Electoral Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Electoral Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

I move, That the Electoral Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Mr Speaker—Madam Speaker; aroha mai—this bill makes a number of changes to the Electoral Act 1993.These changes will increase public trust in the transparency of the rules around political donations and loans and extend the eligibility of overseas voters to enrol to vote in the 2023 general election.

As I stated when I introduced this bill, it is clear New Zealanders want greater transparency about how our political parties and candidates are funded. Seventy percent of respondents to a recent Victoria University of Wellington survey indicated that they did not trust the current political funding framework. In simple terms, voters want to know, and have a right to know, how we as politicians butter our bread.

The changes in this bill will increase public disclosure about party funding by providing more information about the sources of political funding. This bill will increase transparency and therefore trust in our democracy. It is my hope that when Victoria University of Wellington next conducts its survey of public attitudes on our public funding framework, the levels of public trust will have increased, due in some small part to the provisions in this bill.

These provisions include the crucial step of lowering the threshold for disclosing the identity of party donors from $15,000 to $5,000. The new $5,000 threshold represents a careful balance between transparency, privacy, the compliance burden placed on parties, the right to freedom of expression, and sufficient donation revenue for parties.

Other changes in this bill include disclosure of a donor’s identity within 10 working days when their donations to a party exceed $20,000 during election years, and disclosure of the proportion of total party donations that are in kind—non-monetary donations. This bill also requires additional information to be disclosed for the very first time. Under the bill, the number and total value of non-anonymous donations under $1,500 will need to be disclosed, meaning that for the first time New Zealanders will be able to see a complete picture of all donations received by political parties. In addition, candidates will be required to disclose loans received from unregistered lenders for the first time.

Coupled with these changes to political donations and loan settings, the bill also requires all registered parties to disclose their annual financial statements. This important step towards greater transparency about the financial affairs of parties was supported by over 85 percent of respondents to the same Victoria University of Wellington survey from last year. This will allow the general public to view the full income, expenditure, and asset base of parties for the very first time.

The bill also addresses risks identified in the High Court’s judgment in the New Zealand First Foundation case. These risks pose a threat to the integrity of our electoral system and public trust in that system. This bill addresses those risks before we head into election year in 2023.

The bill as reported back from select committee incorporates the Supplementary Order Paper I introduced to address those risks into the bill. The bill now clarifies that party donations include any donation made to a person or group of people if there are reasonable grounds to believe such a donation was intended for the benefit of a political party. The bill also creates an offence for anyone who receives a donation and fails without reasonable excuse to transmit it to the intended recipient, being either a candidate or a party secretary, within 10 working days, as the Electoral Act currently requires.

I’d like to acknowledge Ginny Andersen, the chair of the Justice Committee, and the members of that committee for both scrutinising the proposals in the Supplementary Order Paper and their sensible approach in agreeing to incorporate the Supplementary Order Paper into the bill as reported back.

Additionally, the bill extends the overseas voting eligibility periods for the 2023 general election from three years to six years for New Zealand citizens and 12 months to four years for permanent residents—the amendment in response to the COVID-19 travel restrictions that prevented New Zealand citizens and permanent residents living overseas returning to New Zealand with the required time frames to be eligible to enrol to vote. This extension, of course, only applies for the 2023 general election to address those anomalies. The independent review of electoral law can consider permanent arrangements for overseas voters, and we look forward to their findings in due course towards the end of next year.

Again, I want to acknowledge the Justice Committee for its careful consideration of the bill, and, of course, all of those members of the public who made submissions. The committee received 42 submissions. The majority of submitters were supportive of the bill’s objective to support the delivery of and participation in elections to maintain public trust and confidence in our electoral system. Submitters in support of the bill observed that increased transparency will force politicians and donors to reflect on how the public would view their financial relationships and noted that it is likely to be more difficult to work around the rules designed to protect the system. I believe that this can only be considered a good thing.

The committee recommended some changes to the bill to improve its operations. Specifically, the committee has recommended that all provisions in the bill, excluding those relating to overseas voters, would commence on 1 January 2023. The committee has also recommended inserting a transitional provision into the bill to specify that returns for party donations for the 2022 calendar year should be completed according to the requirements in the Act as at 31 December 2022. These amendments clarify that all reporting requirements in the bill relating to political donations and loans only apply from the start of the 2023 calendar year and do not have retrospective effect.

The committee also recommended amending clause 27 of the bill so the requirements for registered parties relating to annual financial statements apply only to annual financial statements for financial years beginning on or after 1 January 2023. This amendment also ensures these requirements do not have any retrospective effect and means that parties will have time to prepare their annual financial statements for public consumption from 2024 onwards.

I look forward to working with the members of other parties during the remaining parliamentary stages for this bill. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, and it’s my pleasure to speak on this, the Electoral Amendment Bill, although National is opposing this bill, and we’re sad that the Government has chosen to bring about changes to the rules of the game when it comes to the election of parties and the way that democracy operates in New Zealand. They’re changing the electoral rules without any notion of bipartisan support when it comes to financing of political parties. They’ve just decided to use the bare majority that they have available to them and they’re changing the rules, fundamentally, to suit them, and we don’t think that’s a good approach to electoral reform and we don’t support it.

So what, fundamentally, are they doing? The biggest change in this legislation is to reduce the public disclosure threshold for donations for New Zealanders who freely decide to give political parties money—they’re free to give as much as they like, but over particular thresholds, their identity needs to be made public. It has for the last 15 or so years been set for party donations—so people donating to the Labour Party or the National Party or the Greens—at $15,000 for more than a decade. So over time the value of that money has eroded. And for electorate contests, such as in this by-election in Hamilton, or in Epsom where I’m based, or wherever, it’s set at $1,500. That is because candidates are only allowed to spend $30,000 in their electorates, so $1,500 is a significant portion of that—5 percent. But the $15,000, of course, is the proportion of the total amount of money that a party can spend, which, if you stand in all the seats, like the National Party does, can be over $3 million.

So the proposition is somehow that there is something dangerous about somebody donating, say, $14,000 anonymously to a party as part of a $3 million fund-raising exercise, and that is supposed to be a problem. So they haven’t really identified what the issue is. What they have identified is that they want to make it fundamentally more difficult for parties to raise funds.

