Electoral Amendment Bill

Hon SIMON POWER (Minister of Justice) Link to this

I move, That the Electoral Amendment Bill be now read a third time. The House has made excellent progress on this matter this evening—such excellent progress that my third reading speech is still in my office. I conclude these matters by making one or two key points in response to two parties. Firstly, I thank all parties in the House for the constructive approach they have taken to this issue, not only to the repeal of the Electoral Finance Act, which this time 12 months’ ago was inciting a fair bit of activity in this debating chamber when members on that side of the House were on this side and vice versa, but also because I think we have got to the stage where a cross-party approach to try to put into place an enduring legislative framework to deal with future elections is the appropriate vehicle.

I say to Green Party representatives in the House that although they have exercised their right not to vote for this legislation, I acknowledge that according to conversation with their co-leader Dr Russel Norman, the Greens will be participating in the process that will move it forward from here—that is, the cross-party and public discussions about the new, enduring legislative framework—and I thank them for taking that step. Their contribution will be welcomed, as will all parties’ contributions in that discussion.

It is significant that new legislation will be required for the 2011 election, but in the interim, hybrid legislation had to be enacted in the unlikely hypothetical, or theoretical, event that a by-election occurs in the near future.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) Link to this

I thank the Minister who just resumed his seat, the Hon Simon Power, for his offers of cooperation around the process of developing the successor to the electoral finance legislation. The test of the Government’s future conduct on this legislation will be whether it sees fit to compromise on these issues. The Government has criticised the prior legislation—the Electoral Finance Act—as being only the vision of those parties that supported it, and it has said that there was an unwillingness on the part of the then Government to compromise in respect of some of the views of the National Party. Maybe the Labour Party made a mistake in respect of the prior legislation—although I have to say that at times we tried to engage with the National Party and found it less than willing to engage on some of the issues. Notwithstanding that—I do not want to be churlish about this—I think the test as to whether National is willing to engage will be whether it is willing to compromise on some of these issues, just as we are being asked to compromise on some of them.

I thank Mr Boscawen for his contribution; I think he made some good points. If regimes are to have the confidence of the people, and are to provide the sorts of frameworks that people can rely upon, then they ought to be meaningful. We ought not to have laws that pretend to control things but, in fact, do not control them. If areas are due for proper control then they ought to be properly controlled. If there are areas where proper control might be desirable but in practice is not possible, then we ought not to pretend otherwise. I thank the member for that contribution. I look forward to the consultation that the Minister of Justice outlined.

Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Attorney-General) Link to this

Mr Parker’s generous and statesmanlike contributions remind me of the line from John F Kennedy’s inaugural address that “civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof.” I think that the test of sincerity always being subject to proof applies to all parties in this House as we enact legislation that will sweep away this odious Electoral Finance Act. This legislation provides us all with the opportunity to have a constructive multiparty discussion on this critical matter, but not for ourselves. Sometimes there is an almost holier-than-thou attitude coming through the Greens’ speeches—that all the other parties are really only concerned about themselves. That is wrong. We are all concerned, ultimately, about doing something that is in the public interest.

Thank goodness that as a member of Parliament I can finally move on from this poorly drafted Electoral Finance Act.

CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) Link to this

I welcome the outline that the Minister of Justice gave in his third reading speech on the Electoral Amendment Bill on the process intended to be adopted in respect of devising new electoral law. As I understood it he said there would be an issues document, there would be a discussion, there would be a draft bill, and there would be a select committee process. I think David Parker’s observation—that some ability and willingness to compromise, and some generosity of spirit from the Government in this area will enable the possibility of some enduring electoral law to emerge—is absolutely right. I would like to repeat what he has urged on the Government: that in order to get something worthwhile out of this exercise it will be important to approach it with an open mind. It would be helpful in that regard if the Minister would ensure that the issues document he referred to embraced as many questions as possible on the electoral system.

