Electoral Amendment Bill

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker, and it’s a pleasure to stand and take a short call on the Electoral Amendment Bill. Members will recall that this bill makes a number of changes to the Electoral Act 1993 to increase public trust in the transparency of the political donations and loans framework and to extend the eligibility of overseas voters to enrol to vote in the 2023 general election.

Let me start with just a comment that the integrity of Parliament as an institution is very much informed by the integrity of both the rules that govern parties and people here and the parties and people themselves. I have been alarmed in this debate by some pretty flippant discussion about people’s motivations, particularly in relation to donations. I would say that everyone here takes very seriously the role of parliamentarians in maintaining the integrity of this place, and that, really, what we’re having here is a discussion about the problem that we’re trying to solve, because we agree, I think, around the House that we do have an issue with public perceptions around the transparency of donations and that we all want a system that people have trust and confidence in.

The problem here that this bill is trying to address—well, there are three. The first is that transparency around large donations needs to be improved. There is influence that people have when they make a large donation to a political party, and it’s only right that we record the name of the person making a donation. That extends to the second point, which is that when someone makes a donation of up to $1,500 and they are named and they intend to be named, there is no rule which requires party secretaries currently to disclose that part. That is a fundamental part of something like trust accounting, where if you give a donation to any cause and you expect to be named and you expect that to be transparent, you would expect the trustee—or, in this case, the party secretary who is receiving the donation on your behalf—to be transparent about what your intentions there were.

The third is something we haven’t really canvassed in this debate, which is that there are two ways in New Zealand that we participate in political decision-making, if you’re your average Joe. One is to give a party donation, because parties need to be able to advertise and they need to be able to run big election campaigns. But the second one is volunteering. By going out and knocking on doors, by getting on the phone for your preferred candidate, you do make a difference in our electoral system. That is always disclosed. You’re doing that with your face. You’re doing that with your name. You’re doing it with your voice on the phone when you say, “Kia ora, it’s Arena Williams. I’m here and I’m campaigning for my candidate because I reckon she’s giving us a good go.” All people who volunteer and do that are participating in a political system. Their names are known. Their identities are known.

So this is also about making sure we get the balance right of participation, where we say that if you have a lot of money, you should put your face and name out there too. It should be fair between people who give their time and their effort and people who give their money, because those things are both important in our political system, and this bill strikes the best balance, and that’s why I support it.

I call Simon O’Connor—five minutes.

Look, National continues to oppose this bill, for a number of reasons. Look, in effect, it’s screwing the scrum, and I’ll explain that in a little bit. Fundamentally, too, it sits in the background, and we heard it today from a Minister of Justice who is exhibiting an enormous arrogance when it comes towards our electoral system.

💬 Anna Lorck: No arrogance there.

The Minister was simply—well, no, actually arrogant sometimes, only mixed with a bit of ignorance.

💬 Hon Dr David Clark: They don’t like transparency.

We’re being yelled at by a Minister who doesn’t like—

💬 Matt Doocey: Worst health Minister in 50 years.

That’s right. The Minister was not terribly happy about some transparency two years ago.

Look, this is screwing the scrum. There’s a general convention in this House that changes of electoral law—

💬 Anna Lorck: Who’s the scrum?

—are actually—and, actually, someone yells out from the other side, “Where’s the scrum?”, and that sums up the left wing. They don’t actually want any scrum. They don’t want a game. They just want to win at all costs—at all costs. And the thing about donations is, yes, there are limits in place. If people are giving enormous amounts of money, we do want to know, and New Zealand’s electoral law is already sufficient in this space. But what the left want is to, basically, name and shame every person who gives money or time that opposes them. And we have already seen that more in the cultural areas where if someone stands up and gives an opinion which is different to this Labour Government, they are harassed, they are bullied; the twitterati, the commentariat hoe into them. Be under no illusions that when these rules come into play, Labour and its stalwarts and its mates will hoe into those New Zealanders who dare to give money to any party other than the Labour Party. They probably won’t mind about the hundreds of thousands of dollars given to the Green Party, but anyone on the right, particularly in the likes of National—who will, predominantly, actually receive lots of little donations—they are more than happy to track these people down. As I say, they are going to bully and harass them, and, fundamentally—fundamentally—we end up with a series of rights.