Now, I don’t like to upset anybody with stating the obvious, but the reality is that political parties need money in order to campaign—it’s not a free exercise. You have to buy hoardings, you have to get radio broadcasts, you need to send letters, you need to do a whole bunch of things, and it’s expensive. I don’t know if you people have noticed, driving around you’ll see hoardings up—they’re not cheap. And so it costs a lot of money to campaign—nothing like it costs in the United States of America, where they spend hundreds of millions and billions of dollars on campaigns. Here they’re relatively cheap, but it does cost money. So that money has to come from somewhere.

Now, there’s a couple of basic choices. Either New Zealanders can volunteer to give money to parties that they support, or the alternative proposition is that the State seizes that money and gives it to political parties in order for them to campaign. And the fundamental direction of this bill and the Government policy is to move more and more of the funding of political parties away from voluntary donations to compulsory acquisition by the State of money to give to political parties.

Now, no system is perfect, and I’m not going to stand here and say that the current system is perfect. Of course there are problems in any way that you arrange the funding, but the only point I’d make is if you make it a State-funded political parties operation, such as the trend and the direction of this legislation, well, that creates its own problems. Most notably it’s great for incumbent parties that have been around and they’ve got numbers and they get the money. It’s much more difficult for newcomers to crack into the system, notwithstanding the fact that it actually ultimately makes politicians less accountable, because actually persuading somebody to vote for you is quite hard but persuading somebody to give you some money is even harder. And it means you actually have to listen to people and engage with people and to listen to what they have to say and go out, meet people, have functions, fund-raise, all those sorts of things, which gets very tiring. It’s much easier—as the Greens would no doubt argue—just to get the State to pay for it, and to get taxpayers to pay for it, and then you don’t have to be nice to anybody; you can just do whatever you want. And that seems to be the approach taken by the Greens. But that’s by the by—we’ll let them explain their policy and we’ll get to it.

So the only point we’re making is—and this has been a day of great, I suppose, constitutional moment, where we’ve had the Government come in and try and entrench a piece of legislation. And they’ve had to backtrack on that and we’ve had a bit of a debate about that, and hackles were raised about their movement away from constitutional norms.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Come back to the bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m just creating the context, and the context is one where people are quite rightly suspicious of the way this Government operates when it comes to electoral law and constitutional matters. They’ve moved away from such principles as equal voting rights, they’ve been fiddling around with the entrenchment. They got caught out and they’ve backtracked very fast. Here, when it comes to the financing of electoral parties and running elections and campaigning, they’ve been brazen. They’ve just said, “Well, we’re going to change the rules to suit us.”

Now, the other way, of course, that political parties can operate—yes, they can raise funds from voluntary people handing over their cash or they can seize it from taxpayers and use it for campaigning. The third option, of course, is to get people to work for you for free. And that is, I suppose, the approach that most of the Labour Party takes. They get their union friends to campaign for them, and that’s fine, nothing wrong with that. But it all needs to be associated with how campaigns are funded and accounted for.

And so the rules that we have in place should be agreed by everybody and they should be followed, because of course it’s very important that everybody should have trust and confidence in the political system that we operate. I totally agree with the Minister when she said that it’s important that New Zealanders should have confidence in the conduct of the political system and the electoral rules. That’s why we have rules and that’s why we on this side stick to the rules and why transparency is important and we should have thresholds. And we have thresholds. We’ve got thresholds exactly where they should be, perfectly legitimate political debates, and this Government has made no good case for substantially reducing those thresholds.

So people listening in might say, “Well, what’s all the fuss about? Why do people worry about being named as donators to particular political parties?” Well, I can come up with a couple of good reasons. One is that quite a lot of people operate businesses and quite a lot of those businesses make a living by doing contracts, sometimes with Government departments. And they fear if they were to give money to the National Party, for example, and the Labour Party happens to be in Government at the time, they might get in trouble or there might be blowback or they may fail to get the contracts. Now, the Government, of course, will deny this, but people are worried about that, and they’re quite rightly worried about it. So they’d prefer not to have it publicised that they’re giving money to the National Party, because they fear that the people on the other side might not be pleased and there might be repercussions for them. That is one of the reasons why—

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: Point of order. The member is making allegations about the conduct of the Government and Labour Party that suggest an improper motive for their actions, which is clearly unparliamentary.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I’ll ask Paul Goldsmith to stick to the bill.

Thank you. And that was complete nonsense from the opposite member.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): OK, all right. The member will continue without reflecting on the ruling from the Chair.

I accept your ruling, Madam Speaker, entirely. The only point I was making was that there were some stories that came from the Gaurav Sharma episode which showed that member—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): No, no, no. Just as well I’m in a good humour, so the member will continue his speech, focusing on the Electoral Amendment Bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. So, rounding up, in summarising, what we have here is a piece of legislation that the Government has introduced. It’s about the rules that cover the conduct of how we fund-raise for political parties. We do need to fund-raise. The only question is whether that is done on a voluntary basis by politicians and their parties—particularly the parties—persuading people to support them voluntarily, or whether we make it more and more difficult for that to happen. Inevitably, the alternative is taxpayers being forced to fund political parties. Now, neither is perfect, and at the moment we have a bit of a hybrid. There is State funding for political parties for broadcasting, but primarily it’s fund-raised. The Greens want it all publicly funded, Labour seems to be halfway, and we’re standing up for parties actually not being funded by taxpayers. We haven’t seen any good arguments put forward, particularly as the Government has set up an independent panel to review all matters relating to electoral reform and they haven’t waited for the report from that group. They’ve just gone out and rushed through legislation that, as I say, we believe is designed to skew the system in favour of the Government. And, of course, when we come back to the point that the Minister was making at the start, it’s all about trying to improve credibility and public confidence in the system, and my point is that this doesn’t help.

