Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill, Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill

Hon SIMON POWER (Minister of Justice) Link to this

I move, That the Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill and the Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill be now read a third time. These two bills are part of a package of legislative measures giving effect to the Government’s electoral reform commitments. As I have said many times in this House, electoral law should be based on a broad consensus so that the rules are enduring and certain across elections. In that sense, the most important aspect of the new electoral finance regime has been the process used to construct it. The law also needs to be fair and transparent so the public can have confidence in the integrity of the outcome of elections. In February 2009 the Government repealed the Electoral Finance Act 2007 and replaced it with an interim regime. We then undertook to introduce new laws after a thorough and lengthy consultation process involving all parliamentary parties and the public. Only those proposals that had widespread support would proceed.

The Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill has resulted from the work of many people, including those who submitted throughout the consultation process, all parties represented in this House through the Electoral Legislation Committee, and officials who have worked extremely hard on this particular package. The bill reforms the election advertising and donation rules in the Electoral Act 1993, to provide greater clarity, transparency, and accountability in election campaigns. Candidates, political parties, and third-party promoters will better understand their obligations, and the Electoral Commission’s enforcement role will be made simpler. Additional regulation of third-party promoters is introduced to improve transparency and accountability, and to uphold public confidence in the conduct of elections. The bill also makes a number of changes to the donations regime, to provide for administrative efficiency, and, again, greater transparency. I am confident that this bill strikes the right balance between participation and fairness.

The Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill provides a permanent definition of the term “funding entitlements for parliamentary purposes”. The bill also aligns with the proposed electoral finance rules to ensure that Parliamentary Service funding is not used for election advertising. Together these bills will enhance the public’s confidence in the integrity of our elections.

Finally, I thank all parties and the public for their participation and interest in this area, and their desire for an enduring legislative framework for electoral finance laws. I commend these bills to the House.

Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) Link to this

Labour will be supporting the final reading of the Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill and the Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill. These bills did not excite the same level of public attention as did the Electoral Referendum Bill. The Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill attracted 44 submissions, 11 of which were heard by the Electoral Legislation Committee, and the Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill attracted only six submissions, four of which were heard by the committee, and I guess that is a higher hit rate for those who were heard, as opposed to the others. There is a significant reason for that, and I will come to that when I speak on the Electoral Referendum Bill.

I wish to acknowledge the work of the select committee as well, as the Minister of Justice has done, and, in particular, I thank Amy Adams for her competency in chairing the committee, and her willingness to engage on issues where there was not agreement. There are issues upon which she and I will never agree, but I respect her position. The reason I respect her position is that as a result of the discussions we have had, I actually understand her position—I do not agree with it but I understand it. I believe that the genuine contest of ideas that often happens behind the closed door of a select committee is something that the public never fully sees or appreciates, and I want to put that on the record.

I also acknowledge the Minister’s willingness to seek a compromise that enabled a consensus to emerge around the most important elements of the legislation. The two parties have both had to give something in order to gain what it was they felt was a priority in reaching that consensus. We will be supporting measures in this legislation that do not form part of Labour policy, but they are part of achieving that broad agreement that the Minister spoke of.

For Labour, the important issue was the cap on third-party spending. We believe that without the cap, the potential for well-resourced campaigns to exert undue influence, or even the perception of undue influence, would be damaging to the integrity of our electoral system and run the risk of what I call the Americanisation of New Zealand elections.

I have spoken on issues through the debate, and I will summarise them to remind us why we are having this debate. I will not defend Labour’s attempt to write new rules in the wake of what happened in 2005. Those rules were not durable, because there was no attempt to reach consensus or to make compromises. The reason for that was the very uncompromising position of a party that avoided the regulated period to set the scene for one of the most bitter campaigns that I have ever experienced in my then 15 years in politics, and that culminated with the unprincipled collusion with a religious sect to help bring down a Government. The irony that the sect does not vote and that it used subterfuge to hide its true identity was not lost on a voting public, who would have been unaware of its involvement had it not been exposed prior to the 2005 general election. Trust between the two major parties had already broken down completely when consensus on race issues was finally destroyed with the “Iwi/Kiwi” billboard campaign masterminded by John Key’s right-hand man, Steven Joyce, and the team from Crosby/Textor. The billboards with the photoshopped photographs of the scowling face of then Prime Minister, Helen Clark, contrasted with the benevolent, kindly face of the then Leader of the Opposition, Don Brash, set the scene for a campaign I would prefer to forget. But it is a campaign that I will always remember in order to remind me of what would have happened if the subterfuge had not been exposed in time.

