybody who has been involved in New Zealand politics will know for many decades—that many provisions in the Electoral Act are subject to guidance by the Electoral Commission. That’s standard—that’s pretty standard. Nothing unusual about that at all—no constitutional crisis to see here.

So there’s the due diligence requirement, and then the third element—the belt and braces element—is the defence to a charge relating to the failure to disclose or to properly deal with a foreign donation is that the party general secretary needs to point to the reasonable steps taken in the circumstances that they undertook. There is a slightly technical argument in relation to the due diligence requirements where it refers to “a donation” followed by a reference to “the donation”, and I know that even in a third reading speech we shouldn’t be sort of dancing on the heads of various pins, but those words are important. As this House hears many times from members all across the House, words mean something. Those words do mean something, and so the commentators, the academics, and, most importantly, the members opposite need to look closely at those words, and when they do—and when they divorce themselves from the contemporary issues of who is trying to defeat the spirit of the Electoral Act worst—they will see that these words actually do mean something.

These provisions will make a serious difference and help us to attenuate that real risk that has become evident of undue foreign interference and undue influence. So, on that basis, I’m very thankful for the scrutiny that has been applied from the House. I’m very thankful for the overwhelming support that the bill has received. I believe it will serve the members in this House, the parties who are represented here, the parties who are not represented here, and, in the end, the most important people in our democracy—the voters—very well as we head into the 2020 general election.

This is terrible lawmaking. This is a bill that was published only yesterday, and it is now proceeding to its third reading stage.

We’re an unusual country in that we do not have our electoral law protected by a constitution. There has been a longstanding convention in this Parliament that electoral law changes are made on a cross-party basis—a convention that was observed by all three of our Ministers of Justice. What we have here is this Minister of Justice ramming legislation through for no good reason.

He says it’s on the basis of wanting to improve our democracy. It does the opposite. One of the essentials of our democracy is this institution of Parliament, and when we want to change the law, we have a set-down process by which a bill has a first reading, it goes to a select committee, we have experts that are able to submit and advise, the public gets an opportunity to be able to have a say, and a bill goes through its later stages of scrutiny. Do not pretend that this Parliament has given any real scrutiny to this bill. Not a single member of the Labour, New Zealand First, or Green parties took a single call during the committee stages of this bill. It was a farce.

Then, let’s look at the substantive issue in the regulatory impact statement. This bill is presented as an answer to the issue of foreign donations, and so it is materially important as to how many donations have been coming in. Well, here are the facts. Over the last seven years, the average amount of foreign donations coming into New Zealand was $5,000 per year. It’s an average of 60 donations, averaging about $66 each, and what this bill says is that there’s going to be a ban on those of over $50. So let’s be clear: we’re talking about an issue that’s about $5,000 per year. My question to members opposite is why are we rushing a bill through Parliament over the issue of foreign donations of $5,000 a year but ignoring the elephant in the Parliament—the $840,000 elephant?

The outcome of the 2017 election was unusual. For the first time in the history of New Zealand, the party that got the most votes and the most seats did not become the Government. That was determined by New Zealand First. So the outcome of who is the Government, who, every day, gets to makes decisions for this wonderful country of 5 million people, was determined by New Zealand First. And what we know of New Zealand First is they have a secret foundation in which they received $500,000 of donations, and, furthermore, they had $340,000 of anonymous donations—10 times more than any other political party. We know that the president of the New Zealand First Party resigned last month because of moral reasons over that party’s financial issues—and somehow we’re to ignore all of that in this debate about improving our electoral law. As Duncan Garner said so accurately, he smells a rat—and he is absolutely correct.

I pointed out in the committee stage that there are three major weaknesses in this bill. The first is: the one instance of proven corruption in our New Zealand Parliament involved Labour MP Phillip Field. Labour MP Phillip Field went to jail for taking bribes for getting people New Zealand residency. There isn’t a member of Parliament in this House that does not face pressure every single week—

💬 Hon Meka Whaitiri: What’s that got to do with the bill?

—about granting residency and citizenship for our country. The member interjects and asks: why is that relevant? I’ll tell you why: because in the definition of who is a non - New Zealander and can donate for political parties, a person who is in New Zealand on a work permit or someone who has applied for refugee status in New Zealand is able to make a political donation under the detail of this bill that that member did not even bother to engage in.

And so I do say that if we are worried about ensuring New Zealand keeps its reputation—which the National Government bequeathed in 2017; the least corrupt, most transparent country in the world was New Zealand’s international ranking in 2017—then we do need to recognise the risk and the desperation that some people have to be a resident of this beautiful country. And why would this bill say those people can’t vote but they can donate to political parties? That is a big gap.

In the committee stage, I moved an amendment. The amendment said we should not put up with the farce of New Zealand First having a foundation that collected over a half a million dollars of secret donations—that they should be included in the ban. What is the point of having a ban on foreign donations if all a political party needs to do is to set up a foundation, get the cheques in, and then provide it as a loan or to directly do advertising. It is a gaping hole in this bill that you could drive a truck through. Yet members opposite—and the Green Party, the sanctimonious Green Party—voted against an amendment that would incorporate foundations and incorporated societies so that there would be some robustness to the proposals around banning foreign donations. The truth is, this bill is all about politics and not about substance. It is so characteristic of the Government this year—long on rhetoric, very short on delivery.

I was interested to hear the Minister dismiss the views of Professor Andrew Geddis from Otago University. So often that Minister says, “Oh, all the experts are wrong.” Andrew Geddis pointed out that this bill is indeed a very weak response, an inadequate response, if we are serious about protecting New Zealand from foreign influences.

The most disgraceful part of the debate on this bill was the contribution by the Deputy Prime Minister. This is a guy who, when questioned by journalists about those hundreds of thousands of dollars of secret donations—when he was questioned about these sorts of issues—referred to the journalist as a psycho. Do members of the Green Party and the Labour Party support that? That is disgraceful, and I am appalled that members opposite condone that sort of behaviour from the Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand.