Madam Speaker, thank you for the opportunity of taking a call on the Electoral Amendment Bill. Look, I was really confused by that member’s contribution. I really did not know where that was coming from. I felt like I was transported to another time warp or something. I felt that it’s important that if there are any people listening at home, they’re made quite clear about what’s happening. I think the best way to convey what this bill aims to achieve—which was clearly missed by the member the Hon Paul Goldsmith, who’s just resumed his seat—was when the Minister of Justice came before the Justice Committee. And under the new Speakers’ rulings, there’s a requirement there that, if wanted, the Minister responsible for a bill can actually come to the committee and speak to the bill at an early stage. This is a new process that Minister Allan has taken up, and it was great to hear from her and to understand her views on what the importance of this bill is at this point in time. And she made it plain and clear to the committee that it’s important that New Zealanders know where their bread is buttered when it comes to political donations.

And that’s exactly what this bill does. If people are donating to a political party, the general public deserve to have the trust and confidence in their democratic system to know where that money is coming from. And who would want to hide that? So that’s a question that Paul Goldsmith was unable to answer in his 10 minutes that he contributed to the House just earlier. So this bill addresses the risks and the issues that are highlighted by not having a greater amount of transparency.

The bill does three main things, and those are all important things that I think are good to outline. Firstly, it makes changes to the political donations and loans settings, which I’ll speak to a bit further; secondly, it requires registered parties to disclose their annual financial statements, which is also important; and, thirdly, it temporarily extends the overseas voter eligibility for the 2023 general election—clearly something that Mr Bishop’s cottoned on to because he shot off overseas to try and round some up. And let’s hope that there’s some parliamentary purpose in that if anyone ever takes a look at it. So in relation to the donations and loans—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! I’m going to be very even-handed in this debate, and a point of order was raised about impugning motives to a political party. And I’m going to apply the same encouragement, as I did previously to the member, to stick to the bill.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. In relation to the donations and loans framework, the bill’s main changes include lowering the public disclosure threshold for donations and contributions to registered political parties from $15,000 to $5,000, amending the reporting requirements for donations to registered parties received from the same donor exceeding $30,000 by reducing the threshold to $20,000, but only requiring disclosure of such donations within 10 working days in a general election year. It also requires registered parties to report the sum total value of donations separately as monetary and in-kind donations in their annual returns. It requires registered parties to report the number and total volume of donations under $1,500 that are not made anonymously, it removes the requirement for audited party donations and loan returns for registered parties who receive total donations of $50,000 or less annually and who have no loans, and, finally, it requires candidates to publicly report on loans received to support their campaign.

In the consideration and the submissions received in the Justice Committee, we also received a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) that has been included in this bill. It clarifies the definition of “party donation” in section 207(2) of the Electoral Act to ensure a donation made for the benefit of a party is considered a party donation. This bill addresses the risks that have been identified in the High Court’s judgment in the New Zealand First Foundation case. These risks pose a threat to the integrity of our electoral system and public trust in that system, and this bill addresses those risks before we head into election year in 2023.

For this bill, we received a number of submissions in the case of that, and it was good to hear all those people as they came forward. Over two separate periods, the committee received a total of 42 submissions—41 on the bill and one submission on the SOP. And we heard some really good oral submissions from different parts of our community who wanted to have their say in this bill. The majority of submitters were in support of the bill’s main objective, to support the delivery of, and participation in, elections, to maintain public trust and confidence in our electoral system. It’s really important that we stress the fact that people need to know what’s in and behind an election to have confidence in it. We have a great system in New Zealand where we have high levels of participation in our democracy. In order to maintain that and continue that, it’s important we have a good level of transparency. I’m really proud of a bill that has increased the level of transparency that we currently have around submissions, and it’s looking to strengthen our democratic system here in New Zealand, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. As is known, the National Party is opposing this bill. The member who’s just addressed the House, Ginny Andersen, indicated in the earlier stages of her speech “if there’s anybody watching this debate”. I acknowledge a kaumātua I met at Ōhinemutu in Rotorua on the weekend—at the posthumous medal ceremony awards for the 28th Māori Battalion whānau—Pita Anaru, who does watch Parliament TV. Ngā mihi ki a koe e kaumātua.

Turning to the bill, I acknowledge the kaumātua, because there are many of our elderly who value, along with the rest of New Zealand and New Zealanders, the importance of democracy, and democracy is about New Zealanders’ rights and the protection of those rights. The concern that the National Party has about this bill is that it’s well known that the amendment is to make a number of changes to the Electoral Act 1993 but it’s also well known that the Labour Government has initiated a review panel, and that review panel is to report back next year, looking at the wider issues of electoral reform.

So there’s concern as to why’s there’s such earnest and haste again from this Labour Government to rush through this legislation when there is a review panel, in the same way that there’s been the royal commission of inquiry into abuse in care and that the Government chose to rush through in haste legislation by dismissing and dispensing with the wider public opinion and view. That is the concern that the National Party has. This Government talks big about transparency, this Government talks big about valuing the rights of New Zealanders, and again here we have another piece of law that’s being rushed through, dispensing with the fact that this Government has engaged a review panel to report back and is going to ignore that and the value of that work.

Parliamentary colleagues in the House who have sat on the Justice Committee have addressed in detail this bill. I was not a member. My colleagues Paul Goldsmith, Mark Mitchell, and Simon O’Connor did sit on the Justice Committee and as a result scrutinised with the other 41 submitters to this bill, with nine oral submissions heard, the detail of the bill. And as a result, the New Zealand National Party has in that Justice Committee report, which has been reported back to the House, a differing view and opinion, and the concern is, effectively, again highlighting the fact that we are far better to wait for the review and to do the electoral law reform all together—all substantively rather than piecemeal, and this is a piecemeal approach.

It seems that the primary purpose of this bill is to make it harder for parties to raise funds. We’ve heard in the House tonight my colleague Paul Goldsmith mention that those donors who willingly donate do not wish to have their privacy breached and have it disclosed—who it’s from, how much it is—and the threshold has been lowered in terms of the amounts.

The detail of the bill, this being the second reading, will go to the committee of the whole House. Understandably, there are likely to be anticipated Supplementary Order Papers, which, for the benefit of the public listening in, means an amendment to amendments that have been proposed at select committee and reported back to the House this evening, being spoken to.