This bill will not stop the scene-setting behaviour outside the regulated period, but it will stop third parties like the Exclusive Brethren going to the Electoral Commission with a $1.2 million campaign. After finding out that using Don Brash’s photo and promoting him as the next Prime Minister would require the consent of the National Party, and that the whole $1.2 million would be charged to the National Party, they then changed it to attack Labour Government pamphlets on health and defence, and the Greens on drug policy. To know that that religious sect preaches the virtues of integrity but failed to practise them, by hiding its true identity with false addresses as it did in that campaign, was a revelation of the extent that those extreme right-wing organisations will go to. They will not be allowed to spend $1.2 million in the next campaign as a single entity; $300,000 will be the limit, and by law we will be entitled to know who they are and where they can be genuinely contacted.

I hope I never see the likes of the 2005 election campaign again. Let us contest ideas and aspirations, let us debate plans and strategies, let us engage with the public and with each other with respect for the democratic process, and let us never ever allow this place to become subservient to the influence of a well-resourced minority who would never stand for election to serve the public interest, but who would only ever seek to exploit a private benefit from the shadows. It is said that sunlight is the best disinfectant, and this law does cast light into those shadows, and that is why Labour will support its final reading today.

AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) Link to this

It feels like the end of a long journey standing here to contribute to the third reading debate on the Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill. It has certainly been a big part of my year’s work, and I start this contribution by thanking the Minister of Justice not only for the process he has put up on the reform of electoral finance laws, which I think has been an excellent, robust, transparent, and inclusive, but also for giving me the opportunity to get involved in the process. It has been something I have very much enjoyed.

I recognise that I am a new member to the House, but I think that gives a perspective in these debates that should not go without inclusion in the argument. It has been very interesting to work with all the members of the Electoral Legislation Committee. I acknowledge the Hon Lianne Dalziel, the Hon Pete Hodgson, and the Hon Darren Hughes; the members of the committee on my side, Paul Quinn, Hekia Parata, and Chris Tremain; as well as Metiria Turei, John Boscawen, Rahui Katene, Jim Anderton, and Peter Dunne. They all were very good to work with. They all came with an open mind and a real understanding that if this was going to be durable solution we had to, as far as possible, put politics to one side and try to address this bill very much on its merits. As the Hon Lianne Dalziel said in her contribution, we did not always agree—we usually will not, and probably my caucus is quite pleased about that; I certainly am—but I think we did get to a very good place, and there is no substitute for having people who live and breathe this stuff contributing to the future of it.

I will make a couple of comments about where we got to on some of these matters. We have gone through them as the bill has progressed through the House, on a number of occasions. One thing I will touch on, really because it has not had a lot of airtime in this debate, is the changes to the advance voting rules. Clearly, the bulk of this bill is on electoral finance, the regulated period, the campaign limits, and the disclosure and spending limits, which have received most of the airtime. But I think it is worth getting on the record that those changes to the advance voting rules will make the whole process of advance voting a lot easier, a lot more inviting, and they should, we hope, lead to a significant increase in participation in the voting process. It has certainly been the recommendation of committees’ inquiries before, and I am very pleased to see that we have had the opportunity to make that happen.

I want to comment on the issue of spending caps. I said in my second reading contribution that my starting position was that I did not see one as being warranted. I did not see it as being a considerable issue in New Zealand, but philosophically I have no problem standing here and supporting the position we have now come to. As I have said, everyone who undertakes election advertising, other than third parties, is subject to a cap.