The reason the National Party feels strongly about these issues is actually that one of the most precious parts of New Zealand is the strength of our democracy. We have the fourth oldest continuous Parliament in the world. We have a deep tradition of respecting the right for the public to decide in New Zealand on their Governments, free speech, and the processes of this Parliament, and what this Government has shown, time and time again, is that for political convenience and opportunism, it is prepared to ride roughshod over those democratic traditions. That’s why we’re whacking through this electoral amendment bill in less than 24 hours. That’s why the Government’s taking away the decision on referendum from this Parliament and giving it to the Cabinet. That’s why the Government, with Green Party support, voted for a bill that would allow party leaders and not the public to dismiss members of Parliament, something that Rod Donald and Jeanette Fitzsimons and the founders of the Green Party would be rolling in their graves over.

💬 Hon Julie Anne Genter: She’s not dead.

💬 Golriz Ghahraman: She’s not. Ha, ha!

I know that the Greens are laughing. That’s their attitude. I remember when the Greens used to rally against bills being passed under urgency. They’ve become so unprincipled that they are an embarrassment to the founders of that party. There is nothing as precious as our democracy. There is no area of law that is as important as electoral law. This is no way in which to go about changing those fundamentals of the way in which members of Parliament are elected.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Otirā, e Te Whare, tēnā tātou katoa. Protecting New Zealand’s democracy by addressing the real threat of foreign interference through donations and electoral advertising is what this bill aims to address. I’m proud to stand and support the third and final reading of the Electoral Amendment Bill (No 2).

I want to acknowledge the member who has just resumed his seat, Nick Smith, for also supporting this important issue and this bill. It is really something that we want to take to the election next year. We’ve been very, very clear on expectations around foreign donations, and the Minister Andrew Little has outlined the threshold about $50.

But we also, in this bill, talk about the expectations of party secretaries to ensure that the due diligence expected of them is also outlined in this bill in collaboration with the Electoral Commission, and the defence of taking reasonable steps to ensure that that particular expectation isn’t breached.

It is a bill, like the Minister said, that as we go into the start of the election year next year, we want to be very clear that we are banning foreign donations up to $50, and of the expectations of due diligence from party secretaries. It is part of a wider piece of electoral reform that we will be bringing into play on the side of the House. It’s an important issue that all parties in this House have been talking about—and the general public—for months on end.

It is a simple bill to address that. I commend it to the House and look forward to its passage through the House. Kia ora.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It’s good to have yet another opportunity to speak to the Electoral Amendment Bill (No 2). At this, the third and final reading, I thought it might be helpful to provide a bit of a summary of what we’ve heard over the last 24 hours—in fact, less than 24 hours in terms of, actually, the debate happening—to explain, first of all, and separate the process from the substance of the bill.

The fact of the bill existing and the fact of it being something that would be subject to urgency was unexpected, unexplained, and unnecessary. We’ve talked a lot in previous stages, and I won’t reiterate all those points, but in the spirit of a third reading debate, where it’s helpful to place on record the way that things have played out over the course of the debate, albeit the short course of the debate, as a matter of record, we wish to say on this side of the House that we don’t understand or agree with the idea that such urgency was needed in the context of a select committee process—the Justice Committee—that is taking place and will report back any year now.

So one of the interesting points that was made in the debate, I think, was about the quantum of what this bill is actually looking to achieve. The analysis by the Hon Gerry Brownlee was that, essentially, it’s a $16 problem. The maths behind that was something along the lines of the average overseas donation being $66. Here we’ve got a bill that reduces down to $50 the amount that can be kept—so the difference, of course, is $16. So we’re really going to a lot of effort outside of a process that would inevitably have reformed this area anyway to stop $16 worth of donations per time from an overseas person.

That’s about the amount of a block of cheese—Tasty cheese; the only real kind, of course—and it’s sort of ironic that the phrase I associate with the making of cheese is that good things take time. I think the same could be said of legislative processes. The old adage was that the two things that you should never see being made are sausages and laws. Well, I think a block of cheese would be an appropriate way to describe the problem that the Government’s intending to solve in relation to this bill.

I should be really clear that on this side of the House, we do think that there is a problem. We do think that in relation to overseas donations, there is a need for reform. You’ll be aware, and others will be aware, that we are supporting the bill. It is worth supporting because it does at least something in the right direction, albeit that we’ve disagreed as to process and also some of the particulars about the way that it could actually achieve its aim much better.

So I’ll just pass to those thoughts now about the way that the particular law will operate, and a few missed opportunities along the way. Inevitably, it will be the case that we’ve missed opportunities as a Parliament, specifically because of the process having been so rushed. So I’ll sort of refer to those in passing as a general theme of the procedural shortfalls, but really I’m just focussing on a couple of particular things that we could have made somewhat better, including by way of an amendment that was actually put forward and voted down. Dr Smith has talked about that already, and I’ll just do so briefly.

So the first point on the substance of the bill is just that the limited time has limited our opportunity to ensure that the scope is everything that it could be. In relation to local government, the bill says specifically—explicitly—that it doesn’t apply to local elections. Well, it’s good to have that clarity, except that it is a missed opportunity, because many people have been thinking about electoral law reform, both within this Parliament and within that, even tighter still, the Justice Committee and others who have been talking in the general sphere of public life have been identifying a real gap in our statute book whereby we’ve got a Local Electoral Act on the one hand—and Electoral Act, by implication relating to non-local matters; central government, essentially—that are not aligned, even in very basic key areas that you’d expect.

So it is that we’ve still got, after today, after all the heat and light of this process under urgency, a regime in New Zealand whereby local government candidates or parties—you know, we might call tickets, but roughly speaking, we’ve got actors in the local government space standing for election, able to receive donations of any amount, I think, of any provenance whatsoever, and we’ve not taken the opportunity to limit it in any way. Actually, ideally, we’d be aligning the two—that is, the electoral and the local electoral legislation—in that way. It would have been an easy matter from a drafting point of view. On this side of the House, we proved it, even in the short period of time that we had available, by preparing an amendment. We never got the chance to actually table that, but at least some on this side of the House—and I think the Hon Tim Macindoe was one of them—did at least speak to that distinction, that meaningless distinction, or a distinction that shouldn’t be meaningful, I should say, between the local and the central space.