So the detail—in the six minutes that I have left—is that it’s proposed in this bill to change the donations and loans framework, which includes lowering, reducing, the public disclosure threshold of donations and contributions to political parties from $15,000 to $5,000. It’s quite a significant threshold reduction. Also, it amends the reporting requirements for donations received from the same donor in excess of $30,000, either in one lump sum or in total over the preceding year by reducing the threshold to $20,000 but requiring disclosure within 10 working days—within 10 working days; under the pump—only in a general election year. So perhaps that’s a redeeming factor; perhaps not, bearing in mind there is a review panel to report back next year before the general election. Go figure! Also, the bill requires the annual return of party donations to separately state the total amount of monetary and in-kind donations received.

What I picked up, which is of some interest—again, because this has some bearing in terms of my family situation—is that, at present, New Zealand citizens who are living overseas must have been in New Zealand within the last three years to be registered as an elector. I have an adult son living overseas, who hasn’t been home—he tried to get home during COVID. But part of the reason for an amendment within this bill is recognising the fact that so many New Zealanders were locked out during the COVID times and not allowed back. So provision is made and there’s an extension in terms of their having to have been back to New Zealand within the last three years—that period is extended out. So that would be a benefit for the purposes of many hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders, my son being one of those.

That amendment acknowledges the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on international travel and therefore would apply only to the 2023 general election. Now, we know that the COVID-19 impact is going to be long term. This is a long game, and here we are. We’ve got a Government that for some reason sees that there’s urgency and is in haste, despite a review panel being set up by this Government to look at the wider implications of electoral law reform, and is going to rush this bill through. It does not have the support of the National Party, and that is an anticipation of not having the support of many hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders. I do not commend the bill to the House, Madam Speaker.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. I rise to take a brief call on this bill, but first to perhaps bring a little transparency to my respected colleague across the House as to the nature of the way in which this bill has progressed, because I am a member of the Justice Committee and was lucky enough to get to work on it.

There has been nothing in haste about this bill. It has proceeded in the normal way, and the reason it’s proceeded in the normal way is actually for the benefit of precisely the sort of people that Ms Harete Hipango was talking about: people like her son.

If we do not pass this bill in respect of the timeframes that people are able to be out of New Zealand and still cast a vote, then people like her son will miss out on that opportunity next year. If we wait to go through the wider and deeper matters that are being traversed in the review, then people like her son will miss out on the important—and, in fact, vital—act of contributing to our democracy.

And if there is one thing that we have learnt in the last couple of years over COVID—over watching what has happened overseas—it is that democracy deserves every act of protection and strengthening we can give it. Because while we may regard it as inviolable and forever and everlasting, it is, in fact, fragile. We need to give serious consideration at all times to how each and every next election coming up can be better.

We want this bill in place because we are concerned that numbers of people—especially over the last couple of years—have begun to lose faith in democracy. We are aware of surveys—for example, in 2021 by Victoria University of Wellington, as the Minister said—which show that 70 percent of the population do not trust the way in which parties are funded. They feel that the people paying for us may also be paying us to do their bidding. We know that that is not so, but the thought that they could consider that that is a possibility: we have to act. We need to make sure that there is absolute clarity.

My mother always said that if you find yourself too embarrassed to tell someone what you have done, then perhaps it is an indication that you’re doing the wrong thing. Just a little thought for those who are scared to announce that they are funding certain political parties.

Nothing wrong with transparency; very important for democracy; very important for our next election. Let’s pass the bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Democracy is a human right, and it is in lots and lots of ways the one right that underpins them all. Taking account of the rights of those whose rights haven’t always been central to the workings of this Parliament is what that one vote per person democracy that we hold so dear is all about. This bill is about ensuring that that “one vote per person, everybody’s voice counts” model of democracy is at least some way close to being real, and it’s not necessarily all that close to being real if it’s all about the donors, that big money—I’ll say corruption—that people out there do fear when they think about the way that money operates in politics.

We had, I think, a moment just a couple of speeches ago that was, to quote the Hon Paul Goldsmith—because he says this a lot—a chilling moment for democracy, but I don’t think he realises that we was actually the cause of it. He said, in articulating why it’s important for members of this House and politicians out there in New Zealand to receive big money, secret big money, that it’s about being accountable—accountable to big, secret money; not voters but donors who donate secretly with no limit. That was the policy being championed through the auspices of accountability. That isn’t the type of democracy that most New Zealanders think we have. That’s not the kind of democracy that would ever really deliver for, for example, beneficiaries, or, as we know if we look overseas, for climate action, for labels on cigarette packets for health, for the type of mining and deep sea drilling that we want to ban in this nation, for the environment, or for marginalised communities like migrant workers. We want a democracy that delivers for all of those groups. We want the decisions being made in this House to be strong, not the kind of accountability that prioritises big, secret money.

The way that this bill came about is because, some might remember, I had a member’s bill ambitiously named the Strengthening Democracy Amendment Bill that did suggest limits to donations and in particular limits to secret donations. That didn’t proceed through its first reading, but this bill is related to that work, because last term when first I raised the issue of donations reform and was told repeatedly by various Ministers that it wasn’t a priority because it wasn’t an issue, something happened. Three of the five political parties in this Parliament got into some form of trouble around donations. It became clear that New Zealanders needed assurance that we are not beholden to big money, that we are not beholden to secret, big money, that the rules are clear and transparent, and that our democracy is functional. It was through that work that this bill came through. We heard from the public, and just last month we had the first, in the living MMP democracy, piece of comprehensive research delivered by Lisa Marriott and Max Rashbrooke into political donations in New Zealand. They spent a year interviewing the general secretaries of all of our political parties, big donors, members of Parliament past and present, and they came out with recommendations.

One of the findings that is in line with the accidental admission that Paul Goldsmith made earlier, is that the big donors did feel entitled to influence as a result of their donations. They said that in their interviews with the researchers. They said that they gained special access, through successive Governments, to Ministers, to leaders of the Opposition, and that it was expected that that would result in influence on policy. It’s on the record.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The member is skating very close to contravening a number of Standing Orders and Speakers’ rulings relating to imputing impropriety in the House. I just want the member to be very mindful of not making any allegations of impropriety within the context of this House and the Government.

Thank you, Madam Speaker.

💬 Maureen Pugh: Including corruption.

