Electoral Amendment Bill

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s not my pleasure, it’s my duty, to speak on the Electoral Amendment Bill third reading, introduced by this Labour Government that has run out of ideas, it’s tired, and it’s heading towards the denouement with which it deserves.

Funnily enough, we heard earlier this week from the Prime Minister that she had come to the point where she was advising her Ministers that they needed to prioritise and they needed to go back over there—what they’re doing, their programmes—and ask themselves if what they’re doing, all the things that they’re doing: are they actually helpful? And should they be prioritised? What are their priorities, and maybe they should just focus on it. That was her message to Ministers.

When we think of the justice area, and we think of this as a bill coming from Kiri Allan indicating that this Electoral Amendment Bill—which is focused on changing the rules with which parties are funded for campaigns—is one of her priorities. Then we look at the justice sector broadly, and we think of the 500 percent increase in ram raids, we think of the chaos on our street, we think of youth crime out of control, we look at the 40 percent increase in violent crime in our communities, and the increased numbers of victims of crime, and we think of the long delays to justice and the courts system, and we think of those things that most normal people would think would be a priority for this Government in justice. Then we come to this bill, and it ranks alongside the hate speech and it ranks alongside the decision that the Government’s going to introduce a bill to reduce the voting age to 16—which nobody much agrees with—and this one is around changing the electoral financing regime, so the rules of the games for how parties are funded.

They’ve brought this to the House and they’re trying to ram this through, against the opposition of the National Party and the whole Opposition, in fact. We’ve had quite a few lectures about the importance of some kind of bipartisan support for electoral bills—and, on this one, they’ve chosen to ignore that and try and ram through a piece of legislation that skews the system, frankly, in the favour of Labour and the Greens.

Now, how does it do that? Well, it does that by fundamentally making it more difficult for parties to raise funds. Now, why is that a problem? It’s because in a democracy, political parties need to campaign and that doesn’t happen for free. You might have noticed, if you were living in Hamilton West recently, if you were driving around, you will find billboards stuck to people’s fences and you’ll find flashing billboards on intersections, and you’ll see people walking around with T-shirts and they’re handing out pamphlets—and all those sorts of things cost money. So the question is: well, how do you fund that? There’s a simple choice between, at one end, allowing people voluntarily to give money to parties that they support in order to fund them; or at the other end of the spectrum is what I think this Government wants—and certainly what the Greens want—which is that taxpayers fund political parties and they give them to them.

They’ve cloaked this in the argument that that will mean that people with money will have less influence. But what it means, fundamentally, is that incumbent parties will be protected from new players coming in and causing difficulties, because if it’s a taxpayer-funded regime, it’s much more difficult for new people to come in and disrupt things.

So that’s why we’re fundamentally opposed to this legislation: because at the bottom, it’s about making it more difficult for political parties to raise funds. Now, how does it do that? The main mechanism that it does that through is by reducing the threshold in which people are obliged to be publicly named as a donor to a party. Currently—for the last 15 or so years, since the previous Labour Government—the threshold has been $15,000 for a party donation. So if somebody were to donate $14,500 in New Zealand for the last 15 years, they don’t have to put their name up in lights; they can do that anonymously.

If you think in the context of a political party’s fund-raising efforts, a major party that’s going to stand in all the seats is allowed to spend about $3 million, or a bit more than $3 million, in a campaign-regulated period, three months before an election. So a donation of $14,000 would represent less than one-half of 1 percent of the amount that a party could spend. So the rationale that was brought forward by the previous Labour Government, under Helen Clark and others, was that they would have thought that’s a reasonable threshold because it would be reasonably unlikely that a party would be completely overthrown and persuaded to follow a policy path by somebody that had donated less than one-half of 1 percent of what they were raising for the period of the election.

So that’s where it’s been: $15,000. The world hasn’t come to an end. There’s been a few issues around political fund-raising over the last couple of years, not related to the threshold but related to people trying to cheat the system in theory—or the allegation was that people were splitting up donations to donate a much larger sum by dividing that up between a number of people. So a total irrelevance to what’s been discussed in this bill.

What this bill does is reduce that $15,000 to $5,000. There’s been nothing put forward by the Government to say that this will make any particular difference. There’s no rationale put behind it, other than to say that it will make it more difficult for political parties that raise their funds from people voluntarily giving them money—because there is a large number of people who are happy to donate to a party but they don’t want their names up in lights.

Why would they not want their names made public? Well, I can think of a whole host of reasons. The most obvious one would be that they’d be worried, if they happen to have contracts with Governments, that they might be discriminated against in some way or form—that’s a perfectly legitimate concern. They might also be worried that they might be targeted for complaints or criticism publicly. There’s a whole host of reasons why people don’t particularly want to have their names up in lights when they donate to political parties.

