Local Electoral (Advertising) Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Minister of Local Government: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I move, That the Local Electoral (Advertising) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

The bill amends the Local Electoral Act 2001 to address concerns around candidate safety. It does this by loosening the requirement that candidates attach either their residential or business address to electoral advertising, allowing email addresses, PO boxes, phone numbers, or links to an internet page to be used instead.

We now come to the end of the legislative process for this short but sensible bill. It is the end of the work for us here in the House today, but it is just the beginning of the work that this bill is going to do. In a few short weeks, on 15 July, nominations for the local elections will officially open. Across the country, thousands of candidates will put their names forward to stand for their local council. Why do they do this? Candidates will have all sorts of reasons for standing for council, but I believe there are some common threads that connect them. They know that local government is at the heart of serving Aotearoa’s communities. And in order to best serve Aotearoa’s communities, they know we need voices on council that reflect the diversity of our communities. Local democracy thrives when a broad range of individuals who bring different perspectives and experiences stand for public office in a contest of ideas. Candidates want to make a difference in their community, and they believe that they have the skills to make that difference.

These are noble goals, but not all of politics is noble. I think I can be fairly sure when I say that opening themselves and their families up for opportunistic abuse and harassment is not one of the reasons they put their names forward for council. Being the subject of stalking or having anonymous hate mail hand delivered to their house, these are not the reasons that people stand for council. Those activities serve no good purpose in our free and democratic society. Some people will say that this is, unfortunately, one of the consequences of standing for public office. “You are a public figure.”, they may say, and with that comes a need for transparency. And that may be true, but we’re dealing with more than a theoretical concept. We know that too much transparency can be harmful to people’s privacy, it can be harmful to people’s safety. This bill is about balancing privacy and transparency.

I thank the other parties in this House for agreeing to move this bill through all stages this evening, and I thank them for the support. I imagine that those candidates that are due to announce their candidacies for the local body elections will thank this House for supporting this move that will ensure or at least improve their safety. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be able to rise on the third reading of the Local Electoral (Advertising) Amendment Bill. As the Minister has just articulated, the National Party will be supporting this bill. That is for three key reasons, and I want to just reinforce those points, because they are important.

The bill addresses a key aspect in regards to privacy of candidates putting themselves forward for the local government electoral process, a process which is absolutely critical and fundamental in terms of our local democracy and very much important in terms of the functioning of our local communities. And I think removing the barriers which candidates may perceive, or actually face, in reality, as we’ve heard from other members in other speeches leading up to this, is very important, and it’s a principle that National support. We support it because we absolutely want to see the increased participation, at a local government level, increasing of the capability and competence of individuals with life experience and background that will bring value to this role, a role which National absolutely see as essential in terms of the functioning of our broader country.

The other aspect in regards to the bill is around protection, and, in particular, it has been highlighted in terms of the ability of not providing or sharing one’s residential or business address. A number of stakeholders—or actually, a number of people can be impacted by this, but in particular, women are a key group that have noted concerns. I’ve had a number of emails in regards to this, in terms of candidates that have been complementary in terms of the fact that we are progressing this bill through the House, because those barriers are real, and they shouldn’t be a consideration when anyone puts their name forward for this role.

The last aspect is in regards to the local government elections, which will obviously occur in October, and that process will kick off in July. I want to wish all those candidates who are participating in this process the very best. There is going to be, and there normally is, a churn of about one third of our mayors across the country that retire. I want to acknowledge those mayors across the country who have made significant contributions in public service to their communities. Your efforts and your contribution is appreciated. We acknowledge how challenging and difficult those roles are at many times, and the consequences and impacts that has on both your family and whānau, and that is acknowledged and appreciated by those in this House.

So that’s pretty much all I’m going to cover this evening. National will be supporting this bill and we’ll be looking forward to seeing it passing through the House this evening.

It’s a privilege to take a call on the third and final reading of the Local Electoral (Advertising) Amendment Bill. It’s great to see increasing transparency, greater access to democracy, and promoting a far more diverse representation at our local government level by giving people that security in not having their private or their home address. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I must say, I have to give the Minister who moved the third reading credit for being able to speak at all, actually, given that he broke a world record for doing just that over the weekend. So clearly that voice box of Minister McAnulty is certainly a robust one.

This is an important issue, as both the Minister and my friend and colleague Simon Watts has said. It’s hard to know whether or not anybody would be completely put off by the need to disclose a home address on advertising, but for those who might be wavering, it could be one of those sort of negative aspects. I join with the Minister in encouraging those people who are considering putting their hands up to do so when registrations open on 15 July. It is a tremendously rewarding experience despite the rollercoaster and the slings and arrows that occasionally come the way of elected representatives. But this will remove a barrier. It’ll likely keep people a bit safer than they otherwise are on the campaign trail. I certainly condemn anybody that would seek to abuse or threaten in the way that Maureen Pugh described. I think that was a very sobering story. This will be just one small way in which we can make sure that our robust democracy is also safe. I commend the bill.