It’s not about what anyone in here did—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): No, no. Yes, the member is right; the word is “corruption”, but also the imputation of impropriety. I’m very happy to have a yarn with her later.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. So I come back to the bill, a bill that aims to ensure that New Zealanders have trust in our system and that we know who is taking a stake in our democracy, and that if there is influence we at least know who they are. It is about transparency. But I will come back to that piece of research because it did recommend limits to secret donations—and the limit they proposed was in line with my bill; it was $1,500, not as high as this bill proposes so we’re not quite there yet—and it also suggested that we need limits on donations altogether. Actually, to say that we have this sort of gentlemen’s agreement where New Zealand doesn’t have that kind of political interference is one thing, but to leave us vulnerable to the kind of politics that has come about elsewhere in the world, like in the United States, because there has been no limit, means that that culture change is very much on the table here. It could happen here, and it may or not have in different ways, but we are vulnerable.

This bill is a good bill in that it at least acknowledges the problem. It acknowledges some of the research and acknowledges that the Electoral Commission came to the Justice Committee in the general election review and said that it’s really hard to investigate whether there have been donation breaches because the limit in terms of transparency is so high that people can slip donations and they just don’t know and can’t do it properly.

This bill makes it easier to enforce the law. It makes it easier for New Zealanders to know what’s in fact happening in terms of political donations, but it doesn’t go far enough in terms of what the research shows. One of the things that is left out is an actual limitation to donations. So we don’t have a limit. I don’t think most New Zealanders would expect that that would be the law. I hope that through the select committee process we hear from some of the researchers, some of the people who were involved in giving evidence to researchers, and some of the groups that came forward, and that that finding, that New Zealand’s democracy is still vulnerable, becomes more clear and we can engage more meaningfully with what those limits need to look like, not only in terms of transparency but in terms of getting big money out of our democracy altogether and coming back to the kind of accountability that democracy should be about. And that is accountability to voters, to communities whether or not they can afford $5,000, or $15,000, or $35,000, and whether they want to be on the record or not, it’s about those conversations. It’s about saying that actually beneficiaries, solo mums on the benefit, migrant workers, and the disability community all deserve the same level of influence in our politics as those big corporate donors that want to remain nameless and want a limitless stake in our democracy. I do commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party to oppose this bill, the Electoral Amendment Bill. Before I get stuck in, so to speak, I’d just like to start off with something a bit more positive than what I’m going to end with, and that is to acknowledge the work of the Justice Committee, and also of the Minister who attended our select committee to answer questions, especially around the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) and other aspects of this bill. It was great to be able to have a Minister within the select committee available to answer our questions and our queries. I also would like to acknowledge the 42 submitters on this bill: 41 of them were for the bill itself, and, once the SOP came in, we actually had to go back out for submissions for which we received one. Out of those submissions we had nine people that appeared and gave us oral submissions as well.

But I have listened to some of the debate here this evening, and I do have to fight back, I guess, on some aspects of it. One member from the Labour Party said that this bill has proceeded in a normal way. I disagree that it’s proceeded in a normal way. In fact, I believe that it’s been rushed, because we are going through a process before a review has even been completed. We’re going through this process before we’re finishing the year off so it can be implemented before the next election. This is rushing law, but I guess when law is being rushed the way that it is recently, maybe it doesn’t feel like it if we give it an extra few days as opposed to trying to do it all in a week. It’s wrong that one party, having won in an election, is going about changing the electoral laws without the consensus of other parties, especially when we’re talking about electoral laws—changing it so that it advantages themselves but nobody else within the House. So I think that this is nothing more than a grudge bill. I mean, why else would you put this legislation through in such a shortened time, especially with that review that is due next year. I mean, what’s the hurry?

💬 Harete Hipango: It’s become par for the course.

Yes, that’s right. It has become par for the course; under this Government it certainly has. But the hurry that we know is upon us is the 2023 election, and we can see why they’re trying to rush it through, because the writing is on the wall. Labour looks like they’re going to be out next year. The numbers are falling, they’re on their way. Perhaps they wondered, “How could we make electioneering difficult for the Opposition parties? I know, let’s say that people who do donate more than $5,000 to a political party only do it for political gain, and they need to be outed. We need to name them.” No doubt cancel them in the left woke wayward way that Labour chardonnay socialists like to do.

The current public disclosure threshold is $15,000. What political influence can be bought for $15,000? I’ve heard a member from the Green Party actually say that there is no accountability for anything over that, when there is. There always has been. She mentioned the word “corruption”. I just can’t see how any political party in New Zealand can be made corrupt by a $15,000 donation. And if Labour are worried about that figure—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Just stick to the bill. There are some certain phrases which are unparliamentary and shouldn’t be said in this House, because that could well lead to disorder.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. If one would be worried about a figure of $15,000 one should ask why—is this something of concern that a particular party may be alluding to? Perhaps they can’t raise $15,000 themselves in donations, and maybe the thought is that other parties should be restricted in that ability as well. But the way that this Government wants to, perhaps, out some of the donors is to name them. And the thing is, as well, if you’re raising funds within an electorate the figure now goes down to only $1,500 dollars.

There’s nothing that anyone is trying to hide in the Opposition parties. We want donors to be able to donate, to be able to do so lawfully, and also to be able to keep in confidence what they give to other political parties. Some may be donating to more than one party. Some may be donating a bit more to one party over another. They should not be outed over that. There’s nothing for anyone to hide here. We expect that private and confidential information should remain just that, because they are private people, because they don’t want to be stigmatised for their political support, because they don’t want to be closed, cancelled, or suffer potential retribution for the financial support that they offer, and because they have every right to their autonomy without fear of cancellation or retribution for who they wish to support in politics.

Perhaps they said, “Let’s make it harder for the volunteers that work in these Opposition parties; let’s make them report a whole lot more, because there is no real purpose for it, but let’s make it difficult for Opposition in 2023.” This bill touts that it’s all about transparency and improving it for the voters—for whom, and for what purpose? Is it for just two political parties that are currently sitting on the other side of the House who get the least amount of financial support to know and then potentially target funders of opposing parties? This bill means that people either won’t financially support or will not support the party of their choice because their rights to autonomy are eroded by this bill.

