Electoral Finance Bill - First reading

It is fundamental to our democracy that it is one person, one vote; not one dollar, one vote. It is fundamental to our democracy that the election should not be bought by the biggest spender, the way that it has always been accepted it should be, in the United States. The pre-election debate needs to be a contest of policies, but in that country, which has no caps on spending, it is a contest of who can attract the most campaign donations. Already, the presidential contenders are being ranked in the media by how much campaign funding they have been able to attract. Under that system, no party representing ordinary people could ever win an election over one representing the very rich and the big corporates. So it has proved to be, in that country.

The 2005 election brought those concerns to the fore in New Zealand and highlighted a number of very undemocratic practices. The Exclusive Brethren conducted an initially secret campaign to discredit Labour and the Greens on behalf of the National Party — and we know from the emails that they knew about it — spending over $1 million, which did not count National's campaign spending cap.

Other non-party organisations, such as unions, spent significant money advertising on behalf of other parties, although they did so quite transparently, not clandestinely, and it did not involve anything like as much money. As the book The Hollow Men makes clear, National received $1.7 million of anonymous donations from trusts that were designed to disguise the origin of those donations — because if they had not been, they would have been given directly to the party.

But senior officials in the party knew the source of that money and therefore knew whom the party was beholden to. Labour received $300,000 of anonymous donations, which may be why it is not keen to curb the practice. A great deal of money was spent on campaigning, including electioneering billboards*, before the 3-month period before the election and therefore did not count towards the spending cap.

The Green Party is deeply concerned that those practices should not happen again. So what is needed to ensure that? We believe that there are five areas that need immediate change and others that should be considered in the longer term.

First, there must be limits on what parties can spend so that policies and credibility, not budgets, determine the outcome, and that must be the case not just for the 3 months before the election.

Second, there must be limits to spending by proxy organisations so that they do not just become a way for parties to get around the spending caps.

Thirdly, anonymous donations over a small amount — we propose $1,000 — must be outlawed. It is fundamentally important that voters know who is funding parties and to whom they are beholden. People and particularly corporations give large donations to political parties not out of altruism but in order to influence or award policy. That information must be before the voters when they look at the policies the parties are offering.

Fourth, there must be limits, we believe, on the size of donations. It is fundamentally undemocratic if parties representing big business or very rich individuals can raise their entire campaign budget from a few very large donations and have not need for broad-based grassroots support.

Fifth, we must end the practice of having representatives of the two old parties on the Electoral Commission when it allocated broadcasting funding under the pretence that the largest Opposition party can represent all the smaller parties. The Tui billboard has a good expression for that. The Greens are voting for this bill because it goes halfway. It deals with points 1, 2, and 5 of the concerns I have expressed, but we are very disappointed that the Government has backed away from dealing with the other two.

We are supporting the bill because it implements Green Party policy on extending the pre-election period back to 1 January in election year. That will ensure that an election campaign like the National Party billboards in 2005 can still happen, but it will be part of the capped election spending. We support the rolling disclosure of donations above $20,000 during a campaign, because it is not much help to voters to find out in April of the year following an election who has bankrolled the new Government.

We support the bill because it removes all political appointments from the Electoral Commission when it is determining broadcasting funding, leaving that to independent analysis rather than horse-trading* on the commission. We have been arguing about that for many years so it is good to see that in the bill. We support the bill because it attempts to control the practice of re-routeing election spending via third parties.

I was appalled to hear the National Party this afternoon defending the campaign by the Exclusive Brethren. [Interruption] Oh, yes. They did not mention them. They talked about the unions, the Post Primary Teachers Association, and the environmental movement — and we know they have always been strong supporters of those organisations! — but we know whey they really mean. Numerous authorities here and overseas, the New Zealand royal Commission, and many commissions on electoral campaign funding reform overseas have supported controls on non-party participation in elections.

This is not a new idea; it is New Zealand catching up with what many others in the world have proposed. I think that the National Party has gall to base its opposition to the bill around defending their mates in the Exclusive Brethren and their right to do what they did at the last election.

However, we do believe that the way this legislation attempts to control third parties needs another look, and we will be very involved in the select committee scrutiny of the bill. There is a fine line to tread between controlling ways of bypassing parties' spending caps and completely muzzling freedom of speech by many citizens organisations, and this bill goes a bit too far. Does it mean, for example, that any organisation that expresses any views in an advertisement in election year, even if it does not mention parties, voting, or the election, is breaching the rules? Organisations have an absolute right to influence public opinion if they identify themselves and if they do not do it in support of a political party.

The Kyoto Forestry Association has already said it will breach these rules in its attempt to change policy on the allocation of forest Kyoto credits. I do not agree with Roger Dickie that credits are a property right belonging to forestry investors, but I will stand up for their right to put forward that view publicly, as long as they do not use the opportunity to say: "Vote for x and don't vote for y."

And I hold that view, even though they are in fact likely to say to vote for the Greens, because they said we have the best policy on forest credits, even though it is not the same as their policy. It is in this case a matter of principle for us. Will the Environment and Conservation Organisations of New Zealand Vote for the Environment campaign that invites parties to complete a questionnaire about their policies and publishes the results be illegal now if it costs them more than $60,000?

We have to find a better way of doing this, and I look forward to the select committee debate. But we in the Green Party are very disappointed that the bill goes barely half way to giving us a fair campaign finance system. It still does not address the serious issues of anonymous donations, and it does not address caps on individual donations. There are no controls on secret donation laundering trusts, there is no cap on what a large corporation can give, and there are no restrictions on overseas donations, including donations from foreign Governments.

I wonder whether members have ever reflected on the extent to which foreign Governments would have the capacity to influence the New Zealand elections by funding some of the participants. I want to refer here to Raymond Miller's book in early 2005, Party Politics in New Zealand, where he quotes Peter Dunne as saying that United Future drew on the expertise offered gratis by an American political consultant, who was put in touch with the party by the US embassy in Wellington.

So the US Government's representatives in Wellington offered a US consultant, providing their services free to the party that was trying to give the Government a way out on genetic engineering — and it succeeded in giving the Government that way out. I do not think that overseas organisations should be able to participate in our elections. Finally, I want to comment on the question of the select committee — a matter on which there was some debate at the beginning of the debate today.

The Green Party has been calling for months for this bill — ever since the beginning of its development — to be considered by a select committee that represents all parties. We were therefore keen to support the proposal that it go to a select committee that has that representation. However, at the same time, there is logic that it should go to a committee that has the background in the issues and has discussed them before, and also that has the start-up intellectual capital in dealing with them.

So when we told the Government that we were minded to support a proposal where this bill would go to a committee representing all members and it offered the way out of extending the Justice and Electoral Committee to represent all parties, we thought that was an ideal solution, and we will be supporting that. I hope that no member will be churlish enough to prevent those members from being added to the Justice and Electoral Committee.