He made such points about the lack of scrutiny in the local government space as compared with this place, here in Parliament. I sort of motion up in the direction of the press gallery symbolically, because we’ve got them physically here, but we’ve also got a lot of attention to the affairs of this House. I look down the barrel of the camera of Parliament TV and note that we are scrutinised here in decision making, as decision makers, in a way that local government is not, and probably never will be. So in terms of a donations regime—which is, after all, at the heart of this bill—from overseas or anonymous sources, surely it makes sense to have no less scrutiny and no less restriction in relation to donations made to local government election candidates. That’s before we even go on to the question of the fact that local government elected officials can make very powerful decisions, very valuable decisions, in the context of resource consent matters and so forth.

My next point is really regarding the scope of the bill—not only which big picture, big ticket items are captured, as I’ve already discussed, but actually even within the bill itself and even in the provisions that are being changed. We’ve missed an opportunity where we’re talking about overseas persons and donations that are made to parties or candidates, but what we haven’t actually changed, unfortunately, is a scenario where we have trusts, foundations—yes, and companies. That could have been an amendment too. That could have been made by any member of the House, including the Green Party, whereby we say, “Well, it’s not good enough simply to be incorporated in New Zealand, or to have a head office here in the case of a company carrying on business here, maybe, but completely foreign-owned, not owned by New Zealanders.”

That seems as though the intent of the bill, which, nominally, was to reduce the prospect of undue foreign interference—we’ve really missed the trick on that one collectively. On the National Party side of things, we can say, at least, that we tried and we had an amendment in there. The Minister said that he thought it strange that the amendment didn’t go as far as he might have expected. Well, that’s fine. We could have amended that further, or he could have amended our amendment to his original, and we could have got there in the end—opportunity missed again.

My final comment or two regards a couple of the discussions that have been had about the way that the electoral law will be applied. The Minister made a suggestion about the way that he could say—in fact, he has been saying to the Electoral Commission—that if a donation is just a bit over $50, which is the threshold, then you don’t need to look too hard, but if it’s a lot more than the $50 threshold, then a lot of scrutiny should be applied. On a common-sense basis, that sort of sounds pretty reasonable, but it’s not in the law.

Then the argument evolves from the Minister to say something like, “Well, it would be common that the Electoral Commission could give guidance about the way that the law is applied, so you don’t need everything written in the law, but you might reasonably expect that the Electoral Commission could give some guidance about that.” Well, that’s fine, but what we have had in the last 24 hours is the Minister giving that guidance to the Electoral Commission, who in turn will be applying it to all political parties, including the Minister’s own, including, you know, Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition and any other players that might be around at the time of the next election, and so on. That seems a strange way to approach lawmaking, where a thorough job is not done. We sort of appear to be filling in the gaps on the basis of how Minister Little feels it should play out when these matters come to a head.

We also had a brief but extraordinary contribution from Winston Peters, not so much a speech as him telling us what the voices in his head are telling him. So we sort of don’t need to dwell on that much further. Just to say: a worthwhile aim of the bill; pity about the process, but we’ll support it none the less.

Thank you, Madam Chair. A disappointing contribution from Mr Penk there, taking a cheap swipe at the Deputy Prime Minister. I would have thought a man of his talents would look at the substance of the issue before this House.

What I wanted to do here, just very briefly, was just note the fact that this bill is well pitched. There has been some discussion about the obligation on party secretaries to look into where donations come from, and some criticism of it. I think that criticism is quite unfounded, because if we do look at clause 8, which inserts new section 207JA, it talks about the secretary having to take all reasonable steps—it’s kind of got two branches to it—in the circumstances. So if you’ve got a $51 donation, obviously the sky won’t fall if that’s come from overseas, but you’re not expected to spend a thousand dollars trying to find out where that came from. So in the circumstance this is an absolute signal to the Electoral Commission and to the courts that this is a proportional question—that you take the steps that are proportionate to the risk. Now, if you were to get $150,000 through a strangely named overseas company, you’d expect some very robust investigations to be undertaken there. In particular, you’d want to be sure that not only was it not by an overseas person, but it also wasn’t made “on behalf of” an overseas person—the other words used in this piece of legislation.

So this is a very well-pitched piece of legislation. We’re not holding it up. We’re not delaying improving our electoral law. This is an excellent piece of legislation. I commend it to the House.

Well, thank you very much, Madam Speaker. What a sad process we’ve gone through over the last 18 or 19 hours as we’ve considered this legislation.

The first point I want to make is the Government’s press release and, in fact, their whole behaviour over this is, as David Seymour says, “pantomime”. This is not a ban; this is the lowering of an already low threshold from $1,500 to $50. So any claim by the Government that this is a ban and that this eliminates foreign donations is just wrong—any attempt by the Government to claim that it is is incorrect. That’s been pointed out by us and it’s been pointed out by numerous commentators. So that’s the first point.

The second point is—and we have litigated this at length on this side of the House—the process leading up to this has been appalling. Now, it is true that the Justice Committee has taken quite some time over the inquiry into the 2017 election—that is correct. There are good reasons for the length of time it has taken. One reason is that at the start of the inquiry we decided not to include the 2016 local election inquiry, and then we decided to include it. The second reason is that the Minister decided to—not instruct us—ask us to consider the matter of foreign donations, and we have been doing that; well, the committee’s been doing that. I’m, sadly—or not so sadly—no longer on the committee. But the committee has been doing that.

Now, these are tricky issues. The issue of the extent of foreign interference in New Zealand elections, or the attempted foreign interference, is something that the committee has been hearing evidence on, but also there’s the issue of what you do about that. Now, this is a sliver of the possible remedies to the mischief of foreign interference in New Zealand elections. This is literally the merest sliver of what you could do as a Parliament to respond.

If you want an example of some of the things that I think the committee is probably considering, it’s the submission of Anne-Marie Brady, who’s made, I think, at least one submission to the committee. She’s been on Twitter this morning, outlining her possible remedies. None of that is in the bill; not a single thing. So this is literally the merest sliver of a thing that you could do. As various commentators have pointed out—both in this House and also in the media—you could drive a truck through it in terms of the protections that the Government purports to be putting in place.