It’s a pleasure to take a call on the third and final reading of the Local Electoral (Advertising) Amendment Bill. I think we’re all hoping to hear a campaign announcement from the honourable member opposite, Mr Woodhouse, but unfortunately we seem to have missed a trick tonight, so—it would have been a great opportunity.

This is an excellent bill. As many speakers tonight have said, it’s a very straightforward, simple bill that will, hopefully, make it much easier for members of the public to put their names forward for local government. As others have said, we really do encourage people to put themselves forward. It’s critical we have good people leading our local councils and territorial authorities for the next three years. On that note, I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be speaking for the second time on the electoral law that we need urgently. It is reflected in Green Party policy, and it’s reflected in my strengthening democracy member’s bill, so we’re very proud and relieved to have the Government adopt this change. We hope that it will be extended to general elections, to national level politics, because of all the safety issues that others have touched upon: the issues that impact women, marginalised community members like members of the rainbow community, disabled candidates, and candidates of colour.

We know that online abuse is a major and named and silencing human rights issue in New Zealand, and we know that it leads, so to speak, into people’s real lives if their addresses, their places of work, their homes are able to be identified. We know that this discourages, in particular, members of the most targeted communities from running and participating in democracy. And something that the committee noted is that it also means that those without a stable home or work address can’t run and we need those lived experiences in our politics. This is a good change. It will make democracy in Aotearoa New Zealand more inclusive, more equal, and more diverse, so I do commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, look, in the House tonight, we’ve canvassed most of the problems that this bill’s trying to solve.

ACT supports this bill. We think it’s good idea to give people who want to stand for elected office the ability to campaign without having to put particularly their family under stress or give them any sense of anxiety that they’ve had to publish the address of their family home on a piece of campaign advertising material like a billboard or a DLE flyer or a piece of mail, for example.

But I just want to draw attention to the comments from the last speaker, the member Golriz Ghahraman, who suggested that the protection afforded by this piece of legislation—which means that people standing as candidates don’t need to share their home address—should be afforded to candidates in the general election.

Now, some of those people who’ve been members of Parliament for longer than I, and stood as candidates for longer than I, might have thought, actually, that problem was already solved and that political parties are required—and their candidates are required—to identify the authorising statement being from their party, and that’s most likely party head office or, for some, a candidate’s electoral office. So I just wanted to put any concern that people standing in the general election might have as a result of that member Golriz Ghahraman’s comments, which were factually incorrect.

Now, let’s get back to the bill. The ACT Party supports the Local Electoral (Advertising) Amendment Bill because it gives people standing for local government the opportunity to campaign without the concern that their home address might be published. But of course, it’s not just whether your address is published or not that’s going to concern candidates in the upcoming local government elections. There are far more pressing issues than about whether someone can see your address on a piece of paper.

How about New Zealand Transport Authority (NZTA), through the Government’s Vote Transport, has reduced the amount of money that it’s allocating to local roads? Maybe candidates want to campaign on that. Maybe they’ll have an opinion on that, and maybe people in their local communities will say, “That’s terrible. How would a Government that professes to care so much, reduce the budgets for local roads?”

Like they have for Porirua City Council, for example, with their mayor, Anita Baker—who was on the record just a couple of weeks ago saying, “Crikey, you look at NZTA.” You could have basically given her a heart attack when she found out they’d spent $337,000 opening Transmission Gully and reduced the spend on Porirua’s local roads by 7 percent the same year. But that’s this kind, caring Labour Government for you.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! It’s time for the member to come back to the bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. So if I was a candidate standing in the local elections this year, I would be seeking to find out what were the concerns of my community and then reflect on those and offer policy solutions that solve real problems. Because that’s how you get people to support you.

It turns out that a lot of people will support public policy and candidates that offer to solve real problems, like how to fix three waters. Well, you spend more money on pipes; you spend more money on fixing three waters. How to reduce congestion? You build more roads and you add capacity. Who knew? How to foster central and local business districts? Don’t take out their parking and put planter boxes where cars need to park. So those are all things for people standing in the local government elections to think about when they’re putting their hand up to be candidates.

But I just want to reflect on this sense that we live in an era of heightened anxiety; of people concerned about expressing their political views, and when they do, they might get it a bit wrong and maybe their leader will tell them to take down the tweet or remove the post—or maybe someone else will comment on it and tell them where to jump or that they really feel so strongly about a position that a candidate’s taken that they threaten harm and so on.

Well, look, when it comes to threats—when it comes to incitement—there are already rules around that. That’s one of the great things about living in New Zealand; that we have a police force who will respond to the threats against people, real crimes, to the best of their ability, given the constraints this Government’s put upon them.