So we’ve heard about transparency from the other side. There’s two points on that. The first is actually, yep, transparency’s important, but so is the freedom of privacy or the freedom to have privacy, the freedom of expression, and the freedom of association. Particularly in the political realm, those are important. I think most New Zealanders would agree, on one hand, yep, large donations should be shown up or declared, but, actually, New Zealanders should have the right to donate to a party of their choice without having to be named, shamed, and harassed.

But to illustrate the Orwellian-ness—the Orwellian-ness—of the Labour Party, they’ve spoken today and earlier in the debate all about transparency. But do you know what? Do you know what? The Labour Party is refusing to release its submission to the Ministry of Justice on this very bill. Gosh, they’ve gone very quiet now. Why will they not release their submission to the Ministry of Justice? We’ve just heard from speakers, and the hecklers, of just how much Labour wants transparency. But what it illustrates is they don’t believe that. What they want is transparency for those they disagree with. They are more than happy to hide—they are more than happy to hide when it comes to them.

It still plays into the elements of donations, because where does the Labour Party get most of its money from? The unions. Masses and masses of money given by the unions.

💬 Anna Lorck: And it’s disclosed—it’s disclosed.

Oh, and it’s disclosed. Oh, la-di-da. You know, this union gave a million dollars. I mean, yes, we all know that. Everyone knows what drives the Labour Party, but they’re not so fussed by that. What they want to do is get to those ordinary Kiwis who dare oppose them and hold different political views.

And the final point, because we’ve heard it being said today in the House that “Oh well, you know, there are some good elements in this bill. We should vote for it.” Yes, there are some good elements. One of them is overseas voters. A number of my locals in Tāmaki will be very pleased to see that this law will extend the ability or the franchise to vote, seeing that this Government locked them out of their own country—you know, “Wow, thanks for imprisoning us, Labour.” But you know what? If this was a bill simply about extending the franchise to overseas voters, we’d have voted for it in a heartbeat. I’d say, gosh, and I can’t speak for the National Party overall, but we’d have probably have said, “Let’s do it in a day. Let’s get this sorted.” But that’s just a distraction. At the end of the day, this is against the ethos of this House where electoral bills are agreed in a bipartisan way. Let’s not also forget, for those listening at home, the Government is conducting a review into electoral law reform, but so urgent is this matter that it has to be pushed through Parliament. And, as I said earlier, Labour won’t even release its own submission.

Kia orana, Mr Speaker, and thank you for the opportunity to take a call on the Electoral Amendment Bill. I think it’s rather telling that the National Party makes a comment like it is against the ethos of this House to talk about transparency, and I think it’s quite off to actually think that people in New Zealand are not going to like these changes to our electoral law, because if you look, in fact, at a survey that was undertaken by Victoria University in 2021, it found that almost 70 percent of the respondents indicated that they didn’t have a reasonable amount of trust in party funding. So, in fact, it’s hugely important work that our Minister of Justice is bringing to this House, to improve transparency around political donations and around political funding in general. So this bill will make those changes to electoral law on donations to political parties. It will strengthen our electoral law, and it will do such things, as have been spoken to already in detail by my colleague Arena Williams, as lowering thresholds at which donations have to be declared.

But it is also very important to look at another issue that this bill tackles, which is, of course, the overseas voting eligibility and extending that eligibility for voting for overseas voters to six years for citizens and four years for permanent residents. It’s really important because, of course, we have recently had quite significant challenges for our New Zealand citizens and permanent residents to exercise those votes because of our borders, but the good news is it’s all open for business now. Our borders are open, but we still need to make some changes in the meantime. All in all, this is an important change. We do want to have that transparency in these donations. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a short call on the Electoral Amendment Bill. As previous speakers have noted, it makes a number of changes to the Electoral Act 1993 to increase public trust in the transparency of the political donations and loans framework, as well as extending eligibility for voters overseas to vote in the 2023 general election. This is an excellent bill, and I must say it’s disappointing to hear Opposition contributions and parties saying that they can’t even bring themselves to vote for this bill to go to select committee to hear the views of the public through that important process.