So this bill reduces that threshold from $15,000 to $5,000. Surprise, surprise: most of the people who donate money in those groups are people who donate not to the Labour Party or to the Green Party. But it still leaves the fundamental issue: well, if you’re going to make it more difficult for parties to raise funds through voluntary donations, how are they going to get their money? What the Greens are openly campaigning for—and what the Labour Government is more sneakily campaigning for—is a shift of the system away from donations from individuals voluntarily to fund parties, moving towards taxpayer funding of political parties. They don’t admit it, but that’s where this bill is taking the country.

That’s why we oppose it. And most New Zealanders oppose it too, because they don’t want to have their taxes seized off them to go to fund backroom staffers in the Labour and Green parties campaigning a way to continue in a Government that has promised so much and delivered so little and that’s why they want to see change in this country.

That is why, ultimately, the last resort of a Government that is going down the gurgler is to start fiddling around with electoral laws, and that’s what we’ve seen over the last year or two: a Government that has lost its way, has demonstrated its inability to deliver anything that it’s promised, and now what is it doing? Well, it’s turning to fiddling around with the electoral laws to try and skew the system a little bit in its favour, to give itself a little bit of a push.

That’s why we oppose it. We don’t agree with it, we’re not going to support it, we don’t support it, and we’re not going to vote for it. Thank you, Madam Speaker. And, on that basis, I won’t commend this bill to the House.

Democracy is one of the most faith- or trust-fuelled activities that there is, and because of that, we have an obligation to protect the accountability mechanisms and the transparency mechanisms around it. What we know from research from Victoria University and from the Ministry of Justice consultations is that there has been a decrease in the trust in that system, which is what this bill addresses, and it is really concerning that the Opposition don’t appear to be prioritising these fundamentals of democracy. It’s also really concerning that my colleague the Hon Paul Goldsmith doesn’t seem to remember the number of submissions that we received and pored through at the Justice Committee, including a submission from the Privacy Commissioner, who, I will note, didn’t talk about issues concerning privacy when it came to lowering the threshold, although he did address other issues. The Opposition speaker then talked about a taxpayer-funded system, which this bill does not address. This is a bill that is about actual unlawful influence and ensuring that there is public trust in our system. It is a good bill, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Like my colleague and friend the Hon Paul Goldsmith, I rise not with pleasure but with a sense of duty to speak about—and, indeed, against—the Electoral Amendment Bill. Paul Goldsmith has made tolerably clear our position on the bill at previous readings and again today, which is to say that we oppose it, and we oppose it for a number of reasons that I will outline and maybe expand upon a bit.

First of all, if we can just take a step back and consider what it is that we are doing here, we are talking about electoral law; we’re talking about the rules of the game by which people in this House are elected, have been elected, and, we all hope and expect, in our respective cases, will be elected. These are the rules of the game that we play. We have a conflict of interest—and it’s inevitable, of course, that these things should be in the law of the land. They should be made by legislation; so it’s inevitable that Parliament has to make the rules, so that we can manage the conflict of interest. But the way that we do that is by saying, “Well, we can even out the particular interests that any given party or member has by saying, ‘Well, as long as we can agree as nearly as possible on the rules of the game, at least there is an evening out of any particular prejudices”—and I don’t mean that in the ugly sense, but particular inclinations—“that any of us might have.’ ”

So that’s why oftentimes—actually, it used to be invariably the case that—electoral law was regarded as a matter for bipartisan, or non-partisan, concern and agreement, failing which changes shouldn’t be made. And, of course, we’re seeing the opposite of that in relation to this bill. We’ve seen, too, this bill being pushed through in time for the end of this calendar year, and therefore to be ready for election year, and to have particular rules in place from 1 January onwards. And, of course, that’s by contrast with the electoral law review that the Government has commissioned in relation to lots of other aspects of electoral law and the interconnectedness of the issues that relate to electoral law—for example, thinking about donations and ways that people can contribute to resourcing a political party. It’s not in isolation, I would suggest, that we should review such matters when you think, well, you can also donate labour and other resources, and to treat that entirely distinctly from the subject of giving money—which is, of course, the donations element as contained in this bill—seems to be incoherent at best. These things should be considered as a whole. The whole electoral review should be able to take place as a coherent whole at one time. But, of course, this is being pushed through in time for the Government to be able to have an election conducted on terms that it considers best.

I will actually say, though, I do feel obliged to point out that one positive aspect of the considerations at the select committee—and on which the Minister has also engaged well—has been the fact that it is not intended to be, and it won’t be, a retrospective law. So whereas initially there was a lack of clarity, in my view—and certainly we sought that certainty to say, whatever the rules made in this law, they wouldn’t apply to anything that was done before 31 December this year; so notwithstanding that a financial year for any given party might be a 12-month period going before 1 January of next year. But, nevertheless, we got that clarification, and that came out at the select committee. That was agreed and that change was made. So, actually, I do think it’s fair to acknowledge that positive interaction, initially with the Minister, through my office via the written parliamentary questions process, but then also with the select committee. I know there were colleagues on the Justice Committee, permanent members no less, whom I was pleased to interact with on that point. And, of course, the officials provided good advice in that space, too.