So the process has been a shocker. Yes it’s true that the committee has sat on these issues for quite a long time, but we on this side of the House do not believe that justifies the Government, basically, in the case of the Minister, throwing a tantrum and deciding that, because he’s the Minister and, by definition, he’s got the number in the Parliament, he can just basically take an idea, turn up to the House, and decide on Tuesday morning, “Oh well, I’ll put the House into urgency and we’ll ram it through and we’ll pass it through all stages by Wednesday morning, by half past 12 before the House lifts for lunchtime”. Just because the committee has taken a long time, does not justify doing that.

Actually, I believe, from my time on the committee, the report of the committee will be a good report. It will be a substantive report. It will be a comprehensive report. The reason it will be is: firstly, because it’s taken quite a long to get there; secondly, because there are some good people on the committee with real legal expertise and real investment in the issues; and, thirdly, committee members have taken a serious look at the issues, because these are critical issues for our democracy. On the issue of local elections, for example, there’s widespread agreement, I think, across the Parliament that local elections are conducted poorly, turnout is a shocker, we need to improve it, we need to reform the way we do that. So the committee report will be good on that.

There is widespread agreement that we need to protect against foreign interference in our elections. The committee, I’m sure, will produce a substantive report in relation to some of the suggestions that have come forward from commentators like Anne-Marie Brady and others. There will be a whole series of improvements that the committee recommends for the conduct of general elections more generally in light of the experience at the 2017 election.

Our point is Parliament should have waited for that committee to report. So that’s the second point about poor process.

💬 Ginny Andersen: Ha, ha!

Well, members opposite laugh, but, I mean, the process that is always followed following elections is that you have a bipartisan committee that considers the issues, there’s generally a bipartisan report, it comes forward, any amendment bills come forward, it generally passes through with bipartisan support, and we incrementally improve the operations of our elections. Actually, that’s been a pretty good process.

The third point I want to make is there is no need for urgency—absolutely no need. Members opposite have not even tried. They have not even attempted to justify the urgency with which we are considering this legislation. It can’t be that—

💬 Golriz Ghahraman: Yes they have.

—well, Golriz Ghahraman says, “Yes we have.” Well, that is completely not true. For the Greens to stand up—the sanctimonious Greens, who spent nine years, when National was in Government, lecturing the Parliament about urgency being an abuse of democracy and it being, you know, dictatorial and all these other synonyms for fascism, for the Greens to then, essentially, just roll over and support this legislation under urgency, I think, is appalling. I think people will judge them for it.

So many members on the Government side have not even tried to justify the use of urgency for this legislation. If that was the case that there was this flood of donations between $50 and $1,500 that, you know, somehow we’d known about because the commission had disclosed it or told the Minister or something, and he’d made that public, and we had to really crack down, literally overnight, and stop these donations coming in, well, that would be fair enough. That would be reasonable. That might be a case for urgency.

It’s a bit like when the Minister finds out that a bunch of warrants for officers have been improperly or invalidly issued and there might be an issue to do with whether or not people have been legally arrested. Well, that’s, of course, a case for urgency, because the Parliament will want to act swiftly to erase any legal doubt about those arrests. Well, that’s totally justified. As I say, if it was true that there was a flood of foreign donations that we must stop, OK, there’d be a case for urgency, but no one’s made that case—no one has made that case. There’s deafening silence from members. There is literally no justification for urgency in relation to this bill. Barry Soper, I think, this morning or last night, had it completely right, which is he said it’s the worst excesses of what Government does when it’s on the ropes.

So let’s be clear about why we’re debating this in urgency on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. Let’s be clear about why we’re doing it. The Government’s under pressure. New Zealand First Foundation’s in the media—the excesses of the foundation are, particularly—on Radio New Zealand and in the media. The Government doesn’t like it. In the last 48 hours, there’s been a grotesque breach of privacy through the Government’s own incompetent management of the gun buy-back scheme. It’s been a shocker of a week—or last two weeks, actually—for the Government and a terrible poll on Monday night for the Government. So what do we do? Andrew Little turns up. Hey, Andrew Little, the strategic mastermind who led them to 23 percent. He’s turned up on Tuesday morning and he said to Chris Hipkins, the Leader of the House, “I’ve got the answer. The answer is: let’s go into urgency and ram through a pitiful, small sliver of a bill so that we can distract everyone.” It’s Boris Johnson’s dead cat theory. You know—you throw a dead cat on a trampoline and everyone goes, “What are you doing?” He says, “Oh, it’s a dead cat.” and everyone’s talking about the dead cat. It’s exactly the same. [Interruption] It’s exactly the same. [Interruption] It’s exactly the same tactic that they’re operating, which is, “Let’s just have a debate about something that’s totally, totally near pointless.”

And that’s the fourth point that I want to finish on, which is the bill does very little. You read the regulatory impact statement—it even says that. The best that the regulatory impact statement can muster in support of the bill is that it sends a message. That’s it—that it sends a message. This bill, we support it. You know, in so far as it goes, it’s a sensible bill but the process has been a shocker and this Government’s got no idea what it’s doing. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise in support of this bill. It is a step forward to recognising that our electoral donation system needs reform. I was delighted to see the Government pick up this particular measure out of my strengthening democracy member’s bill, which introduces a suite of reforms and we will continue to look further and further into making our democracy fairer because that is a priority for this Government. We live in a global context where democracy has been undermined by big money interference, whether that’s foreign interference, whether that’s multinational companies, whether that’s domestic actors with far more to invest, as they would see it, into our political system, shutting out ordinary voters. And that isn’t the way it’s meant to be.

But we knew that New Zealand was vulnerable and we, in particular, as Greens, know that our issues are vulnerable to this type of interference. We know that action on the climate crisis has been slowed for decades by the interests of big oil, by mining companies globally. We know cigarette companies—and the member who just resumed his seat, Chris Bishop, would know a lot about that having been a cigarette lobbyist—have interfered with healthcare reforms, with putting labels on cigarette packaging. We know they did that. We know that the gun lobby in the United States has brought that country’s public safety laws to a standstill for money. So we knew that change needed to be made. Imagine our Parliament sitting here passing our gun law reforms that were so necessary after this year’s terrorist attack in Christchurch, and having to be beholden to big money interests from the gun lobbies elsewhere in the world—and we know they tried. So this is change that is necessary.