It is essential that the issues document should include a continued commitment to a high level of transparency over donations. Surely it must canvass the issue of additional funding for political parties. I refer to Mr Boscawen’s comments in an earlier part of the debate in this regard. He said: “Goodness, do we not think that the political parties are already funded; what is this all about?”. Well, of course, the problem with the existing funding regime includes that it applies only to parties represented in Parliament. And it is an opaque system. Those members who have had any experience of attempting, over the last couple of years, to work with the Parliamentary Service bureaucracy to get spending authorised for, as an example, a simple electorate office ad, will know that we cannot persist with the current system—it is not satisfactory. The public are not clear as to what is or is not included. It is not always clear to members. The point has been fairly made that there is no public funding for candidates or parties not currently represented in Parliament. We need to take a long, hard look at whether all this is a desirable state of affairs if we want this House of Representatives to live up to its name.

Clearly the transparency that the issues paper will have to canvass means that we will need to look at all “actors” in the political process—let us use that term for candidates, political parties, and pressure groups who seek to spend money on media in order to influence a citizen’s most sacred duty and right, the duty and right to vote. Of course, all such groups should be subject to scrutiny and transparency. People should be able to know who is seeking to influence the process. They should be able to know who is spending what and whether that is being done in any sort of collusive arrangement with other “actors” in the system. If we do not have that transparency applying across the board then we do not have a healthy democratic process.

We need to look at limits on donations and spending and at the question of the regulated period. In my personal view, the donation and spending limits must err on the low side as to amounts, and the regulated period needs to err on the high side. The Obama precedent has been quoted in this debate, and surely it is a healthy thing for democracy that a whole lot of small donations are sourced from a large range of people. If political parties and candidates can follow that precedent then they should be able to prove that they have a programme and personalities that attract popular support. That has to be a good thing; that has to be something that our system has to incentivise. We must, if we are to have a discussion of public funding, also get the mix between public funding and spending limits right. We must not go down the road that the Australians went for many years where they had public funding of public parties and that funding formed the floor for the spending of the political parties. Then there was a bidding war amongst corporates and other donors as to where to get all the other money from. That is not a healthy democratic system to have. That striking of the balance must be a question for the issues document that the Minister mentions.

As far as the regulated period is concerned, unless and until we move to a fixed term of Parliament—which in my personal view we should do—there has to be certainty as to what the regulated period is. It should not be a period measured with reference to when the election is called. It should be a certain period that everybody can know, rather than just, say, 3 months, 6 months, or 12 months before the general election, the date of which is known to only one person—that is, the person advising that date to the Governor-General. That is not an ideal situation as we go forward and write the laws anew.

We should also look very closely at the question of the agencies that police our election law. Indeed, the question of whether there should be just one agency, rather than the three that are currently set up to deal with the various questions in this area, needs a careful look. We should have a good look at whether there are sufficient resources for that agency, or for the agencies that exist at the moment, to do the job. There surely ought to be independent forensic, police, and enforcement resources in that agency, rather than it having to rely on the New Zealand Police rationing its scarce resources to chase up allegations of electoral offences, where it does not have the expertise or the time to do that job properly. I mentioned earlier the importance of having a good look at the voting age, because it is appropriate in these times, in my view, to consider whether people who are under the current voting age might well make a good contribution to the system by being enfranchised.

I conclude my remarks by acknowledging that we will not have a utopia come out of this review; clearly there will have to be give and take on all sides, and I hope we see that happen. But we should aspire to the best system and the best set of laws that we possibly can. We have done that in the past, when we led the world in enfranchising all our citizens, and we did it with great success. I hope that this is the beginning of a period when we will do that again. Thank you.

Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) Link to this

I have already spoken a couple of times on the Electoral Amendment Bill, so I will not repeat everything I have said in my previous speeches, but there are a few things that I would like to draw members’ attention to. One is the cap on spending. The cap on spending is probably by far and away one of the best elements of our system. We have only to look across the Tasman at the war that goes on there every year to see who can spend the most money and, therefore, who can be most dependent on corporate donors and give the most favours after the election to the corporates who pay for the parties’ election campaigns. Having an accelerating war over who can spend the most money on election campaigns would be very, very bad for our democracy, so having a cap on spending is absolutely essential.