This bill restricts freedom of expression and party funding. Everyone loses here. I thought that the Government wanted more people to be involved and to participate in elections. If that’s the case, why are there restrictions being placed on them? Why delve into where and how people spend their hard-earned cash, the money they have in their pockets after the Government has taken their share of it?

People donate because they are free to do so here in New Zealand. It’s called democracy. Democracy has freedom of expression attached to it. Now this Government are wanting to put conditions on it, and when Minister Jackson told us democracy has changed, maybe this is what he was talking about. I’ll call it what it is; it’s a bill to try and defund the current Opposition parties from raising funds for the upcoming election. It’s been pushed through quickly so it’s in place for the 2023 election, and I believe it’s because Labour are very worried about their position.

Writing legislation so that the people’s choice can be corrected before the next election is wrong. If that’s not what the Government are doing, then support my SOP to amend the start date for reporting to 31 December 2023. I’ll bring it to the Table on Thursday. Think of the volunteers and the unnecessary work that is being placed on them heading into an election year. Prove and show to New Zealanders that this isn’t a bill about stopping the freedom of expression to play politics into the Government’s own hands, but a genuine attempt at transparency. They won’t because it’s not. It’s about damage control now that Labour know that they’re on their way out. It’s about damage control because Labour knows that the Opposition parties are better at fundraising than them and they want to try to reduce the flow of funding that will be advocating to get this Government out. Government interfering in people’s lives, interfering in their decisions—you used to stop at the front gate, now you’re going through the front door. The Government is going through the front door and not stopping at the gate. They are going into private homes. There is no adequate policy justification for this bill and there is no consensus across Parliament. Big Brother needs to get back out the gate and stay there.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Look, it’s been a bit of funny business in this debate, and I will take us through what this bill actually does, because I feel a bit sorry for the punters at home who are a bit confused. But first, I want to offer the House some reflections. I’m a relatively new member, and I really enjoyed working in the Justice Committee and on this piece of legislation with Nicole McKee, who’s just spoken. I wanted to reflect upon this idea that she’s spoken about, about there not being consensus on this bill. Nicole McKee and I are people who try to find consensus; we love to get to get our heads together in select committee and think about the people out there who we are here to serve as parliamentarians, and to think about the good ideas that we can do, and the things that are holding people back and that we can take away. There’s nothing I love more than having those discussions with Nicole McKee, and finding consensus on that basis—this isn’t what this is.

Our emotions are high tonight because this is actually not about the people out there, is it? It’s about us. We are trying to have a discussion about consensus around this House, on something which affects us very personally. You know, if we tried to find consensus around this House on things that just affected us, we might get together and put our pay up; we might get together and give ourselves a really nice retirement package, or extend our benefits. Consensus around the House is about the people out there and the expectations of New Zealanders, on us, to serve them. It’s not about what suits us in an election year, and so I’m comfortable with the fact that this bill serves the interests of people out there. It gives them more confidence in our electoral system. It makes us stop and think about who is involved in politics in New Zealand, and those are good things. These are things that a brave Government advances, and I’m really happy to be able to commend this bill.

Now, my first point is something that the Hon Paul Goldsmith raised, which might be confusing everyone. He said New Zealanders can volunteer to give money or the Government seizes that money to give to political parties—that’s not what this bill is, is it? That’s not actually what we’re discussing in Parliament tonight. The Government is not seizing anyone’s money to give to political parties, and we’re not stopping people from volunteering anything. All this bill does is that it lowers the public disclosure threshold for donations and contributions to political parties from $15,000 to $5,000, which means that somebody giving over $5,000 simply needs to give their name, and we need to know who they are.

I heard one argument only advanced by the Hon Paul Goldsmith about why this would be a bad thing—why simply naming someone was so egregious. It was because of this idea that people don’t want their names published because the Government will take retribution. Now, in relation to corporate donors, I actually think it’s a good thing, and I think most New Zealanders do think it’s a good thing that around the board table everyone stops and says, “Oh, will this be a good look for us? Will it be a good look that we’re putting more than $5,000, more than $10,000, maybe more than $100,000, into a particular political party with a particular political persuasion and point of view? Will people like that; will our customers like that; will the people we serve like that? Will this do our brand any good?” That’s probably a conversation that I want them to have, and I think members on the other side have shown themselves who they are for when they come to this House and say, “Actually, no, we don’t want those conversations to happen. We should be able to have lots of money going into political parties which has no name attached to it.”

I think the ideas here are quite simple—that people deserve to know who is involved. In the Labour Party, that means that when we get door knockers along to volunteer for us—when they put up their signs—their names, their faces: they’re all known. You cannot volunteer for a political party in that way without putting yourself out there, putting your credibility on the line, and thinking to yourself, “Is this a good look that I’m involved with this party? Do I want people in my community; my neighbourhood, my neighbours to know that I’m aligned with this political party?” You have to make those calls. There’s no way that you can do that anonymously, and there’s no way that you can give more of your labour than 40 hours a week. But in a situation where we have people giving large amounts of money without their names attached to it, they have a huge advantage over those people who put themselves out there with their names and their faces. I think that should be evened up for the good of transparency and people knowing who’s involved in politics.

I want us to find consensus on these issues. I do think it’s important that we agree on really important principles like this. But I am comfortable with us setting a very sensible threshold of $5,000 for this kind of disclosure, and that’s why I commend this bill.

I call Simon Watts—five minutes.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I tell you what: listening to that speech from a fellow classmate of the class of 2020, Arena Williams—who is, I’m sure, a well-meaning MP for the electorate of Manurewa and does a lot of good work in that electorate—definitely reinforced that they’ve been drinking the cordial. They’ve been drinking the cordial on that side of the House in terms of why this bill is such an amazing bill. I’ll be honest, I haven’t touched that cordial, but I can tell you that when I’m looking at this bill, it’s very clear that this is just another one of these bills that is looking for a problem.

The articulation from the prior member in regards to what this bill is trying to do in trying to make sure that people are making donations that are fully disclosed—well, there is a threshold. Any donation over $15,000 is publicly disclosed, right? So we’re not talking about people being able to make political donations in this country that aren’t disclosed; we’ve simply got a Labour Party electoral amendment bill that is looking to move this threshold down from 15 grand to five grand.