I will go through the bill because there’s been some comments made that were a touch nonsensical. It is a ban on foreign donations. Fifty dollars is the cap, because as they know, the officials said that where people are selling things like raffle tickets, inquiring about the immigration status of someone in a town hall meeting is quite difficult, but we are raising the bar in terms of putting a positive obligation on party secretaries in all other cases to enforce a ban on any foreign donations above that amount, which we say they do have an obligation to regulate.

We can talk about urgency. We know, and we’ve heard across the House, everybody admits that the Justice Committee has been reviewing the 2017 election. And also within that and separate from that, they’ve held an inquiry into foreign interference in New Zealand’s democracy. For months and months they’ve heard submissions. They’ve heard submissions from experts, from members of the public, from human rights organisations, and everyone agrees that this ban is necessary, although much more is also necessary. I sat in some of those select committee hearings, although I don’t ordinarily sit on the Justice Committee, but this is a special interest of mine and I do have the member’s bill. So I did sit on some of those sessions, and it was extraordinary, the obstructive attitude taken by at least one member of the Opposition that I won’t name. It was extraordinary the patience that that committee and submitters showed in the face of just absolute disorderly behaviour.

Who would want to stop progress on reform of our political donations regime? Who would want to slow that process down? Why would you not want this ban in place before the 2020 election? They know they can’t oppose it publicly. They know the Serious Fraud Office is investigating their political party for receiving a large donation that allegedly was cut up to go under the threshold for anonymity, allegedly by—and incidentally—a foreign businessman. They know they can’t say no to this this year publicly, and there is a saying in politics, “When you’ve got no power, you delay.”—that’s what they tried to do. There’s been a process at select committee. There’s been a recommendation to this effect and we weren’t going to let them keep our democracy vulnerable.

The Green Party has supported urgency in cases where we know substantively a select committee process has taken place. We did that at the beginning of this Government with the paid parental leave legislation, which the National Party deliberately had delayed. We knew the substance of that bill had been through a select committee process. The process is what’s important, not the tick-boxing. And we won’t let them delay what New Zealanders need from us as a Government.

There’s been talk of people setting up shell companies to bypass this law. Well, that would be fraud, just as cutting up donations to go under the anonymity threshold is fraud. But first, you need the ban in order to enforce that law. If anyone is setting up a shell company in New Zealand to bypass this law, we would investigate them, just as the Serious Fraud Office is investigating the National Party. If they had, in fact, set up a shell company to bypass this law, they would be guilty of fraud but, first, we need the ban. So that’s that.

Something that people haven’t talked a lot about that’s also in this bill that’s close to my heart and I think really necessary, again, in the global context is that we’re also, apart from the foreign donation ban, requiring people—advertisers, political advertisers—to make themselves known. Now, this is part and parcel of making our system transparent. We know that fake news and all manner of lobbying goes on everywhere else in the world. We know it happens in New Zealand, and we know online, in particular, it’s really easy for those stakeholders to remain anonymous whilst they’re pouring money into advertising that does affect our elections, whether it’s on an issue-by-issue basis or in particular support of a political actor.

This bill makes that system transparent. New Zealanders do need to know who is taking a stake in our democracy, which is also why we need more reform, which is also why my bill seeks to lower the anonymity threshold altogether because actually every political party in this House is able to receive a huge amount of anonymous donations, and that does make our political system opaque. We do need to know if there’s a gun lobby operating here and donating anonymously to our political actors. We do need to know if the oil companies are slowing climate action. And what more we need to know—and I think New Zealanders would be shocked to know—is that we don’t actually have a limit on political donations. We need to introduce one because our democracy shouldn’t be bought and sold on the free market—the free market that they love so much. Simon Bridges was asked about this a couple of weeks ago and he said, “Oh, well, if we don’t let people pour all the money they want into our democracy, they will breach their freedom of speech.” Imagine thinking that freedom of speech and democracy should be up for sale to the highest bidder. It’s impeding freedom of speech to say that our politicians can be bought and sold if you’ve got the money.

So we do need more reform. We actually need the transparency reforms in order to implement this particular change itself. New Zealand does need us to protect the democracy that we hold so dear. We are the second-longest-running free democracy in the world and we should actually be leading when it comes to getting big money out. So I commend this bill to the House. I hope for, and will work towards, further change diligently, and we won’t let them slow us down. Thank you.

For the benefit of those who may have only recently tuned into this debate, I want to point out that the House, and previously the committee, has now been debating this measure for nearly three hours and 10 minutes this morning and that was the first contribution we’ve heard from the Green Party. That once proud party that has constantly claimed to be champions of democracy and defenders of constitutional precedents and freedoms has today been totally disengaged and failed—failed—to answer, until a couple of minutes ago with Ms Ghahraman, any of the important points that have been made.

We have heard frequently in this debate highlighted—

💬 Hon Clare Curran: Apologise—first reading and second reading.

I have referred to the three hours and 10 minutes this morning, Ms Curran, and my claim was correct. We have been in committee all morning. She may not have been here, but that is the fact: that was the first contribution all morning from the Green Party.

💬 Hon Clare Curran: Don’t refer to a member not in the House.

Well, you can abuse me now, but you were wrong, and it would be nice to hear your apology.

Let me continue. We have been highlighting the fact that Henry Cooke made a very good observation that this is great politics but terrible lawmaking, and that has been emphasised by the failure of Government parties to engage. What we’ve had is Government parties demonstrating their contempt for constitutional conventions, which are very important when it comes to matters of electoral law, and proper parliamentary scrutiny, of which there has been very little because only the National Party has genuinely engaged in this debate.

Now, since I’m following Ms Ghahraman, let me just point out that according to the regulatory impact statement, it is the Green Party that have received more than 20 times the number of foreign donations than each of the Labour, National, and New Zealand First parties in recent times. Now, we’re not suggesting that that is an indication of something dodgy about the Green Party—I don’t believe that is true. But it is a fact that theirs is the party that has been receiving vastly greater numbers of foreign donations, and so I’m wondering if the Greens are perhaps acknowledging that they’re the problem here. It’s curious, therefore, that no member of the Greens took a call throughout the whole of the committee stage of the debate to explain their support for a measure that bans the means by which they receive much of their funding. I hope, since they haven’t done so in that contribution a moment ago either, that they will at least do so to their public and their increasingly disenchanted supporters, who we know are feeling badly let down by the failure of the Greens to deliver in Government the same sort of energy and principle that they constantly championed when they were in Opposition.