Back to the bill itself, and actually just acknowledging the submissions process—and I didn’t hear all the submissions, I’ll be honest, and I didn’t read all of them, but the ones that I did rightly acknowledged the balance that needs to be made between privacy, on the one hand, and transparency, on the other. I didn’t actually see the submission by the Privacy Commissioner. I was quite interested to learn, in the contribution made by our colleague, just prior to mine, Vanushi Walters, that the Privacy Commissioner didn’t raise any privacy issues in relation to the compulsory disclosure of political donations. I would have thought that would be a thing that any Privacy Commissioner should take very seriously and should at least raise, even if they were to say, “Well, these concerns can be mitigated.” To not raise privacy issues, if you’re the Privacy Commissioner—that seems to me a classic case of having one job and needing to do that well. But maybe there’s a sort of joint effort across the Public Service, in relation to the Reserve Bank not doing its one job, either—anyway, I digress.

So we’ve heard, also, throughout this process, that the initial justification for bringing this legislation was the court cases that have now concluded, and they related to three political parties that are both inside this House now and outside this House. The argument was made, “Oh well, the existence of this litigation, the investigation into whether the law has been followed or not, indicates that there is a problem.” But, actually, of course, it’s entirely possible to argue that the reverse is true, which is to say that the fact we’ve got court cases means that, where the law isn’t being followed, these matters are able to be brought to light. And, of course, you can’t say with certainty one way or t’other whether there are things that are out there that haven’t been brought to light. That’s in the nature of an uncertainty, and the difficulty of proving a negative is obvious, but, suffice it to say, I don’t think there’s enough justification for bringing forward this law on the basis simply that laws that were previously in place may or may not have been followed correctly. Of course, this is why we have a system where we can judge these things. And when I say “we”, of course it’s not the people in this place who judge them, and of course that’s as it should be. We have the rule of law, whereby we set the laws in a transparent way, those are applied, and to the extent that they’re not followed, we have a judiciary that can speak to those, and so they have.

I think it’s actually also worth taking a step back and just thinking about the starting point for this discussion. The presumption should be, ordinarily, that if a private citizen has property—and, actually, I should say “person”, because that way we’re not just talking about a natural person or a citizen; it might also be some manner of corporation. And, yes, that could be an evil big business, in the fevered left-wing imagination that forms part of the vast right-wing conspiracy! Or it might be a union or some other body corporate, but, in any case, a legal person that has resources should be able to do, roughly speaking, whatever they like with those. Of course, there are limits, and I think it’s reasonable to have some transparency limits, some sort of disclosure regime, but it would be a red herring to suggest that we should have such a system—and therefore that this bill needs to be introduced—because, of course, we already have one. We’ve got rules in place already. We’ve got a line in the sand that the parties previously, most of the parties—perhaps all of the parties; I’m not quite sure, but certainly a super majority of the House, let’s just say—and I don’t want to go down an entrenchment rabbit hole; I genuinely don’t. But it’s roughly been the case—

💬 David Seymour: Oh, c’mon!

—don’t encourage me!—that parties have agreed on where the lines should be drawn, the rules of the game. We all have to follow them. When we don’t, there’s a consequence. And so, with that presumption that we can do what we like—except that there should be some limits, yes—but there are limits, I think that’s really the overall kind of backdrop that we need to consider with doing this, before we leap ahead to sort of arguing about where the lines should be, and so on.

But, if we do want to get detailed, we can say, “Well, the costs and the money involved is relatively little.” And, with all due respect to our friends in the Green Party, I know very well what the member who will make a contribution for the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand will say that it’s big money, and it’s US-style corruption and influence, and all that kind of thing. We have a completely different jurisdiction. We have completely different rules already. We don’t have the same commitment to freedom of expression, and freedom more generally, as they do in accordance with the rules set, in their case, by the US Constitution, enforceable as that is. So, really, it’s not an apple-with-apples comparison. The money involved in New Zealand is trifling. I think I’m right in saying that the amount that an electoral candidate can spend in any given constituency is something like $26,200. I can never remember whether it’s with or without GST; I should look that up some time in the next 12 months! But, in any case, if you think about the number of households in an electorate and if you were to send a letter to each one of them, or some sort of propaganda—I mean, collateral—through the post, at more than $1 or whatever the cost to send something by post now, that’s your whole campaign.

I mean, we’re talking very modest amounts, and, really and truly, this is not a matter of going down some sort of slippery slope to end up in Washington DC. Certainly, it’s not a reason or an excuse to alter the fundamentals of our democracy, which is that transparency is important but so too is privacy, so too is individual freedom, property rights of all persons in this country. We’ve got electoral law that should be applied to all, should be made by all, and should be for the benefit of all, and I don’t mean political parties; I mean the people of New Zealand, to whom we are accountable. And, to echo the words of my friend Paul Goldsmith, public funding of political parties should not go ahead.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker, and thank you for the opportunity to give a quick call on what is a simple bill. It is a good bill, and that’s why I support it.