We can navel-gaze a lot around whether that is appropriate or not, and around disclosure and transparency and all of that, but, as the Minister articulated in the opening statements around this bill, the purpose of this bill—the purpose—is to improve trust and confidence in Government. Well, oh well, I tell you what, for anyone who’s been watching Parliament TV in the last four hours, you might have seen a few other bills that have come through this House which pretty much appease and epitomise that contrast around why this Government cannot be trusted in regards to protecting our democracy. So I just simply do not buy it that the true intent of this bill is to try and increase trust in the population of hard-working Kiwis in our democracy—what a load of rubbish. A load of rubbish—absolute rubbish—and it’s pretty clear when you look at this that that is the case.

The other thing is some of the amendments—which is another element of the bill—around the reporting requirements for donations exceeding $30,000, and they’re wanting to reduce that to $20,000. Again, this isn’t going to make any material impact in regards to disclosure. I think there was a degree of consensus in the Justice Committee around the time period in which disclosure of information should be made—absolutely. There is agreement. Getting disclosure into the public arena at pace is something that I understand all parties at the select committee agreed on.

But moving these thresholds is, in our view, not going to fix a problem which we face in this country, and, heck, don’t we have a lot of problems in this country today, right? I don’t know if anyone at home is thinking, “You know what? In terms of the top three issues that are on the West Coast, or the top three issues on the North Shore or in Invercargill”—[Interruption] Is the Electoral Amendment Bill, Penny Simmonds, among the top three issues in Invercargill?

💬 Penny Simmonds: It’s not featuring.

No, it’s not featuring at all, because it’s not, is it?

Arena Williams and I—we’re going to get consensus and agreement. Surely, we can agree that this isn’t a top three issue or top five issue, and it’s not going to improve trust and confidence in Government. The actions that a Government takes are the things that build trust. The reality is that Kiwis across this country will make an assessment around trust in this Government, as they do every three years in this democracy, and that will be wholeheartedly based on what this Government has delivered, not on whether they have implemented the Electoral Amendment Bill and changed the threshold for public donations from 15 grand to five grand. I’m chuckling under my breath, but it is a reality that this is actually something that we’re seriously pushing through off the back of the significant issues that our country faces.

So National opposes this bill. It’s a waste of time. We don’t think it’s going to make any impact, and I don’t think we can do much more categorically on that. I’m looking forward to the next speaker on our behalf—Simon O’Connor—who will no doubt bring a lot more comprehension to this because he’s on the select committee. But at that, we do not commend this bill to the House.

Dr Duncan Webb—five minutes.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. It’s always good to take a call unexpectedly when the Māori Party choose not to speak on a matter, which I must say I find unusual given the importance of this. This is a simple bill, and the crux of it is that there are two kinds of donations: there are open donations that everyone knows about, and there are secret donations, and we want to shift the needle away from secret donations and towards open and transparent donations. Given the noise that comes from the other side of the House on transparency, I’m surprised that they’re so vociferously opposed to this bill—draw your own conclusions. We support this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I too will just take a short call on this. I have been listening to the contributions in the House this evening, and it is really concerning me, actually, that there’s such, I think—as the previous speaker just said—vociferous opposition to this. So what is it that they are worried about? I think, as the member that just sat down said, you can draw your own conclusions.

I want to just highlight, you know, one of the reasons for doing this was the public support that there is for making these changes. One of the earlier contributions was that this is hardly the most important issue on people’s radars right now—and that is true, there are much bigger issues out there facing our country and we are dealing with those too. But there is public support for what is proposed in this bill and I just want to highlight that a survey undertaken by Victoria University of Wellington in 2021 found that almost 70 percent of respondents indicated they did not have a reasonable amount of trust in party funding.

The Ministry of Justice undertook public and targeted consultations from 3 December 2021 to 21 January 2022, and the feedback from the consultation generally supported the changes to the Electoral Act to increase transparency. And the committee received 42 submissions, the majority of which were supportive of the bill’s objective to support the delivery of, and participation in, elections to maintain public trust and confidence in our electoral system. I commend this bill to the House.

The left wing, once again, are trying to screw the electoral scrum. If you want to take only one lesson away from me tonight, it’s that the left wing are so quaking in their boots that they are ramming, once again, through Parliament a piece of law to try and assure that they can win the election next year. And the thing is, the lefties on the other side—looking all a bit confused, that’s normal, too. They’ve got form in this space because old Helen Clark—sorry, that was not meant to be an age-related thing, it was just a phrase—tried this with electoral finance eight years ago. In fact, it was the first protest I was ever involved with. The Labour Party and its Green mates have form when it comes to screwing the electoral scrum. So what—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! The member is skating close to impugning or suggesting improper motive. Equally, a couple of members across this side of the House have done the same thing. I won’t take any more of it.

So the left wing don’t want New Zealanders to exercise one of their most fundamental rights, which is the right to privacy. The thing about the right to privacy is one should be able to donate to the political parties of their choice without harassment. I’m going to put out the suggestion, which, hopefully, is not an imputation, but there’s form again on the left wing to harass, cancel, deplatform, and discourage those they disagree with. By lowering these thresholds to an arbitrary number, I might suggest, an arbitrary number, they are more than happy to try and dissuade New Zealanders from donating to any parties of their choice other than, of course, the Labour or the Green Party. They’re very, very happy with that. They have very good friends in the union movement, which, obviously, can provide financial but often non-financial incentives. I personally think, again, without impugning my left-wing colleagues, they would be very happy for us to be moving towards complete State funding—complete State funding—once again, removing an ability of democratic society to actually contribute to the extent they wish to the political parties of their choice.

Now, let me be really, really clear. I do not want to see a system that we see in the likes of the United States or other countries where you can donate enormous amounts of money with basically no oversight. I’m actually relatively comfortable with current New Zealand law. Personally, I think dropping the thresholds from $15,000 to $5,000 is not going to achieve any greater transparency or trust. As I said earlier, I think it’s arbitrary. I’ve heard other speeches from the other side, “Oh, well, it’s not too bad.” But why not make it $1? Why not flush out every single New Zealander who dares—who dares—to give money to a political party other than the Labour or the Green Party? Why not a dollar? In fact, could I make the suggestion, because we’re now looking at $5,000—I might be making a bit of a mockery of the $1 thing, but of course with current inflation, $5,000 ain’t going to be worth that much in a few months’ time. It just doesn’t make sense.