We live in a time and a world that is growing in complexity, with multiple challenges such as COVID-19, climate change, and the undermining of our rules-based system. It is critical that we as parliamentarians do all that we can to support trust and confidence in our political system. Opposition speakers have tried to downplay the views of the public and the results of a Victoria University study—which to me is quite bizarre: that Opposition members would seek to undermine one of our upstanding universities. Victoria University found that 70 percent of respondents indicated they did not have a reasonable amount of trust in party funding. Some Opposition speakers have suggested that neither $15,000 nor $5,000 is a large sum of money so it shouldn’t matter where the line is set. Well, for the people I meet, $5,000 is a very large sum of money. In the Government’s view, the public have a right to know who is funding our political parties, because it is about transparency.

We’ve had some unique challenges over the past couple of years that have stopped many of our citizens and permanent residents from being able to return to New Zealand, because of COVID, and so I’m pleased that New Zealand citizens and permanent residents will have an extension of that time frame so that they can participate in the 2023 general election. It is the right thing to do. This is an excellent bill. I look forward to seeing the submissions through the select committee process, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to speak on the Electoral Amendment Bill. The National Party opposes this bill. There is no evidence that the status quo has proven so problematic that a review could not address it. So a review is currently under way. The issue is: why is the Labour Party pushing this through now, before that review comes back with any recommendations? Any major change to electoral law should be considered as part of a wider electoral review. The primary issue that has been raised by people concerned about transparency is people splitting donations and keeping it below the threshold and doing multiple donations. This bill does nothing about that. It changes the amount that donations should be—or the public disclosure threshold for donations and contributions to political parties. It changes it from $15,000 to $5,000. Will that make any difference? The frank answer is no, it will not. It will not address that issue that people have expressed concern about.

There is a real issue here in terms of something that is commonly called a “constitutional convention”, and that is, if there’s to be a change to electoral law, the convention is that it should be agreement between all parties in the House. There should be agreement between both sides of the House when there’s a change to electoral law, so that we don’t have the impression or the reality of laws being changed to benefit one party over another, so that we maintain a fair playing ground. The concern here is that the Labour Party is pushing through a change to electoral law without having that agreement across the House, in effect breaching that constitutional convention.

I remember something similar back in 2007, 2008, when the Electoral Finance Bill was pushed through by the then Labour Government—again, wanting to change the playbook and doing it with the real concern amongst the country that it was doing it to improve its own electoral prospects. That is the real issue. These kinds of changes to electoral law should not be done in a way that is done to potentially favour one side of the House over the other, and it should not be done when there’s a review under way which is looking at this wider electoral issue. There’s a real concern here. There’s a piecemeal approach being taken by Labour. One is being taken which they have decided to push ahead, given their numbers in the House, having won the election last time, and doing it without consultation with the other parties.

The other concern is that the National Party was happy to release its submissions to the public. There are three other parties which the Ministry of Justice has declined to release to the public, and that raises a real concern here. If this is really about transparency, why is there not transparency about the submissions that three other political parties have made on this issue? The National Party is quite happy to do so. We’re being transparent about our view and our position on this. Why are there three parties that the Ministry of Justice are holding back? That is a real concern.

Another issue is the very limited opportunity that the public had to give feedback on the Government’s proposals on this electoral reform. The Ministry of Justice called for submissions over the Christmas and New Year period. Now, as anyone who spends any time in New Zealand will know, that is a time when most people aren’t thinking about politics and aren’t thinking about the law; they’re thinking about where to go on holiday and spend some time with their family. It’s quite cynical, it would seem, that the Ministry of Justice called for those submissions over the Christmas and New Year time period, an extremely short time frame, with submissions closing on 25 January. Critics could certainly be forgiven for being somewhat cynical about whether the Government really wanted to have public input—a substantive public input—on this change.

There is another issue, which I heard David Seymour touch on last week, and that is the concern by businesses who have Government contracts and/or have other relationships that they don’t want to put the Government of the day off side. If there are businesses who have these relationships or they have a policy framework which may affect them—and certainly, many political decisions affect businesses right across New Zealand—then there’s a concern that if they have to disclose all of these donations, they’re going to be identified and there are going to be consequences for them. Unfortunately, I have heard from businesses that there has been a feeling that the Government will respond negatively to them if they don’t feel that they’re on the Government’s side.