But I want to push back on one particular idea which members of the National Party have brought consistently through these readings, and it’s that somehow the Labour Government is trying to change the way that we treat the comparison between donors and volunteers. Volunteers, who rock up to support their political party, whether that’s on election day or whether it’s in January to deliver some flyers—those people, by their very nature, are not anonymous. This is legislation which evens up the rules and makes sure that people who don’t choose to volunteer but do choose to make donations also do so with their names published, just like volunteers do. Their faces are out there and their names are out there.

If your way to participate in your democracy is with your labour and to get on the doors or phones, like I did when I was 15, you’re doing that with your name on the public record, and I think it’s appropriate that donors donating over a certain amount also publish their names. That’s why I support this, and I would ask anyone doing this—we’ve heard on that side of the House that they don’t want volunteers to be able to have that power. I say, fill a shift. Tell them that you’re going to use your labour to volunteer for the political party of your choice. Get in touch with your field organiser and make a difference.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I feel like I was given a little intro by my friend cross the aisle there, but I will begin in speaking on this bill, as I always have at every reading, by saying that democracy is a fundamental human right, and it is, in many ways, the one right that underpins them all, because it’s the right to have a say in decisions ranging from our education and health system to our justice system to our immigration system and the ways that those laws, the decisions in this House, so intimately impact on all of our other fundamental rights. So to get it right is important. To make it fair and inclusive and accessible is one of the most important things that we will do as a Parliament, and each Government successively gets to do if we pay attention. A modern, functioning democracy has to be responsive to changes in society. And, in this way, I think successive Governments have actually let New Zealand down. We have a privilege. We have the machinery of parliamentary political parties behind us in this House, and I think sometimes it’s easy to forget that the rules weigh in our favour.

We’ve heard over and over again that political donations in New Zealand aren’t a big problem. Well, to anyone who does say that, I say: let’s step outside of what we think as standing politicians, as members of this House, and look at the independent reports and what the independent entities entrusted with speaking to electoral reform have told us.

The Electoral Commission itself came to the Justice Committee, in its review of the last general election, and said that it’s actually pretty hard to investigate donations breaches, because the limits are so high. So, yes, some cases end up in court. Yes, three out of the five parliamentary political parties last term did end up in some kind of trouble. But what we don’t know is the other stuff, the stuff that goes under the radar, the stuff that’s hard to investigate because the thresholds have been so high for so long in terms of anonymity, in terms of limits.

So this bill brings down the anonymity threshold to $5,000 and the reporting requirements of donations to $20,000. My strengthening democracy bill suggested much lower thresholds of $1,000 and of $15,000. Now we have—leaving aside the plea from the Electoral Commission itself—the latest comprehensive study into donations schemes in New Zealand by Max Rashbrooke and Lisa Marriott. Independent academics who spoke to members of all of our political parties, our general secretaries, and our donors spent a year looking into this. And I would hope that members in this House go and look at that report, because it is a little bit chilling. We are unprotected. There are expectations by donors of access. Whether or not that’s being delivered, there is an expectation that big money will get you political access in New Zealand, and, in many ways, it has. It’s all detailed in there. Everybody’s being open in their interviews and to the extent that they have been, even that is a little bit chilling. Their recommendation was $1,500 and $15,000. So this bill is pretty conservative in terms of the political landscape when it comes to donations in New Zealand. By the way, that’s at doughnation.nz—the full report—spelt like “doughnut”. Money for Something is a report on political funding in Aotearoa New Zealand; an independent comprehensive report.

I didn’t hear Paul Goldsmith’s contribution this time, unfortunately, but the last time he spoke on this, I think his contribution really encapsulated the fears and confirmed them. When I last spoke to the Minister of Justice on introducing an overall limit to political donations, which is not contained in this bill, she said, “Show me where there might be a problem.” And, of course, the donation report does show that. It firmly recommends a limit be placed on it. But I think Paul Goldsmith’s contribution—and I think maybe people should look that up—where he went on and on at some length about how taking donations, or the ability of people to give donations, large donations, and anonymous donations, is about creating accountability for us as politicians—he thought he was saying something about democracy being functional and working appropriately. But accountability to donors is not equality in our democracy. We have a one vote per person democracy, and some people can’t afford to give big anonymous donations to hold politicians accountable for what they want and need. That’s not cool. It’s not a good argument for keeping donation levels high or keeping the anonymity threshold high. It’s an admission. And I won’t say what that might be an admission of, because it may be unparliamentary.