But back to the bill, the Local Electoral (Advertising) Amendment Bill. The ACT Party supports it because we think it will be very helpful for people who want to stand as candidates in local government elections coming up soon—in just a few months’ time—that they want to have the confidence that when they put their name down and when they put up their hoardings and when they put a flyer in the letterbox, their home address isn’t on it.

So the ACT Party supports that and we’ll be voting for this bill when it comes time. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. This is a very short contribution. I want to congratulate and thank the Associate Minister of Local Government, the Hon Kieran McAnulty, for ushering this bill, the Local Electoral (Advertising) Amendment Bill, through these final stages. I want to thank all of the parties, who worked collectively and in an urgent way to get this processed in time for the local body elections. I commend this bill to the House.

I call Chris Penk—five-minute call.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Like a couple of others in the House, I’ve already had the opportunity to speak on this bill tonight at a previous reading, so I’ll do so somewhat briefly. I understand that we might have the opportunity to pass it into law this very evening, so that’s very exciting, isn’t it? You can tell the level of excitement that I certainly have about it all.

I think it’s worth just summarising where we’ve got to with the debate at this, the third reading. A couple of different trade-offs and balancing acts have been made. I think it’s possible on the one hand to say that we want to protect the privacy and the safety and the security of the candidate with the idea that the candidate should be able to be contacted. There’s an element of accountability for that, but I think more so it’s contactability. I think it’s possible to balance those, and certainly that’s the effort that the bill is making.

Another balancing act, I suppose we could say, is in relation to the way the bill’s being passed. On the one hand, it would have been good in many ways if we’d had longer to consider the bill and for a longer select committee process, but then again, on the other, it is important that these laws are passed into effect this week, actually, for the reasons that have been outlined I think by others in terms of the opening of nominations for the local government election period. So notwithstanding that, all things being equal, it’s better to have a longer process than a short.

It is a short bill itself. The bill itself is quite narrow in its scope. We’ve talked about the fact that it’s necessary to pass it if it’s to be meaningful for this round of local government elections. So, for those reasons, we’ve supported the process in that sense as well.

Others have spoken about the need for an equitable approach whereby we don’t have some candidates feeling able to put themselves forward and some not, according to their personal circumstances of where they live, or whether or not they live alone. Of course, it might be that living alone is a basis on which a person will feel vulnerable, but, of course, equally, others might not wish to put themselves forward because they are living with family members or others who wouldn’t appreciate being made a target, or a potential target, by the operation of the law as it currently stands requiring that.

So whether or not we’ve got the balance exactly right in terms of a PO Box or an email or a website address—and those various options are all available—I suppose this is, potentially, a piece of ongoing work. It’s is something that we should maybe consider into the future, along with the point that was made by the select committee, actually, in their diligent consideration—of which I may or may not have been a part—which is the question of whether to remove an authorisation statement completely. They do exist for a reason, but we’ve reduced it almost to the point of meaninglessness, I suppose, where we allow someone simply to have a PO Box and, therefore, to not necessarily be accountable in the sense of being truly contactable, should that be needed. Anyway, that’s a story for another day.

So I’ve joined with others already and confirm now at the conclusion of my speech that in this, the third reading, we do commend this bill to the House.

I call Shanan Halbert—five minutes.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I would like to commend this bill to the House.

Madam Speaker, I too commend this bill to the House.

Crikey! I didn’t even have time to write all that down, it happened so quickly! Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Third reading of this bill and, as you can see, everyone is enthusiastic to make sure that it does pass tonight.

The reason for that is because we do want it to be in time for the local body elections this year, which open on 15 July—so this is being timed so that we can ensure that this one barrier may be removed in time for this year’s elections and that that may encourage more participation in the local body elections. It has been through a shortened select committee process for that very reason.

One of the reasons that people do like to see an authorisation statement with an address on it is because a lot of people find it important to make sure that their local body representatives actually do live in the area in which they’re standing. So that is something that I think may be dealt with during their own individual campaigns.

Standing for local government and serving your community in that way—it’s an absolute honour and a huge learning curve. It’s something that I had 15 years of absolute enjoyment in doing, it’s the coalface of your community, and it’s a very responsive place to be, especially in small, rural communities. I’m not so sure that the same applies in some of the big metro councils.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank those that have served in that role over the year and thank those that will be standing down at these local body elections. I pay particular tribute to one of the mayors on the West Coast: Bruce Smith, who is standing down this year. He’s enjoyed a trial over the last few months in his challenge with personal health issues. Bruce, you’ve been an absolute champion for your community. Every mayor in the country, I’m sure, knows your name. He has held a huge role in raising awareness of issues through his social media fetish. He’s been an absolute champion for his community, he’s been a champion for the West Coast, and I wish you well, sir, in your retirement.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. As referenced in my previous contribution, I think this will make a huge difference to communities as we head into the next set of local government elections. I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Members, the House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow.

The House adjourned at 9.56 p.m.