So there has been a real withdrawal of confidence in many people I’ve spoken to, unfortunately, in the business community about the present Government, and that is a concern. It has a chilling effect on the operation of businesses in our country, and that is something that we shouldn’t encourage and we shouldn’t see as acceptable in our system. We should be ensuring that we have a framework in which all people feel that they can have some confidence in. We should not change them without having cross-party commitment, to maintain that constitutional convention that anything that affects the electoral system needs to have bipartisan support, so that we don’t get into a situation where we have parties changing the rules when they have the power. We agree that we have a robust constitutional framework where we compete against each other on an agreed playing field, where we have an agreed set of rules, that we then play robustly within those rules but we don’t try and change the rules to benefit ourselves. That’s a really important constitutional convention that New Zealand should maintain, and, unfortunately, this bill does reduce that confidence in that system.

There are some other issues in terms of the complexity of the change in this area and the uneven impact on parties’ finances. I note that the ministry itself actually recommended against making any changes in that area ahead of the 2023 election. So the question is: why has Labour pushed ahead with this despite that recommendation? It’s disappointing that the Government is doing this. If the objective is to ensure political parties can access financial support, to play a robust role within the MMP system, the question is: how does this improve that? We need to ensure that all political parties can have a robust campaign in an election, can put their message forward. Look, if this was a real problem, you’d ask: why did Labour win with a compelling majority at the last election?

Look, the National Party, the ACT Party, the Green Party, and the Labour Party were all able to access finance. The Labour Party won. The country decided that their message was the most compelling one in that election. Labour won with a resounding majority. Why do we have to change the electoral finance law now without that bipartisan support? If there is a real issue, Labour should be consulting with the other parties and making sure that it’s something that’s going to be durable, something that all parties can agree on, and something that maintains that constitutional convention around our electoral law.

This bill is, unfortunately, deeply, deeply flawed. It does not address that fundamental issue that submitters were concerned about, which is the issue around splitting donations and keeping it below the threshold. All it does is change that threshold from $15,000 to $5,000, among a few other things. I note it does also include in it the issue of New Zealand citizens who have been living overseas and New Zealand residents during the COVID period, and it changes that eligibility period for overseas voters to six years for citizens and four years for permanent residents just for the 2023 election. That, in my view of it, seems a sensible thing to do, because people have been locked out of the country, often without the wish to do so, because the borders were very strictly controlled, obviously, for the last two years, and people haven’t been able to travel back into the country, as a consequence.

That, however, is not the most substantive part of this bill, which is quite a significant one. It does go back in my mind to that 2017-2018 period when the Labour Government decided that they were worried about losing the next election, and they decided to change the electoral finance rules and brought in the Electoral Finance Act, and it didn’t work out particularly well for them. So it was a terrible piece of legislation. This has echoes of that, unfortunately. Labour are trying to screw the scrum in their favour. It’s not a good thing to do, and I would ask them to reflect on that and maintain that constitutional convention which is really important: that we don’t change electoral law without bipartisan support across the House. In conclusion, unsurprisingly, the National Party does not commend this bill to the House.

Kia orana, Mr Speaker. As a new member, this my first time speaking in the House. It’s a huge privilege to be speaking to the Electoral Amendment Bill, an important bill, because, right now, public trust and transparency in the political donations and loans framework is relatively low.

I myself have never had the pleasure of receiving a considerable donation for my campaign. If you know of anyone, I’ll be glad to meet up! My campaigns have always run on the smell of an oily rag. If I did, however, know wealthy individuals or organisations who had a large amount of money to donate, then it’s only fair that the public has visibility of it. The key point that I want to make today is that people deserve to know who’s bankrolling their politicians. This bill does that. This bill makes various changes to the political donations and loans framework, and it also increases the public disclosure about party funding.

This bill lowers the threshold for disclosing the identity of party donors from $15,000 to $5,000. The new $5,000 threshold provides a careful balance, increasing the amount of information that’s publicly available about party donations, whilst not providing an overload of information, and respecting donor privacy for smaller donation sums. It, essentially, provides balance. The Minister of Justice, the Hon Kiritapu Allan, has nominated the Justice Committee to consider the Electoral Amendment Bill. Select committee consideration of such a technical area of the law will be valuable. We welcome public and expert submissions on this bill. So I commend this bill to the House.

Bill read a first time.

The question is, That the Electoral Amendment Bill be considered by the Justice Committee.