But I’ll correct one thing that Paul Goldsmith does also throw around, which is that it’s Green Party policy to introduce public funding for political parties rather than donations. My very detailed bill that covered every electoral wish the Green Party had didn’t have public funding as a policy in it. So I’ll just let him know who spearheaded that campaign in Aotearoa New Zealand: it was the Rt Hon Jim Bolger a couple of years ago. He came out and said that, actually, we need to have public funding for political parties, because our donations laws are too loose and they leave us at risk. To say that we are not vulnerable to an American-style political system is to be naive. We know globally that cigarette companies, for years, held off having warnings on packets. We know globally that oil companies held off climate action. We know that we’re in the midst of a biodiversity crisis and we’ve barely got to a point of putting cameras on fishing boats because of a scandal related to political donations last term.

So we know that this is a problem. We know that we’re vulnerable. We have the Electoral Commission asking for this change. We have independent studies telling us we should go much, much further, and we have this bill. All I would say is that given we know we are vulnerable and that we need to go further and that a proper limit on political donations is what has been recommended over and over again by independent entities and experts, I would ask that the Government and this Minister include political donations in the electoral review that’s going to be under way shortly. This issue is not done, and New Zealanders want to have a say in the way that our political system runs in terms of being independent from big money, and in terms of being inclusive and equal. So I commend this bill as a starting point to that reform.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT in opposition to this Electoral Amendment Bill. I want to speak tonight especially to the members of the Labour Party about the heritage and history and values of their party, a party whose constitution says that political power should be withheld or managed by regular free and fair elections, with universal suffrage. I want those Labour members to think about the likes of Savage and Fraser, Nash and Kirk and Rowling, Lange, Palmer, Moore, and Clark—men and women who were committed to something bigger than them. They were committed to the idea of a liberal democracy in the South Pacific, and that put certain constraints on what they were prepared to do.

None of those former Labour Governments would ever have dreamt of the arrogance of trying to entrench their own policies alongside our most basic democratic rights to vote, but this one did. I don’t think any of those previous Labour administrations would have unilaterally rushed through laws that changed the rules of the game for the next election just in time to advantage themselves before they go to the polls again. This is a low point for this Labour Party. They are doing something that is against their own heritage, against the values of the men and women who have stood for Labour, who actually stood for liberal democracy, and wouldn’t have dreamed of doing what this bill does today.

What does this bill do? Well, let’s just deal with some of the better things that this bill does, because it does a few things, and they’re not all bad. This bill requires that if somebody receives a donation to transmit to a political party then they must actually give the money to a political party that was nominated by the original donor; that’s important. Why is that important? Well, people might like to ask a slightly less salubrious party without the same values and history of Labour—that is, New Zealand First—just why they had a foundation in which they put three-quarters of a million dollars of their money, and some of it may or may not have actually got to New Zealand First. People need to ask themselves why you’d have a New Zealand First Foundation. This law means that if some other entity receives the money, they must actually give it to the intended political party, not exploit some loophole. ACT supports closing that loophole.

This law also allows those New Zealanders trapped offshore due to COVID to come and have their vote without having been in the country in the last three years, and we welcome that. And people listening offshore, Kiwis stuck overseas who couldn’t visit their country, who may not be able to vote because they couldn’t come here under Labour’s two-year border closure, well, when the time comes around to vote, you know what to do, and this bill means that you’ll be able to give your party vote to ACT.

So those are the good parts of this legislation, but there is another part, and here it is: it reduces the amount that a New Zealand citizen or a permanent resident who lives here can give to a political party without being publicly named. Right now, that amount is $15,000. Under this law, it will go down to $5,000. Why would the Labour Party do that—unilaterally, by themselves; not with agreement about what the electoral rules should be by all concerned, for a free and fair election, like their party constitution demands? Actually, they’re doing it by themselves, and they’re rushing it through. They want to make sure that it gets done in time, that those rules are in place for the 2023 calendar year, which, as we all know, is an election year.

Why are they doing this? Well, they tell us—Minister Kiritapu Allan got up, Arena Williams got up, and they talked about trust. They talked about democracy. They say that they’re going to build trust in democracy by unilaterally changing the rules of the game right before an election year. I don’t think so. But what problem are they trying to solve? Well, it’s actually a difficult one; I’ll give them some credit. It is difficult because if the threshold is too low, then there will be few people who will give money, and political parties will find it hard to be funded—they’ll find it hard to get their message across. People upset with the direction of the country will find it hard to contribute and help people of like-minded views share their values and communicate to their fellow New Zealanders and win an election—something we call democracy. So if it’s too low, we’ll know who all the donors are, but there won’t be much democracy going on.

Here’s the alternative. If it’s too high, then it’s true, you could have people giving significant amounts of money, enough to change the course of a political party or an election, and no one would know who it was. It is difficult to choose what that number should be. But nowhere in this debate or in any of the documentation has this Labour Party explained why the law should be $5,000 instead of $15,000. What they should have done is shown examples of people that gave between $5,000 and $15,000 who, was it known who they were, we would have greater trust in democracy. They haven’t stood up and given one example, because there is not one.