We also need to give some attention to what kind of spending we want to put a cap on. Previously the focus has very much been on advertising, because that is the most visible part of it. The definition of “spending” broadened with the Electoral Finance Act, and I think that it was actually a good thing to pull in more elements of what really is campaign spending. But the Act still does not cover some key elements. The kind of spending like that on the work that Crosby/Textor does—which is an essential part of the National Party campaign, according to the media—is not currently caught. Unless it is the preparation of an election advert under the Electoral Finance Act, a lot of the spending that goes on around campaigns is not currently caught by the cap, which I think is one of the weaknesses of the law. It also means, of course, that Parliamentary Service money can be spent employing Crosby/Textor. The public never know, because the Parliamentary Service is not covered by the Official Information Act, so the public’s money is spent on the National Party campaign to fund Crosby/Textor. I think that kind of spending should be brought within the cap.

I think the cap needs to increase. The cap is too low. I think that is fair enough; it has not increased over many years. But it needs to cover what is really going on with elections.

The donations regime is a bit of a war and a counter-war—those who seek to get around the law try to figure out new ways to avoid it. The invention of the Waitemata Trust was clearly an attempt by National to avoid the 1993 electoral law. By putting all the money into the trust and then moving the money from the trust to the National Party, nobody knew who was really funding the National Party election campaign. But as Nicky Hager showed in his book The Hollow Men, the board of the National Party was aware of the identity of the donors. Contrary to what Mr Boscawen said, one of the changes in the Electoral Finance Act was basically to make it very difficult to use that mechanism any more. It made it very difficult to launder the money through the trust and then into the party, with the public never knowing the source of the money. That was the real progress with the Electoral Finance Act, and it is something that we should hang on to.

The other part about donations that I do not think we have addressed properly is putting a cap on how much any one person or corporation can donate to political parties. It seems to me that the ideal for the funding of political parties is that they are encouraged to maintain large membership bases and to get many small donations from a large group of people. But a party can get around that if it has one donor who gives half a million dollars, in the case of Owen Glenn and the Labour Party. That means that a party does not have to go out to lots of different people, it can just go to its one big wealthy donor and get a big lump of money. It does not have to be dependent on the community; it does not need a big base. I think that we should cap how much any one person or corporation can give to a political party and should force the parties to go more broadly to seek money, and that would be an improvement in the donations regime.

Another part that we never really progressed in the Electoral Finance Act was the use by the Government of the day of Government advertising. One of the things done in Canada, for example, is that every Government ad has to be vetted by the Auditor-General at a subcommittee of the Auditor-General, to see whether in fact it is an election advert. We discussed this matter in some of the discussions that happened around the Electoral Finance Act. Australia is the classic example of the use of such Government advertising. The Liberal Government used millions of taxpayers’ dollars to promote all its programmes, basically as a form of campaigning. It is a problem here in New Zealand, as well.

We need a system like the one the Canadians have, which is that if the Government wants to place an ad, then we have an independent group of experts who ask whether it is a campaign ad and whether the Government should be allowed to spend taxpayers’ money on that ad in an election year or in a regulated period. I really think that we need to introduce that factor into it.

Another part that is missing from all of this, of course, is the lobby groups. Maybe lobbying cannot be pulled within the Electoral Act, but should be more part of an open government package—which, I agree totally with Mr Chauvel, has to include a fixed date for elections—but we do not know what is going on with the lobby groups. What is their influence in politics? Who are they working for? For example, when a lobby group comes to see us we do not know whether it is working for whom it says it is working, or whether it has another client who is paying a lot more money and uses some particular client the public likes as the public face for it. When lobby groups come to see us we do not know what they are up to. We do not know who else they are working for or who else is paying them.

In Canada lobby groups have to register. They have to say who is employing them, what pieces of law they are working on, and what they are lobbying about. It puts transparency around lobbying, which is a key part of the legislative process. Let us be honest about it; the lobby groups play a big role in which laws get passed through this place. I think it is essential that we have transparency around the lobby groups, and I would like to see that brought into an open government package.

One of the things that I think makes transparency around donations particularly important right now is the infrastructure stimulus package. We are about to throw many hundreds of millions of dollars at a whole bunch of contractors. We are going to give them a whole bunch of money. We are giving them a bunch of money to build a whole bunch of roads and various other things. We know that some of those people donate to political parties. The Road Transport Forum declared its donations to Labour and National, because it was forced to due to the 2-week rolling disclosure that the Green Party put into the Electoral Finance Act. The Road Transport Forum put 35 grand into Labour and National.