It’s also very disappointing that neither the Greens nor the Minister sponsoring this bill from the Labour Party, Andrew Little, demanded answers from their New Zealand First colleagues about the very murky circumstances and lack of transparency over the New Zealand First Party’s foundation, which has emerged as the elephant in the room in this debate. I’m quite sure that it is the matter that is going to receive the greatest media attention and public comment, and rightly so, because—and this is a very important point to put on the record—it’s those three parties opposite that voted down Dr Nick Smith’s tabled amendment, which was designed to bring those foundations into this bill. Well, what a disgrace that is.

It looks as if Mr Patterson might be going to take the next call. If that is the case, would he please explain to the House and to the public why New Zealand First voted down an amendment to bring those foundations into the ambit of this bill. If he doesn’t give us that explanation, then all of the doubt, all of the concern, and all of the murk will remain in the public arena.

Now, many observers have, quite correctly, observed that that’s the key issue requiring exposure to the disinfectant of sunlight. Yet, as I say, today, Labour, New Zealand First, and the Greens have voted to exclude foundations from this bill’s valid objectives. We in the National Party say shame on them, and it exposes utter hypocrisy in what they’re doing. That’s what the public wanted answers to. That, as I say, is what the media should highlight, and it’s why this bill is so inadequate and simply won’t meet all of its stated objectives.

Unfortunately, I had to leave the House for the last half hour or so of the committee stage, so I’m not sure if Minister Little answered Dr Nick Smith’s query about the definition of an “overseas person”, but, if he didn’t, it’s another deficiency in this bill that the Government ought to seek to clarify as soon as possible, because it appears to include someone who is in New Zealand on a work visa. Now, a person who isn’t a New Zealand citizen but is here on a work visa isn’t residing outside New Zealand, as is the terminology in the bill, so the question to the Government is: is it the Minister’s intention to enable people who are here on work visas to donate to our political parties? That’s a legitimate question.

Now, I commented in earlier debates on this bill about other inadequacies in the drafting of this bill, and, as we now come towards its conclusion, I want to focus on a couple more, because these inadequacies mean that it will almost certainly need to be amended in the future. It’ll come back to a future Parliament, and they will be charged with putting it right.

Now, another example is that I cited the illogical and still unexplained failure to include foreign donations to local government candidates and entities. The Minister claimed during the committee stage to answer the question, but, quite frankly, he didn’t. He certainly didn’t do it satisfactorily. Local body candidates and entities are just as susceptible—perhaps even more so—to foreign interference, and we need to have an assurance that that is another area where that particular problem won’t be allowed to continue in the future. But this bill won’t stop that.

Let me now turn to the issue of anonymous advertisements, because there are measures in this bill to strengthen the requirements around advertising, and they are welcome, in order to ensure consistency across advertising. As we’ve said repeatedly, there are intentions behind this bill, or underpinning this bill, that we all support, and that’s why National will continue to vote for it. But it isn’t entirely clear that the change will capture those individuals and entities whom it’s intended to capture. Clarity about that from the Government would have been appreciated during the debates, but, as I say, they remained disengaged this morning and therefore that clarity, again, wasn’t forthcoming.

There are serious issues present that the Government has not considered that may well prove to be unworkable. Political parties, including National, always put authorisation statements on their advertisements online, but, if a third party puts up an advertisement with no authorisation statement and no contact details, whether it’s from a foreign country or domestically, we want to know—we need to know—what measures will be in place for the Electoral Commission to contact them to take it down.

Now, someone can do a lot of damage in a day with misinformation and the wildfire of such misinformation going viral. That is deeply unsatisfactory. It’s something that this Government ought to have wanted to stop, because we know that it might take some time for the Electoral Commission to approach Facebook, for example, to get them to take that inappropriate content down. We’ve seen this problem with other big global tech companies online, including Google and various streaming platforms who don’t like being told what they can and can’t have on their platforms. Yet here we have these problems.

So in the last couple of minutes, let me conclude with some general observations. We all acknowledge that this issue is about genuine foreign influence, foreign powers, and foreign interests influencing New Zealand’s process. That is just wrong. We all agree with that. We all agree that this needs to change. Concern about the risks of foreign interference is growing, and it’s based on recent experience in overseas elections. That’s why it would have been appropriate to do this job properly and to take a little bit more time. It could still have been resolved early in the new year with a proper select committee process, but, no, that’s been denied. We know that New Zealand intelligence agencies have advised the committee—that’s a matter of public record—that they have seen actions taken by foreign State actors in New Zealand. That is of concern, and I assume we all want to stop that.

In New Zealand, donation returns indicate that the level of foreign donations received by political parties is pretty low, and we’ve had some figures quoted in this morning’s debate which show that is pretty farcical that we’re having to reduce it to $50 when the average one is only $66. But, anyway, we assume that the same is true for candidates. But, in another illustration of this Government’s total incompetence, this bill doesn’t actually do what the public is calling for. It’s another example of poorly thought-out law that doesn’t achieve its stated objectives. It’s now part and parcel of this Government, which is just failing to deliver across a whole range of issues.

So we are left with the fact that trusts and foundations, such as the dodgy New Zealand First Foundation, which is currently at the centre of a $500,000 scandal, will still be allowed under this bill. National will continue to support this bill because of its better provisions, but we’re deeply disappointed that as a consequence of poor process, unjustified urgency, and an arrogant “we know best and don’t need expert advice” approach from the Government. This incompetent Government has failed again, and this matter will be back before a future Parliament to put things right that they’re getting so badly wrong.

Before I call Ginny Andersen, I’m going to do a general reminder that members are not to read their speeches.

Mr Speaker, thank you very much. Now, this is an important piece of legislation, as the select committee found out, because we heard, as members of the Justice Committee, that there have been some examples of foreign interference in New Zealand. We’ve heard this from the GCSB and the SIS. And it’s important we take this action urgently, to put in place legislation before the next election, in order to prevent any interference or possibility of that happening.

Yes, there was a more fulsome report from the select committee that would have added far more detail and would have informed the public debate. And it’s very unfortunate that that was stymied to the point where it was not able to be brought to this House. And that was incredibly frustrating. The committee heard evidence and reported back, and all of those members opposite actually were in agreement of the key areas.