Why wouldn’t someone want to be named? Well, I happen to have been the chief fundraiser for the ACT Party for the last eight years, and I’ve raised quite a lot of money, and the people on the Labour benches would love to know how much. Actually, if they read, they could find out. But I can tell them that when I talk to people, a lot of people give just under the public disclosure limit. Is it because they are nefarious people that want to secretly influence me? Can you get the ACT Party to bend from its principles for $14,999? No, you can’t. They are people that have contracts with Government departments. They are people who like their privacy. They are people who have seen other political donors being publicly attacked for their political views. They’re people whose friends or family might politically disagree with them. They want to participate and help like-minded New Zealanders communicate their views by advertising and campaigning to others, but they don’t want to blow their cover for a whole variety of perfectly reasonable reasons, and I think that’s okay.

But what’s the other thing that this change will make? Well, it’s not going to somehow increase trust or transparency, because nobody is seriously arguing that $5,000 is a better number than $15,000. Nobody is seriously arguing that there is undue influence on political parties for $15,000. But what they are arguing and what they know but will not say is that if people decide to give only $5,000 instead of $15,000 to remove public reporting, here’s what that will mean for the parties: altogether, there would be $1.2 million less donated to democracy, that’s compared with 2020 figures. Which parties would get less money? Well, the Green Party, after the speech we just heard, you can understand, they don’t raise much. Not many people give money to the Green Party, and you can understand why. They would have lost $67,000. And the Labour Party, you only get a 30-second speech from them, so not many people donate to them either. They would have raised $147,000 less in 2020. Now, the National Party—not all donors are wise—they would have raised $600,000 less, obviously not based on the quality of speeches, in this instance. The ACT Party would have raised $300,000 less.

So this Labour Party that used to believe in democracy, it’s bringing in a bill, unilaterally, rushed through with a shortened process to be in place in time for next year when there’s an election. And why? It’s because it is going to rip off their opponents by $900,000, and it’s going to rip them off by about $200,000. This is a Labour Party that cannot make the argument there’ll be more transparency. They can’t explain why $5,000 is a better number than $15,000, but they know that they are screwing the scrum, kneecapping their opponents, undermining their opponents’ fundraising ability, and all they are doing is eroding trust in democracy. They are eroding trust in them. They’re eroding their adherence to their own constitutional principles. But I’ve got some good news for the Labour Party: people who want a change of Government are smart and they know that the law changes on 31 December. I can tell the people in the Labour Party, they aren’t holding back from filling up ACT’s coffers before the law changes. With that, for this totally treasonous, undemocratic Act, next year we will bury you.

E te Māngai e te Whare, tēnā koe. Thank you for this opportunity to take a brief call. For the listeners listening in tonight to the debate, I think they should pay close attention to how fiercely some parties are opposing this legislation that we’re going to pass tonight. Evidence—I’ll give you some evidence. A survey undertaken by Victoria University in 2021 found that almost 70 percent of respondents indicated that they do not have a reasonable amount of trust in party funding—oh, he’s walking out. He can’t even hear the rest of my evidence.

What then happened was that the Ministry of Justice undertook consultation. They consulted on reducing it from $30,000 down to $1,500, and where they actually landed—and what we heard in the submissions process—was $5,000. So that is actually a compromise on what was initially taken out for consultation, and the majority of the feedback that they received was actually in support of that. So, unfortunately, he didn’t hang around to hear the evidence that supports why we are introducing these proposals. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak on the Electoral Amendment Bill at its third reading. This is a sad day, it is a Labour Government that is using the power that it has been given by the New Zealand public to screw the scrum in its own favour rather than playing by the rules of the game that had been agreed on a bipartisan basis. And that is a very important part of our democratic framework. We have an agreement, a constitution of conventions, in this country that when we do things that affect the democratic arrangement—the way that people choose their Governments—we only change those rules on a bipartisan basis. However, Labour is changing the rules on its own accord without bipartisan agreement from the other parties.

I have not heard a good reason for why reducing the public disclosure threshold for donations and contributions to political parties from $15,000 to $5,000 is going to make any difference. Let’s keep in mind that New Zealand is one of the oldest continuous democracies on the planet. It is one of only 21 full democracies in the world at this stage. We have a unique place on this planet, one of the only full democracies in this world, and we need to make sure we only change rules which affect the way we choose who governs us, very, very carefully, and we do so on a bipartisan basis.

I do recall Labour did something similar back in 2008 when it brought in the Electoral Finance Act—again trying to screw the scrum in its benefit so it could have what it thought was a more beneficial system to give them a better chance of winning the election. I note the somewhat cynical view of this is that Labour is bringing this in for 2023, which just happens to be an election year. That is indicative of a Labour Government that does not have respect for the constitutional conventions that have made us one of the only 21 full democracies on this planet, and one of the longest-standing continuous democracies in the world. I’m very disappointed that Labour has not respected that, and is bringing in laws like this.