The issue is that where there are those kinds of connections between contractors who are donating money to political parties and Governments that are allocating hundreds of millions of dollars to contractors, it is essential for both the perception and the reality—for the Government’s sake as much as for anyone else’s sake—that there is maximum transparency around who is funding political parties, so that nobody can go to the governing party and say that it gave a certain contract to such and such a company because that company had given the Government this donation. It all needs to be transparent so that we know who is funding the parties and so that we can also see what contracts are going out.

I think that that should be the normal practice, but it is particularly important in an era where not only our Government but also other Governments are throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at these giant infrastructure projects, many of which are being sped up in their allocation process. A lot of the roading projects are being accelerated during this time and the normal processes are not being applied.

Finally, I will respond to earlier comments about citizens’ assemblies. The thing about a citizens’ assembly is that it is not just about asking the public for submissions. When we ask the public for submissions, we get responses from all the interest groups. All the interest groups come in and make their submissions, and that is good. That is fine, and it is a healthy part of the process, but there is something more than that. Ordinary citizens will have a particular perspective on their democracy, as well as on their justice system, but generally they will not be engaged in the process. They will not make the kinds of submissions the Minister of Justice is talking about. Most people in New Zealand will never make a submission on the Electoral Amendment Bill. They will never have any input into it.

How do we get the perspective of the ordinary citizen of our country on what electoral finance law should look like? The only way is through a jury process, which involves informed decision-making. That is, we get a group of randomly selected people together and give them the information so that they can make a decision from the perspective of the man on the Clapham omnibus—or the ordinary citizen of New Zealand, because he or she will have a very particular perspective on it. We have seen with citizens’ juries in Canada, where they have been used extensively, that we get very highly informed and useful contributions.

I would once again promote citizens’ assemblies as a way for ordinary New Zealanders to have an informed input into this process.

JOHN BOSCAWEN (ACT) Link to this

It always fascinates me when members of the Green Party talk about citizens’ assemblies. I was at the hearing of the Justice and Electoral Committee on the Electoral Finance Bill on 18 October 2007 as a member of the public. At that hearing the Chief Human Rights Commissioner said quite clearly and categorically that her preference was—and remains—that the Electoral Finance Bill be withdrawn, and that Parliament start again on electoral finance legislation. She then went on to say: “If that is not going to happen, it will be essential that there be a further round of public consultation. The Labour Party here are playing with electoral law”—and she said to the committee—“you owe it to your fellow New Zealanders to allow them to comment on what you are going to do.” Metiria Turei, the Green representative on that committee, totally ignored that submission. So I always find it fascinating when the Greens talk about citizens’ assemblies, because if the Green Party was really interested in what the people of New Zealand thought, it would have accepted the recommendations of the Chief Human Rights Commissioner.

I would now like to come to the comments of Lynne Pillay. In her speech in the second reading debate on the Electoral Amendment Bill, she talked about the importance of participation, and how it was important that ordinary New Zealanders participated in the election process. I would like to read her a paragraph from the Human Rights Commission’s submission. It is paragraph 10.2 of the conclusion to the commission’s submission dated 7 September 2007. It states: “A human rights approach to democratic government requires genuine participation. Genuine participation, in turn, requires an informed electorate. By limiting freedom of expression and creating a complex regulatory framework in the way it does, the Electoral Finance Bill unduly limits the rights of all New Zealanders to participate in the electoral process. The Commission therefore considers that the Bill is inherently flawed and should be withdrawn.” I say to Lynne Pillay and the Labour members who are concerned about the ordinary New Zealander’s participation in elections that it is a pity they did not actually listen to the Human Rights Commission when it made that submission.

The Labour Government’s behaviour was worse than that, because initially it was very reluctant to have the Human Rights Commission appear as a witness at the hearings. It did not make it easy for the commission. Pete Hodgson has justified the Electoral Finance Act by saying that it does not restrict free speech. I have a very simple answer to that—let the people of New Zealand decide. Let the people of New Zealand form their own opinion. The Human Rights Commission said that if we are going to restrict the right of lobby groups to speak, we need to allow them to spend between $250,000 and $300,000. That is in the context of a political party spending $4.8 million; both the Labour and National Parties, as well as their candidates, were entitled to spend up to $4.8 million. I might add that $1 million of that was given to the Labour Party by way of broadcasting allowance, and $900,000 was given to the National Party by way of broadcasting allowance. So when people say that we must have taxpayer funding of political parties, I say that is a joke, because $1.9 million was spent on broadcasting alone, for just two major parties.