I go out there, spend funds that are my own or are funds I have raised, and I am subject to very tight rules on how much I can spend and on what. When the National Party, the Labour Party, and the Green Party campaign, there are very strict rules on what we can spend to ensure that it is a contest of ideas. It seemed to me to be odd, to say the least, that in a very tightly constrained area a third party could come in and spend at will against us.

I think it is worth noting for anyone following this that there have always been limits on what third parties can say in positive campaigning, by which I mean a bill board that asks the public to vote for a certain party and candidate. It was only ever negative campaigning that was open slather. I have to put on record that the last speaker, Lianne Dalziel, spoke at some length about the nastiness of negative campaigning, but to be really fair about it, I have to say it is not a one-sided thing. The 2008 election was a pretty good example of some fairly strong negative campaigning from the Labour Party. But that is a part of it, and we can all take the hit and the cut and thrust. But what I do not think was right was that third parties, be they unions, religious groups, business groups, or lobby groups could spend at will when the parties and the candidates could not.

Fundamentally, I have no problem supporting a limit. The issue for me was to ensure that the limit was high enough to ensure that every citizen of New Zealand has the chance to engage in this debate in a meaningful way if they want to do so. My own view was that a limit of around $500,000 would have been good, but a limit of $300,000 over 3 months means that we know there is still a significant ability for everyone to engage in the election process and undertake election advertising. There is no limit on discussing the issues. There is no limit on anyone who wants to take a stance on an issue. This limit applies only to the carrying out of election advertising.

Finally, I will touch on disclosure limits. I know that the Greens have expressed their concerns with the small change we made to those. I want to put on record that those limits of $1,000 and $10,000 before one has to name one’s donor have been in place since 1993 without review. Yes, transparency is an important part of the process, but so is the right to freedom of association and privacy around donations.

No one in this country should have to disclose who they support politically. If they want to make a contribution that is not big enough to buy influence, then they should have the ability to do that without fear of retribution from people on the other side of the political debate. We have seen that happen often enough to know that it is a real threat, and we have to set a balance between the public’s right to know and the donor’s right to support parties of his or her choice. For me, we have to ask at what level the balance should swing in favour of disclosure. I personally am of the view that at $1,500 and at $15,000 we are still very much in favour of transparency over the donor’s right to privacy. I think a small increase is not only warranted but necessary. I am very pleased to support it.

I conclude by very warmly commending the Electoral (Finance and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill to the House. I hope we have achieved through this process an enduring solution to these difficult matters. Thank you.

Hon PETE HODGSON (Labour—Dunedin North) Link to this

I will probably not take my full 10 minutes. I do not want to repeat a lot of stuff that has been said on the Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill, but I want to repeat a little bit, which is that the process worked and it need not have. It worked, I think, for just about everyone. When some minor parties in contributing to this debate say they are very distressed about this or that aspect of the outcome, I think they may also say that the process was none the less a valuable one. In respect of the major parties, which were the ones that had to put together the deal on third-party expenditure, the $300,000 figure came about because Labour and National talked to one another. It was a deal from which Labour and National emerged near enough to equally unhappy. That is what negotiation is like. The people who made it happen were the folk on the Electoral Legislation Committee, who have been mentioned by Amy Adams, as well as the Minister of Justice.

It need not have happened. It need not have happened, because there is an awful lot of bad blood going back to the 2005 election. Lianne Dalziel put that on the record firmly again. I think she did it really well, and I am glad she did it, but it does not need to be done again by me. I will not do it afresh. What happened is we moved from that point of very serious disagreement over the years to the 2008 legislation being repealed and an interim regime being put in place, and now we have the third reading of legislation that will have some durability. So I thank colleagues from other corners of the House, including the Minister.

I am still distressed that, and do not easily understand why, some of the media think this bill is a bad thing. Some of the media think Simon Power is a disappointment.

METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) Link to this

I will start where my colleague Mr Hodgson ended, because the process has been a comparatively good one in dealing with quite fractious electoral law matters.