The reality is that many people and businesses wish to remain anonymous—either because they value their privacy, and they have good reasons for that, which I’ll touch on, or because they fear retaliation from the other party in power at the time. That is the reality. We are a relatively small country with just over 5 million people. A lot of people do business with the Government and they don’t want the Government to be aware that they don’t necessarily agree with their ideology and would prefer to have a different party in power. That is their right to do so. Will reducing this threshold from $15,000 to $5,000 make any difference on that? Fundamentally, no, it will not.

The other point is: valuing privacy. We live, unfortunately, in an era where people are facing trial by social media. So if people don’t wish to be seen as being affiliated to any particular party, they will be a lot more cautious about providing donations because, unfortunately, there is an increasing tendency, not just in New Zealand but, certainly, in New Zealand as well, where people are picking others who don’t have the same belief system as them and attacking them by any means possible and using online mobs, effectively, to do so. That is something that we should be very, very cautious about because it is incredibly important that people feel they can express their views and that they can support the political parties of their choice to reflect the values that they think are important and should be reflected in the way they are governed.

In the time available to me, I’ll touch a little, as well, on an article from back in 21 July 2022, by Bryce Edwards, which said that although National had publicly released their submission, it was unclear from the Ministry of Justice why submissions were kept secret for other political parties. It also said that Labour did not provide a formal written submission. Instead, the party’s general secretary gave an oral representation to the ministry, and it appears the records of that meeting are being withheld—the irony of a Government that is reforming rules around secret political donations in a very secretive way. That, again, is not healthy for a democracy, and it begs the question why Labour is doing this.

This is an unfortunate attempt to screw the scrum in its own favour rather than playing by an agreed set of rules and playing a fair game, a fierce game, and letting the best person win. This will become law tonight, but this is a mistake by the Labour Party, and the National Party strongly opposes it.

I call on Helen White for five minutes.

I want to respond to that particular speech because it concerns me. We are in a democracy, it’s true, and I would stand by that member Joseph Mooney in saying that we actually live in a very good democracy; we are one of the great democracies of the world. When I look at where we came from, from England, I worry about the level of democracy there because of the pressure on the MPs through lobbying.

We’ve done several things, as we’ve evolved, to really combat that. One thing we do is we pay MPs quite well; that actually stops people from being subject to lobbying. Another thing that we do is we disclose donations. And, yes, we have to evolve, because we don’t want to end up in a situation where those kinds of donations are putting pressure on people.

Sunlight is an incredibly good idea in this situation. It is very important that we adjust the rules every now and then. There is nothing about this that is screwing the scrum; in fact, I’d say that’s getting close to crazy-making language. This is exactly the opposite; this is bringing transparency to the system.

Actually, the National Party, as well as the Labour Party, will look back at this day and thank God we did it, because we do not want to end up in the camp of democracies that are so fragile and so eroded by the actual pressure of money and donations on them. I would remind the public to look at something like the United States and think that we are doing well. Let’s keep doing well; let’s make these changes. I commend this bill to the House.

Kia ora e te Māngai o te Whare. I’m reminded always, when I listen to the Opposition in this particular debate, of my mother’s comment: if you can’t do something and tell people what you’ve done, then you should probably be worrying about why you’re doing it. But perhaps I am speaking a little unfairly, because I am someone who ran an election largely on the sale of jars of fudge made by my campaign manager, Julie Rigger, and the sale of $10 beanies, also made by my campaign manager, Julie, and other volunteers. So perhaps I underestimate the delicate sensibilities of those who do receive these large donations, and the even more delicate sensibilities, apparently, of those who give them but are too ashamed to do what they do out in the sunlight in public—again, a very strange concept. I come from a small town, a small city, and, in that city, I meet many of the larger firms who are doing work for Government, in construction and other matters. I’ve never found any of them who had any difficulty whatsoever in telling me what they thought of my political opinions or which side they support, and yet they still continue to talk to me and to deal with the Government. Strangely, they still continue to get contracts. So, again, a little concerned about the other side of the House and what they do in the shadows.

But the fact is, over on this side of the House, we understand what the public feels about what is done in the shadows. We do understand that over 70 percent of the community in a survey recently were deeply concerned about the lack of transparency of political donations, and they wanted to know what was being bought. And 85 percent of that same community survey found they wanted the reforms that are in this bill. People fear that large donors in the shadows may be buying preferential treatment or, indeed, policy. Let us show them that that is not so. Let us protect the incredibly fragile and important creature that is democracy. There is nothing more important that we do in this House to safeguard democracy, and that is why we commend this bill to the House.

It’s my pleasure—well, actually, it’s not my pleasure—to stand and take a call on this bill. We are opposing it.

I couldn’t believe it when Vanushi Walters—who I have a lot of respect for, and I sit on the Justice Committee with her—got up and in her opening statement and said, “We must do everything to protect our democracy. We must do everything to acknowledge our democracy in New Zealand.” She had to come to the House with a straight face after they’ve just got caught out trying to put an entrenchment clause into a bill, which was a massive insult. If you looked at all our constitutional academics and lawyers, they all came out and said that that’s a massive attack on our democracy. So how do you get to stand in the House and say, “This is us protecting our democracy.” when the week before, they were conducting one of the greatest attacks on our democracy?