The Human Rights Commission agreed that it is right to restrict people; there is no point in having restrictions on political parties and then letting third parties go unrestricted. But the commission thought it reasonable that third parties should be able to spend up to $250,000 to $300,000. That is one-twentieth. The commission said that, yes, let the political parties get lots of funding. That was fine. But it said we must not drown out small people. The commission said that if a small person could spend just one-twentieth, and if National and Labour were allowed to spend twenty times what a lobby group was allowed, that would be acceptable. But that was not good enough for Labour. It wanted to spend 40 times that figure.

I referred to the International Bill of Human Rights, and to the actions of the previous Attorney-General. For members opposite who are genuinely concerned about electoral law and reform, I say that the actions of the previous Attorney-General, the Hon Dr Michael Cullen, were very, very poor. The reason we have this problem is that he did not exercise his judgment. He used his role for purely political purposes, and he did not stand up and say that the electoral finance legislation was not acceptable. It was not acceptable to make the people of New Zealand come to Parliament, as I came to Parliament, and as Amy Adams came to Parliament; 500 people made submissions to the bill saying they were not prepared to see their freedoms—the freedoms of their parents and grandparents—taken from them. I believe the previous Government was very, very arrogant in the way it treated the people of New Zealand.

I also make a point in my final speech on this debate to acknowledge the courage of the commissioners and staff of the Human Rights Commission. The Chief Human Rights Commissioner is Rosslyn Noonan. She is a former national secretary of the primary teachers union, the New Zealand Educational Institute. She is a trade unionist, and someone who might normally be considered a supporter of the Labour Party. I believe her actions, and those of her colleague Professor Judith McGregor, the Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner, in speaking out against the electoral finance legislation and in continuing to speak out against it, are courageous and should be acknowledged.

When I had the chance to speak for a few minutes in Thursday night’s debate, I talked about the arrogance of the Labour Government in pushing through the electoral finance legislation. I did so as a warning to the National Government, because when it comes to three terms in Government, and is looking for a fourth, it may want to consider something along the lines of the Electoral Finance Bill. It is not without precedent. I am a member of the ACT Party, and in 1995, Jim Bolger’s National Government passed a law with the support of the Labour Opposition that made it illegal for a political party to purchase advertising. I have said that taxpayers gave the Labour Party $1 million in broadcasting time, the National Party $900,000 in broadcasting time, and the ACT Party $100,000 in broadcasting time. That is fine. The ACT Party does not have a problem with being given $100,000, because at that time it had two members of Parliament. But it was illegal for ACT to purchase broadcasting time. In my consultation with members of the Māori Party on this bill in late 2007, they made the point that when they fought the 2005 election it was also illegal for their party to buy broadcasting time. They very much would have liked to spend the party’s own money broadcasting on Māori and iwi radio stations. It was illegal.

I urge the Minister to review that. If it is done in a truly non-partisan way, then by all means set caps on how much political parties can spend, but let them have the freedom to say how they spend their own money. We do not have a level playing field when the two major political parties can appropriate for themselves—voting together in 1995, as they did under Jim Bolger’s Government—the right to spend taxpayers’ money, and can then deny others the opportunity to raise money to put their message across. I would also like to pay a tribute to members of the media: the ones I work closely with, and the ones I do not know as well. I had a great deal of support in my campaign from Leighton Smith on his Newstalk ZB programme. Leighton spoke at my first protest march on 17 November in Auckland.

TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua) Link to this

It gives me pleasure to stand up and speak on the Electoral Amendment Bill and, in so doing, to support it. I am encouraged by the common sense that has been shown by most parts of the House in addressing this important issue through the bill’s first reading and in the Committee stage. I congratulate the Minister Simon Power on once again meeting an election promise that the National Party made—a commitment that in the first 100 days of office we would repeal the Electoral Finance Act. This Minister is starting to develop a reputation for action, and it is well deserved. This is yet another commitment made and honoured in 100 days in office. I congratulate him on that.