It seems to me, having been involved in the first Electoral Finance Act process a few years ago, that this is actually part of the same process and is just unfinished business. If there had been enough time to deal with the issues we raised then—and we dealt with them in a very fractious and combative manner, but if we had been allowed to go through the process such that we had a bit more time to then deal with those issues—we would have probably ended up in exactly the same place. When a highly reactive, often emotional approach is taken to develop legislation on a very technical and often principled-based issue like electoral law, it is a real difficulty to find the best form of electoral law to provide the best protection for the community and for political parties. So in some ways I see this bill as the end result of a process that was really just unfinished business. We would quite likely have ended up here if we had had the time to go through this properly.

Of course, the difficulty was that, as Lianne Dalziel explained, the 2005 election was a very unusual election in some respects because of the Exclusive Brethren attack. I acknowledge my late colleague, Rod Donald, and Jeanette Fitzsimons who exposed the Exclusive Brethren campaign and the relationship between the Exclusive Brethren and the National Party in that million-dollar campaign. If it had not been for Rod Donald and Jeanette Fitzsimons chasing down those people, they would not have had their role in the campaign exposed to the extent that it was. That is the history out of which this legislation has been born. It has taken 5 years for us to work through to get reasonable electoral law.

But the issues are even older than the 2005 election. In 1986 the Royal Commission on the Electoral System said it was not fair if some people in the community used their relative wealth to exercise disproportionate influence in determining who was to govern and what policies were to be pursued. It advised in 1986 that there should be a cap on third parties campaigning in an election. It was 20 years later in 2005, or just after, that one of the bigger parties finally saw the validity of that statement—because there was no cap until after 2005. Finally one of the bigger parties saw the validity of that statement, because it was subject to a million-dollar uncapped campaign against it. So it was not until it actually felt the pain of that attack that it realised the royal commission had it right. We should have, many years before, instituted a process of caps on third parties.

The political consensus we now have, which is very good and very valuable, that there should be caps on all political players during election campaigns is excellent, but it should not have required the 2005 attack campaign to make parties, especially National and Labour, understand the importance of having electoral law based on sound principles from the start. We had a 20-year gap and the 2005 election before that principle was made apparent to the two older parties. Only then did they feel that they could support what was the only principled and rational change—to have the third-party cap.

We cannot allow our electoral law to be developed in that kind of way. We should not wait for crises to happen; we should have an electoral law system that is based on principle. A rational approach to a principled and values-based system that supports the public’s right to a fair electoral process has to be the basis of our decisions. Although in the bill we are instituting those caps with a largely across-the-board political consensus, which is great, we have failed in the bill to apply the same kind of principle or to learn the lesson from 2005 and the 20-year delay in reaching that consensus when it comes to donations and the right of the public to know who is funding political parties.

This bill makes it easier for political parties to hide from the public those who are giving them money. That is a recipe for corruption. It does not mean that parties are behaving corruptly but it keeps open the door for that possibility. How many more years will we have to wait before some other crisis happens for one of the older parties to understand it is really important that the public know who is giving money to a political party so they can feel confident that no one is giving money to political parties in exchange for policy? That is the inherent evil that we should be trying to prevent. People should not give money in secret to political parties in exchange for policy deals, should that political party be successful in an election.

The public need to know who is funding their political representatives, but this legislation will make it much harder for the public to know. That is bad law, it is bad principle, it is irrational, and it fails the test of ensuring that our electoral law is fair and transparent, and provides the public with an electoral system in which they can have some faith and confidence that it is fair. So, it is just difficult, very difficult, that in one area we can see that lessons were learnt from the failure to act in the past on a principled basis, but at the same time we let the same legislation follow the exact same path of failing to understand that principle in electoral law is absolutely critical.

The process has been better this time round. We have slightly better law this time round than we did last time, and on that basis the Green Party will be supporting the bill. But there remains a genuine and ongoing concern that the bill makes it harder by preventing the public from having the right to know who is funding political parties. That therefore keeps open the door to further corrupt practice in the future, and it will require another crisis before we can finally close that door once and for all. Kia ora.

Hon JOHN BOSCAWEN (Deputy Leader—ACT) Link to this

So far in this debate on the Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill we have heard a lot about the issue of spending limits for third parties. I will address that issue in my speech later this afternoon. I also want to focus on the issue of broadcasting limits on television, but I will start by addressing the issue of donations and limits on donation disclosure.