Now, the real reason—this is the last thing I’ll say before I sit down—that the committee did not report back was because of the Hon Dr Nick Smith; he prevented it from happening. And it came to the point where his own party tried to physically remove him from that committee because he was being so obstructive, and that is a shame—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order! I think if the member is referring to incidents which occurred in the non-public part of a committee which has not yet reported back, she is out of order and will cease.

Apologies, Mr Speaker. To get to the point, the real reason that came out in the Hon Dr Nick Smith’s speech today was that there was a general unhappiness and dissatisfaction that the party that got the largest vote—this is what he said—were not in Government. And he blamed New Zealand First for that. And that is the underlying real reason, and his self-interest, that shows the true colours. And there is no concern for the public interest in New Zealand to protect our democracy and to protect us from foreign interference. I commend this bill to the House.

That was a very nasty and quite unnecessary contribution to the debate from a member who’s only been here for five minutes and frankly knows nothing.

The reality is that the Government’s hiding something. That’s why the bill is here. We all know that. Why would a bill that affects so little, does so little, be in the House under urgency for the place to consider it, for it not to become effective in one part until 1 January, and in another part, until 1 April? It’s complete rubbish, it’s a total distraction, and it is an absolute nonsense that when the issue that is being considered by so many out there in the public at the moment—the issue of anonymous donations to political parties, focused at the moment very much on New Zealand First—the amendment laid in the House by the Hon Dr Nick Smith was totally rejected by the other side of the House.

We have no problem with there being a reach into foundations, political action groups, trusts, or any other construction that people might like to put around a political party and its funding stream. But, apparently, all the Government parties do. It’s interesting to note that one of the biggest recipients of foreign donations, undeclared anonymous foreign donations, is the Green Party; the very party that’s railed against all sorts of electoral excesses for decades, now comes into the House and exempts themselves, effectively, through this legislation, from the scrutiny that any outside political action group might come under, should they make a donation to the Green Party.

And then, of course, we know about the missing $840,000 from the 2017 election in the New Zealand First Party, and the Electoral Commission is looking into that at the moment. But under this legislation, there’s no problem for an organisation like that. No problem at all.

We in our party declare all donations to the foundation that we have supporting us. We don’t make any bones about that. And, yes, it is a capital structure and we do use the interest for political purposes, but it’s all declared.

So why is it that New Zealand First blocked today—blocked today—a provision that could have gone into this bill that would have made the good practice law? So it’s really very interesting for us to be in a position where we support the bill, because we want transparency. But we find, interestingly, that the number of declared anonymous donations over a long period of time averaged about $66. So we’re in here making a $16 difference to the level at which a current average donation is made. We know some are bigger, because that is average. Some are much smaller. But it really makes the point that if you aren’t going to have a bill that looks at every aspect of funding going to political parties, then it’s a bit of a nonsense to say it is an amendment bill to make the greater security around New Zealand elections to ensure that there are no outside bodies influencing the political process. No one has any idea where that $840,000 came from, except the people inside New Zealand First who received it, or the people inside their foundation who received it. What we do know is that there should be a greater reach and understanding of where those influences—that can be at least made accusation about—come from.

It’s also a bit, we think, odd that we’re going to have a three-week period now between when the bill gets its Royal assent—probably later today—and when the bill comes into effect. Now, you could take out your few statutory days around Christmas and Boxing Day, perhaps the Sundays and the weekends, but it gives, effectively, 15 or 16 working days where these donations can be solicited, can be received, and do not have to be declared if they’re going into the political party above the levels that are currently prescribed.

It’s interesting that the only party that did not declare any donations last election over the specific amount was New Zealand First, and I don’t believe there were 840 people out there who gave them a thousand dollars each. That’s just too hard for me to believe.

Nevertheless, that will be part of the ongoing discussion. We support this bill, but it’s not adequate and it does miss the point. We do know it is here as a distraction.

I rise with pleasure to support this bill, on behalf of New Zealand First, as we seek to eliminate foreign influence from New Zealand’s democracy. It has no place.

The reason we are here, of course, taking out this lowest of the low-hanging fruit—the foreign donations—is because the Justice Committee, which started on this process, reviewing the 2017 election, in July 2018 and is yet to report. This has been a dysfunctional committee on a very important issue. And Minister Little has implored that committee to come back with a report so we can look at these wider influences, and they have failed to do so. So we will support him in bringing this measure—as I say, the lowest of the low-hanging fruit.

We do need this wider reform. There are plenty of international examples out there where we’ve got foreign actors in all sorts of jurisdictions around the world—in hacking and disinformation, and, yes, in funding. We’ve heard from Professor Anne-Marie Brady from Canterbury University that those influences quite possibly exist within our democracy.

Now, we have heard also some incredibly disturbing accounts from Jami-Lee Ross articulating exactly how Todd McClay, as a Minister of the Crown, went over to China and solicited a donation from a foreign national, which then came back through a New Zealand - front company—that most Kiwi of New Zealand - front companies—the “Inner Mongolian Racing Company” or some such thing, and Jami-Lee Ross was advised to tell him how to break those donations up into amounts that would not be detectable, completely flouting the intent of the laws of New Zealand. It is an absolute display of collective amnesia over there, that the only party—the only party—in this Parliament that’s sitting before the Serious Fraud Office is the National Party.

💬 Hon Member: No, no. Winston told us you guys have voluntarily gone in.

So we’ve volunteered to go to the Electoral Commission, which is the appropriate place. That Serious Fraud Office is a big step up on volunteering information to the Electoral Commission.

So there is need for wider reform. We must do this, but until that Justice Committee returns its report, we somewhat have our hands tied behind our back. New Zealand democracy is for New Zealanders. It is up to us to decide our fate. It is only us that have skin in the game here, and this bill, while it’s a modest step, is a step in the right direction and New Zealand First has pleasure in supporting it.