There has been a lot of intelligent debate around the repeal of this Act. Such intelligent and sensible debate probably could have been shown in 2007 when the House last focused on this issue. It is good to see that the Minister has said that once the Act is repealed, all parties in the House—indeed all stakeholders in New Zealand—will have an opportunity to consider a new bill to provide transparency and openness when it comes to how we govern our elections. Again, it is a shame that this was not a possibility in 2007 when the bill was last considered. The commitment that has been shown, and certainly the well-deserved reputation for action that has been developed over the last 3 months, is diametrically opposed to the previous Government’s first 3 months of office. It did not deserve any such reputation.

This legislation is about common sense. In 2007 we heard a lot in relation to this legislation about the fact that we were governed by common sense. It is quite easy for members opposite to have all the answers today. It was shown just a short few months ago when New Zealand voted that the answers were not there. Labour members were found wanting. I am glad that those members have come around to realising that New Zealand deserves good electoral law. They will have an opportunity to show how reasonable they are and how much common sense can be applied to this issue in the coming months.

The people of New Zealand want their say. Some old ladies in Rotorua came to me during the campaign and said they were concerned about this nasty bill they had heard about that had been passed. They asked why they could not stand up and have their say. They are women who for the previous 20 years had been wearing their pinnies with the National Party badge on them, and they asked why they could not wear them any more. The answer was that those pinnies would be illegal, were they to wear them. I feel for some of those people in Rotorua. It was bad legislation, and the Opposition, I am glad to say, has recognised that.

What were others saying about this legislation 2 years ago and last year during the election campaign? The New Zealand Herald stated that democracy was under attack. Those were the words of the New Zealand Herald: “Democracy under attack”. We also read in the New Zealand Herald that if the law was passed it would be Labour’s epitaph. Well, that has certainly been the case. The Electoral Commission referred to the bill’s “chilling effect”, and the New Zealand Law Society and the Human Rights Commission also condemned the bill. The Listener stated during the course of the debate on the Electoral Finance Bill, when it was first discussed in this Parliament, that it was a “great electoral hijack” and a “dog’s breakfast”. Well, I have canvassed opinion pretty widely and I did not see a single dog that was willing to swallow this legislation, but it was rammed through the House.

I spoke a moment ago about the law of common sense and what was said in this very Chamber. With this legislation the law of common sense applies, as it always does with electoral Acts. Finally, when it comes to electoral law, we have some common sense, and it is the legislation we are debating today—the repeal of the Electoral Finance Act—that is sponsored by the Minister Simon Power. Finally, we can see that there will be some common sense.

What were the problems with this legislation out on the campaign trail? I can say that all parties, on both sides of this House, probably spent much more time than they needed to—far too much time—considering the legal ramifications of legislation that was rammed through the House, rather than being out there having open discussion and debate, promoting democracy, and listening to constituents. That is really what I want to say: elections are about debate, openness, and dialogue, and the Electoral Finance Act did not allow any openness, debate, or real dialogue throughout the width and breadth of this country. In fact, the very way it was adopted in 2007 had little to do with debate, openness, and dialogue in New Zealand.

Many hours were spent considering the Electoral Finance Act. In fact, lawyers told me that they were looking forward to the result of the election and that they thought there would be great income for them in sorting out the many problems the Electoral Finance Act would create once declarations were made. The great news is that the lawyers will not have that work to do, thanks to an outstanding result on the part of the National Party. Without a million people in New Zealand deciding that they did not like the legislation and that they wanted a change, many of us today might still be considering the advice our lawyers have been giving us.

A farmer in Waikite, which is in my electorate of Rotorua, phoned me and said that many years ago he had been a strong supporter of the National Party, and that last year during the election campaign he was again a strong supporter of the National Party. He asked me to tell him about the legislation that was rammed through Parliament without enough consultation. He asked what people could do out there in the rural areas, where they want change, growth, more productivity, and where they want somebody to sit down, listen to them, and represent them. He asked whether he could go out and paint his sheep blue. I said that would be a wonderful thing to do. Would it not be a great thing if all the sheep of New Zealand farmers who supported National were blue? I said that the problem with that was who would authorise the sheep. Members cannot tell me that if a farmer in my electorate wants to paint his sheep blue so that people can see exactly which way he votes, he should then have to consider how he will authorise the sheep. Indeed, why does the Act suggest that an authorisation would be needed? Every member of the House who campaigned last year had to have business cards. Those business cards had to be authorised.