The other element, and actually two elements I might touch on is around this whole trust and transparency side of things. If you look at our current electoral laws, particularly around donations, it’s actually working. It’s actually working. The parties know the system, the individuals donating know the system. In fact, you would argue—I would, certainly—the courts are working. They are rightly hauling up, catching those people involved. That’s a positive thing. In fact, if I wanted to make a suggestion to Government and future Governments, it’s actually begin to look at foreign funds which get funnelled into this country in different ways, not the Kiwis trying to donate a little bit of money to the political party of their choice.

But trust and transparency would start, one might suggest, if actually—I actually don’t know the answer to this question, but I know when this whole process started, and, by the way, as context even to the second reading, the Government went out to consult around electoral law changes. They went out to consult and then they slipped this bill in before the consultation. They’re trying to tweak the bill before the consultation properly finished. I’m not sure how that fits “trust and transparency”. The answer to my wider question too is I believe the Labour Party and maybe the Greens, maybe other parties, refused to release their submissions to the Ministry of Justice. Now, they may have done so now—I suspect not because of the silence and the head bows—but just because so many members have talked about trust and transparency, let’s put it really clearly on the record: the Labour Party refused to release its submission to the Ministry of Justice on this bill, which they wax lyrical about being trust and transparent. And then, if we want to keep belabouring that point, which may be a terrible pun, to belabour the point, we just had a constitutional outrage in this House, a constitutional outrage which cuts to the heart of the trust and transparency of this Government.

But of course, this is more about money and also voting age, as the Speaker has rightly pointed out. Fundamentally, the right to privacy means, in my view and I think the National Party view, that New Zealanders have that right to be able to donate a certain degree of money without fear of any harassment or anything else—anything else. We can certainly debate where that line is and I think fundamentally, fundamentally, that’s where I see this debate tonight. I have not heard anyone in this House, and certainly not myself, arguing for open slather. But to drop it so low, so low, is very much, as I suggested, a means to bring about an end which is not healthy to the democracy of New Zealand.

Fundamentally, too, I suspect we will see further changes in the future if a left-wing Government maintains its power in this country, God forbid. However, despite having been so heavy and negative, there is one bouquet to give to the Government, and that is the aspect of this law which addresses overseas voting. Citizens now can be away for six years—please come home, we desperately need you; we have a crisis everywhere and we need you back in this country. People on permanent residence up to four years—same message to you as permanent residents: we desperately need you in our hospitals, prisons, you name it; come back home. Wages are terrible, inflation terrible, but we’re still nice people—and National is going to win the 2023 election.

But that is a positive that we’re doing the overseas voting. That is a positive. It’s something actually that this side of the House has called for for quite a lot of time. In fact, I think a number of parties across the House have called for it—including, I think, the Green Party as well. So it’s good to see that this is finally here. But for those at home, do not be caught out by those on the left and those in Government talking to you about this bill and how wonderful it is because of overseas voting. It’s an attempt, somewhat, to pull the wool over one’s eyes, because fundamentally this is an attempt to undermine the ability of New Zealanders to easily and freely donate to a certain degree, to a certain degree, the moneys they wish.

Finally, and fundamentally, I don’t think this is going to really make, at one level, a lick of difference to trust and transparency, which again seems to be the supposed fundamental driver to this. I don’t see how New Zealanders are going to feel things are more trusted and transparent around this. I think they’re just going to find their ability to participate in the democratic systems that we have even harder. I do want to finish by stressing that—even harder. Because things which have happened in this country over the last, arguably, five years, but certainly 2.5 years, have done enormous damage to our democracy. I’m not going to go through them, as that would not be appropriate on the second reading. But our democracy has been damaged in many, many ways by this Government, and this bill is just one more dangerous little nail. Thank you.

It’s a pleasure to take the last call on this matter. I wasn’t on the Justice Committee, and I’ve listened to these speeches, really, with very fresh eyes, and I’m really disappointed in what I’ve heard from the Opposition. What I’ve heard is accusations of things like a lack of freedom of expression because you can’t put your cash on the table at $15,000 without putting your name on it. I’ve heard accusations of wokeness, and I’ve heard accusations of left-wingness, which apparently is some sort of crime.

This isn’t a communist plot; this is something that cuts both ways. This is all about democracy and transparency. This is something that everybody should be supporting in this House today, because $5,000 is a lot of money. And, quite frankly, if I was a person sitting out listening to this, I’d be thinking, “Do I want to know that my politician is being supported by, perhaps, Shell Oil, or they’re supported by the National Rifle Association, or they are supported by, perhaps, even the unions? I want to know those things because they’re the context.” And, yes, there is an attempt here to prevent some of the soft lobbying that can happen. It’s a very insidious thing when somebody gives you $5,000. It’s actually quite a thing, and we want to know. Actually, our voters want to know that kind of thing. And, yes, it’s a pain in the neck writing out all that information for people when we are bringing down the amount, but it’s very, very important because our democracy is actually quite delicate.

That is something that struck me over many years—that we often think that we are safer than we are in our democracy. It’s this sort of thing, this sort of adjustment, that makes the difference. It is something we can get complacent about. I, for one, don’t want to be complacent.

I like this piece of law because it’s sensible. I don’t believe that privacy is something that we should be so concerned about when people are actually donating $5,000 or $10,000 or $15,000 or $20,000 or $30,000—I’d want to know that if I was a voter. I’m glad we’re going to know that.

I’m glad we’re including the people from overseas who’ve been outside of the country but have a very real stake in it. I’m glad we’re doing that before the election. I’m glad we’re doing this. And I hope that this kind of thing, which has got nothing to do with being left-wing or right-wing—it’s got to do with being democratic and aware that we’re in a world where people trust each other less and less when it comes to this sort of thing. It’s got to do with being democratic. This is an important, fundamental step, and I’m proud to support this bill. I commend it to the House.