National supports the intent of this bill to reduce the threat of foreign intervention in our democracy and foreign influence on our democratic processes, and we support the very small, the very minor, provision of lowering the level of overseas donations from $1,500 to $50. So we support this bill. But what we do take particular issue with, and have taken issue with throughout the urgent stages of this bill’s passage, is the overblown way in which it has been described. This bill does not amount to a ban on foreign donations. It falls very short of that, because it does not address some of the major issues that have been raised by experts and others. All it does is lower the level of donations that can be received through formal channels.

We lament the process that this bill has been taken through. We lament it being passed through urgency, because we see that that has denied the democratic right of New Zealanders to have their say on this bill, to question whether or not it will achieve the purpose it says it has, and to examine the provisions and the detail of how they will come into effect. It has denied the consultation with the affected parties to find out what it may mean in practice, and it has been put through urgency in a way that is unnecessary and unjustifiable, because the bill’s measures do not actually get implemented until 1 January next year, and, in fact, some of the provisions of this bill don’t get put in place until the 1 April next year.

So we do lament that process, and we put that on the record because we are concerned that over the next year—in fact, into the years ahead—there will continue to be questions raised by the public, there will continue to be concerns raised, about the potential for foreign interference in our elections, and we do not wish it to be thought that we think this bill will address those issues. It will not.

There is a lot missing from the bill. There is still the potential—and the regulatory impact statement raises this, and experts have raised it—that foreign States will be able to circumvent the rules in our foreign donation regime. That is a very real concern, and the Minister in the chair himself acknowledged that concern. We are concerned that the bill still allows for anonymous donations of up to $1,500. Again, officials have acknowledged that that is a potential loophole whereby foreign actors will seek to use the anonymous donation channel to continue to influence. I note that New Zealand First has been the biggest recipient of anonymous donations, and we have invited New Zealand First again and again to address who those anonymous donations have come from and why it is that they receive so many anonymous donations, and that remains unanswered.

The bill also doesn’t include any provisions for this to apply to local government, and we have queried throughout this debate why that would be the case. If we are so concerned about the influence on democracy, why is it that we’re only concerned about central government democracy and not what goes on at local government? That seems a missed opportunity.

Finally, when it comes to this question of how this has been overblown and the PR about this being a huge ban, I just want to point out a fact that has been tabled in this House in the regulatory impact statement, which is about where donations currently go, because, actually, this bill is very narrow. It deals with donations of between $50 in value and $1,500 in value that come from foreign entities and foreign persons. When we look through the electoral returns for the past 10 years, it is clear that the vast bulk of donations of that size, of between $50 and $1,500, have been made to the Green Party. It is the Green Party in 2018 who received 57 overseas donations under $1,500, it is the Green Party who in 2017 filed a return with 60 overseas donations under $1,500, and it is the Green Party who in 2015 filed a return with 300 overseas donations under $1,500. This is relevant, because we have had, throughout this debate, people talking about the spectre of dark forces, of foreign influence, and the fact that this regime in itself will kerb that threat. Well, if that is the case, then the Green Party must know something that we here don’t know about the influence those hundreds of donations have had on them, because if, really, all it took was this bill to address that problem, then, clearly, the donations they have been receiving are of significant concern to them.

What this bill does not do is go any way to address the actual concerns New Zealanders have right now about our donation regime—concerns that have been raised on the front pages of New Zealand’s newspapers in recent weeks. We know what this is. This bill is simply an attempt to distract and divert the New Zealand public, and I believe that New Zealanders are smarter than this Government gives them credit for. They see this for the sham that it is. Yes, it has a good intent. Yes, supporting the lowering of the level of donations is a good idea. But, please, let us be clear: this does not ban foreign donations. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, Nicola Willis likes to throw bombs at other parties in the House around donations, and I’ve got a question for her: why did she launder donations of between $1,500 and $15,000 through her Wellington central office? Got any answer to that, Nicola Willis? Laundering donations—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I believe there’s a provision in the Standing Orders that where an allegation like that is made, a member may take a call to refute that allegation, and I think it would be appropriate.

💬 SPEAKER: A person at the end of a speech can make a personal explanation—at the end of a speech. That is open to Nicola Willis if she wishes to do so.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. So despite all of the howls and the fake outrage from the National Party on this bill, the ultimate point is that they are supporting this bill, and that’s a good thing for our nation. But after 18 months, the Justice Committee, which has been conducting an inquiry into the general election, the local body elections, and extending it to foreign interference in our electoral system, has been unable to report to the House, back to Parliament, which it should have done. Why is that? Because it’s been held up. It’s been held up by the National Party. It’s been held up by one particular member—that member is Nick Smith. I challenge again the National Party to explain that, to refute that. That is what the people of New Zealand, anybody listening to this debate, should know. It’s very deliberate. It’s a very deliberate tactic. As a result, it’s their own fault that we are in this House today debating this legislation under urgency, because the Minister who signalled for months that he wanted that report—there’s been very good work done by both sides. That report deserves to come back to Parliament. But because he couldn’t wait any longer, he had to bring this bill to the House. That’s why we’re debating this bill today.

This bill is not a fix-it for everything. There is a much bigger piece of work that needs to be done, and the people of New Zealand deserve to see the depth of the work that’s been done. I want to acknowledge all of the submitters that spent hours before the committee giving their presentations on the impact of foreign donations and interference in our system. I particularly acknowledge Professor Anne-Marie Brady on that. I want to point out to the Opposition over there that currently, there’s one large donation that they are responsible for that is under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office. There’s another $150,000 donation channelled through Chinese donations—both of them are Chinese—that is under scrutiny and should be under further scrutiny. These are serious matters—very serious, in our system, that these things can be happening. We have to pay attention.

It is currently illegal for there to be—and I’ll quickly read the provision. Section 207L in the Electoral Act makes it an illegal practice to enter into “an agreement, arrangement, or understanding with any other person that has the effect of circumventing” restrictions on overseas donations or contributions over $1,500. It is “a corrupt practice if the circumvention is wilful;”. These things need more scrutiny. This bill does not fix all of it, but it lowers that threshold to $50. That is not minor; it is significant. The scrutiny and the duty of care on the party secretaries is absolutely critical, and it will make a significant change. This is an important bill. It’s one step in much-needed electoral reform. I commend it to the House.

Was the member going to make a point of order—no? Mr Brownlee? I was just checking were we going to have a point of order?

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: No, no. The moment’s passed.

Bill read a third time.