Why was Labour, which was in Government but is now the Opposition, so worried that every small piece of literature—every card I put on a doorstep of the thousands of doors that we knocked on in the Rotorua electorate—had to be authorised and, if not for that, we would be breaking the law and the people of Rotorua could not be trusted to decide what they should be doing?

NATHAN GUY (National—Ōtaki) Link to this

It is important that I make a contribution to the third reading debate on the Electoral Amendment Bill. I remind all those people who are listening this evening that Labour rammed the Electoral Finance Bill through under urgency with very poor consultation and did not take into account the human rights submissions. It was one of the pieces of legislation that brought down the Labour Government—just one of them. The other, I believe, was the social engineering legislation, and then right across New Zealand the electorates said: “We’ve had enough.”

The electoral finance legislation was a bit like a spider web. It went across everything. It moved the campaign period from 90 days right out to a whole year, and financial agents had to have their own physical address on anything that was promoted. In the past, it has been fine to have PO Box—people could be found—but then the need to have the physical address of the financial agent caused many people to decide that the legislation was not well-thought-through. Many MPs could not find financial agents who wanted to put their name to that legislation because no one actually knew how far reaching it would be. That was the real concern that a whole lot of New Zealanders had. The electoral finance legislation was a spider web. It was suffocating freedom of speech.

I need to acknowledge the good work of the Minister of Justice, Simon Power, who has brought the Electoral Amendment Bill to the House this evening. John Key rightly said it will be very important in terms of getting our democracy right. The most important part, I believe, is covered in the explanatory note, which states: “the Government will undertake a considered process involving all parliamentary parties”—something Labour did not do—“and the public to further examine the reform of the electoral finance law. The stage 2 reforms will be enacted in 2010 for the 2011 general election.”

It is hugely important that this legislation is right, because we will all be elected under it at the next election. That is why this Government is very keen to have open dialogue with all political parties to ensure that we get it right. So, on that note, I stand here to support the third reading of the Electoral Amendment Bill.

MOANA MACKEY (Labour) Link to this

I will take a very short call on the third reading of the Electoral Amendment Bill because I know the House is desperate to pass the bill, despite the filibustering from the Government benches. All I will say to the Minister, Simon Power, is that we are only in our fourth week of Parliament, and already Government members are having to filibuster their own legislation because they do not know what they doing. They do not know what we are going to do once we get past this legislation. I say to the Minister that we must make sure that in these cross-party talks we uphold the battle of ideas, not the battle of cheque books—that is, “one person, one vote”, not “one dollar, one vote”. Labour says: “Let’s get on and vote on this now.”

MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National) Link to this

I rise in support of this bill being passed. In doing so, I do not want to repeat the mostly erudite submissions that have been made by colleagues on both sides of the House. I do want to add just a little reflection on the Electoral Finance Act.

We have heard a lot that the Act is flawed. It is flawed not only because it was rammed through against the conventions of bipartisanship that underpin electoral law and because it was a handbrake on democracy and freedom of expression but also, in my estimation, because it was a slight on the intelligence of the voting public. It said to the people of New Zealand that they were a bit ignorant and did not actually have the wherewithal to discern the messages being sent to them by political parties, unions, and other people interested in our democracy. I accept that there may need to be a tightening and clarification of the law, but the Electoral Finance Act was so far out of proportion to the problem it attempted to solve that to say it threw the baby out with the bathwater is a huge understatement.

I have a confession to make. I was the recipient of four pairs of National Party - branded socks from former member Katherine Rich, as has been mentioned by the Attorney-General during the second reading debate. They were unauthorised. I wore them nearly every day of the campaign, and I must confess that I probably sat cross-legged, exposing the brand, at the front of campaign debates in Dunedin North. To think that the poor public of Dunedin North were somehow subliminally influenced by such promotion or that I risked breaching the Act over a pair of socks underscores how ridiculous the legislation is.

So I look forward to a new law that has regard for our citizens’ inherent ability to discern the issues and make informed decisions without being treated like children. On the other hand, I would not be at all averse to the replacement legislation, when introduced, containing a provision that prohibits a certain party leader’s yellow jacket. It might be somewhat undemocratic to do so, but it would end the crime against fashion that is being perpetrated against us.