I will comment on the comments that have just been made by Metiria Turei. She said that people should not be able to give money in secret to political parties to get policy in exchange. All I can say to her is that she must have a very poor view of her fellow human beings. She must believe that the only—

RAHUI KATENE (Māori Party—Te Tai Tonga) Link to this

The Māori Party is pleased to support the Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill, and in doing so we support the reform of the Electoral Act and the associated guidance it will provide political parties, our supporters, and parallel campaigners regarding the precious issue of funding for spending on election advertising. The really big question we found missing from the bill, and the really big question on our mind, is how political parties actually go about raising this funding. If we look at the Māori Party, we are expected to do amazing things with five loaves and two fishes. It seems to be the same sort of thing amongst our whānau, as well. They are used to doing it that way so we are getting used to doing it that way, as well. But, that aside, we want to acknowledge the leadership of the Minister of Justice, the Hon Simon Power, in establishing this legislation and the reforms it makes in relation to going where there is only broad consensus.

This year there have been a few occasions across the House where consensus has largely been achieved. In particular, I think of the tobacco reforms introduced by my colleague Tariana Turia, and of the Canterbury earthquake response when parties across the House worked together for the greater good. I have drawn on that precedent in calling for a cross-party accord on child poverty similar in effect to the one on New Zealand superannuation, so that members of Parliament can consider policies on children as sacrosanct as policies for older people are. It is a challenge that I hope all members will consider over the summer break.

In coming back to this bill, the Māori Party is confident that it will establish a regime that is fair and transparent for all groups and individuals, as is vital for the operation of democracy. The Māori Party supports the range of electoral finance reforms contained in this legislation, including a register that is publicly available to record the contributions of third party promoters in terms of their investment in election advertising. We think this will ensure openness and transparency concerning the identities of third party promoters. We have agreed with the proposed increase in the amount of money that parties and candidates can spend on election campaigning, and we agreed that it should be set at the rate of inflation for each general election. In the interests of greater transparency for the general public it would, however, be useful to know why there needs to be twice as much funding available for by-election campaigns. Given the events of yesterday, we would recommend such information be circulated before the 5 March by-election in Botany. We believe that these changes ensure that anything spent on behalf of, or towards, political parties is above board and open.

The Māori Party has also supported the public’s call for greater transparency, in order to desist from the practice of using trusts or lawyers’ accounts to obscure the identity of donors. The Māori Party supports reforms that ensure greater certainty and transparency in the conduct of the electoral process. We were particularly pleased that the reforms remove the requirement for advance voters to make a written declaration before election day. From an administrative point of view this is helpful in removing another layer of costs from the schedule, but, more important, it removes a barrier to participation. We are hopeful that the Māori voting public, in particular, will be able to take advantage of that mechanism.

I want to just touch on the move to introduce more certainty to what counts as election advertising by modernising the definition. But we would like to see the issue of unethical advertising addressed in the implementation of the bill. Consider the appalling way in which some parties and advertisers have used Māori as negative fodder during election campaigning. We should never again return to the era when politicians gambled on national identity and threatened the unity that has been so desperately sought, by pitching campaigns to create unnatural divisions between iwi and Kiwi.

Finally, although the Māori Party supported the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper keeping broadcasting out of this bill, we are disappointed that there is nothing on the agenda signalling the reform of the broadcasting regime that has existed since 1990. Although we can understand that there were widely held views about this, we cannot forget the issues that have arisen in the past over varying interpretations of the rules over the broadcasting period. We thank the Minister of Justice for his leadership throughout this bill. We thank the chair of the Electoral Legislation Committee, Amy Adams, and we also thank all the members on the committee, who made this such an interesting and useful way to deal with this issue. We note that there has been cooperation—mostly—right across the House, to ensure that this legislation was able to proceed without further delay. 2011 is just around the corner, and I have no doubt at all that the drive for an effective, efficient, and equitable electoral system will continue to remain a priority for all the parties in this House.