💬 Hon Kieran McAnulty: Ha, ha!

So—well, they’re laughing about it. You got caught out. That’s funny, isn’t it? My colleague Joseph Mooney was saying that this is screwing the scrum—absolutely, it’s screwing the scrum. It’s a desperate attempt by the Labour Party, who know that they’re in trouble, to introduce legislation that is going to work in their favour. Mr McAnulty, let’s look at the proposal that was put up recently for lowering the voting age to 16. Everyone rushed out from the Labour Party and they said, “Let’s do it. This is a great idea.” Mr McAnulty—he put up the most compelling—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! Order! The member will come back to this bill.

Yeah, Madam Speaker, I’m responding to comments that were made in earlier—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): No, no. You can actually debate the third reading of this particular bill.

Well, it’s a pleasure to talk to this bill. Let’s talk about influence, because influence keeps getting raised on the other side of the House. I was trying to rack my brain, thinking, “Have we had any really good examples in this House where there have been allegations of influence?”, and I’ve thought of one where there was a very wealthy Chinese businessman that made a large donation to the Labour Party and, for whatever reason, ended up with a citizenship ceremony in a Minister’s office, or in a parliamentary office. Everyone thought, “Well, that’s wrong—that’s inherently wrong. That’s money for access and that’s money for influence.” But the Labour Party came out and they were very clear and they were very firm about it, and they said, “No, that’s not the case—that’s not the case. That donation had nothing to do with expediting a citizenship ceremony or hosting it here in Parliament.” We have to take them on their word. Is that true? Is that true that the donations had no influence and that those donations had no—it is. So we have to accept you on your word. So what is the problem? What is the problem that you’re trying to fix?

What is the real problem that you’re trying to fix, or is it quite simply this—and David Seymour raised it, and it was a very good point. Is it quite simply this: that you want to try and impact and affect the chances that your political opponents have got in raising money, because it has a disproportionate impact—doesn’t it?—on the National Party and on the ACT Party, and we’ve heard that. We’ve heard the numbers. I disagree with them. I think that $200,000 is actually going to be very important to the Labour Party next year, when they’re trying to raise money to actually campaign—because that’s what we should do. We should rely on donors that want to support us and want to get behind us to allow us to go out there and campaign and make our case to the country.

I think that it’s vile and I completely reject the premise of what these guys want to do, and that is to go to public funding. That quite simply means that taxpayers now will be funding political parties—

💬 Hon Kieran McAnulty: That’s not in the bill.

—and they’ll have no choice at all. “It’s not in the bill.”, says “Mr 16-Year-Old Voter”. He actually said, “I think 16- and 17-year-olds are smarter than a lot of us.” He makes the most compelling case for change, actually, when you think about it, and I assumed that he was talking about the Labour caucus. I assumed that he was talking about his own Labour caucus members—very true.

So we’re not going to support this bill. Joseph Mooney is absolutely right, and, by the way, most of the public—most Kiwis—can see what’s going on here.

The last speaker, Dr Emily Henderson, spoke about transparency—transparency! They tried to suppress the submissions on this bill.

💬 Angela Roberts: What?

What is transparent around that—what? Are you not aware? Whoever is speaking to the bill, take a call on it. Are you not aware that the submissions on this bill were suppressed? It took a long time to get them prised out for members of the public, for the press gallery, for the academics, for the political commentators—for members of the public to actually have visibility on it.

So when we stand on this side of the House and we say that this is a screwing of the scrum, it’s because it is. The thing is that the public now are deeply suspicious of the machinations that are going on on the other side of the House in terms of what they’re trying to do to use their power in Government to screw the scrum to make changes that normally would never happen. There is no bipartisan support for this to actually—very clearly articulated—give them an advantage next year, when we go into a general election. The people of New Zealand can judge and make up their own decision on that. Thank you very much, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on this bill. Just four points I wanted to make, quickly, in relation to some of the statements made in the House.

There is no public funding proposal in this bill. I also wanted to talk about transparency quickly. This bill lowers the threshold for reporting the donor to political parties from $15,000 to $5,000. That increases transparency; that means that there will be more confidence within our democracy.

Another thing I wanted to mention was there’s been some criticisms that this is being done before an election year. As everyone in this House will know, New Zealand has three-yearly election cycles and I don’t doubt, if we pass this bill in an election year, there would be criticisms that we were doing it in an election year and that was also inappropriate. That leaves one year that we could make electoral law change. And as legislators whose party has been legislators in the past—and sometimes supports legislation—that is an impractical proposal.

Last thing I just wanted to mention was that this does increase franchise from the people who have been overseas unable to get home from COVID. More of these people will be able to vote. Therefore, I commend this bill to the House.