Electoral Finance Bill - Second Reading

Speech to Parliament, Thursday November 22 2007

I rise to speak to the second reading of the Electoral Finance Bill and, as I rise to do so, I have to say that I partly agree with the Labour Party on this Bill.

This may come as a bit of a surprise, but I do.  The current Electoral Act - and the Broadcasting Act in particular - have significant flaws that restrict the operation of fair and open democracy.  It is unfortunate, therefore, that this Government has done nothing at all in the entire process to address these flaws but has - in the Bill we have before us today - made the law much worse.

A bold Government would have looked at section 70 of the Broadcasting Act and seen it for what it really is: a terrible limitation on New Zealanders' freedom of speech - the freedom to purchase advertising on TV or radio to promote a political cause.

It also creates a system where the two old Parties, Labour and National, are allocated the vast majority of broadcasting time and all other Parties are left to fight over the scraps.  This results, of course, in systematically entrenching their positions.

A bold Government concerned with open elections would have abolished this provision, or at least amended it to allow Parties to spend their own money to buy advertising to match the taxpayer allocations given to the Labour Party and the National Party.  A bold Government would have looked at the campaign spending caps - $20,000 for a candidate in a General Election, and $2.4 million for the Party Vote.  There were submissions to this effect, as I sat in during the Select Committee process, but these have not been addressed at all.

A bold Government would recognise that these existing caps are an exercise in rationing free speech and should be struck from the statute book - as they were when Australia attempted to introduce these, and as they are in the US.

This Government should have listened to the advice of the Electoral Commission, particularly when it recommended that spending and registration limits could be indexed to inflation.  We have had these limits since 1995, and the ability for electorate candidate to run meaningful campaigns has diminished at every subsequent election as inflation bites into what a candidate can spend.

Instead of adjusting these caps, this Government has decided to increase the period during which this rationing period applies - from 90 days before an election to an entire election year.  It sounds like Labour Party members have been reading their hero Lenin again: "Liberty is precious - so precious that it must be carefully rationed."

There are many other points I could make and, in fact, it is hard to know where to start with this Bill - the flaws are so broad and manifest.  However, I will raise a few other issues.

The first is the suffocating effect this Bill will have on democracy, due to the power that it gives to incumbents.  It is not just incumbent Governments - with the ability to spend taxpayer money advertising their propaganda, but specifically excluded from expenditure caps - but incumbent electorate MPs and Parties.

How often have we heard it stated that one of the greatest benefits that MMP has brought to this House is diversity?  ACT is proud to be the only Party that has been elected into this House without an incumbent member standing under a new banner.  This was an extremely difficult exercise.  I was involved in that process, despite the fact that I did not come to Parliament after that first ACT election.  But I can say, from personal experience, that it was a very difficult exercise.

The Party was funded completely by donations in those days.  It had to fund from donations a research unit, media staff, and the travel of our spokesmen travelling the length and breadth of the country for a year before that first MMP election in 1996.

This Bill will make electorate campaigns next to impossible to win for independent candidates, or candidates not already in Parliament or on a Party list.  In fact, with only $20,000 to spend in an election year before an election, any candidate faces an intensely difficult challenge to unseat an incumbent electorate MP.

This is blatantly unfair, when we like to call ourselves a democracy.  We had several very good submissions, both written and oral, at the Select Committee and others have talked about how many we had.  People in New Zealand are very concerned about this legislation - despite what the Prime Minister said on National Radio yesterday morning, that this is like the pledge card: an issue that is completely under the radar.  I suspect the Prime Minister is a little under the radar herself, if that is what she really thinks.

But we did have two very good submissions.  One was from the New Zealand Law Society, and the other was from the Human Rights Commission.  The Human Rights Commission was asked to participate in the process and it brought forward some very valuable points to the Select Committee.  Some of these were taken note of, and others have been completely ignored altogether.

But I would like to focus on some of the things that the New Zealand Law Society said: "The Society is concerned at the haste with which this legislation is being pushed through the House.  In our experience, hasty legislation is usually ill-considered and contains defects."

It certainly does.  The Law Society found itself in the very unusual position, when submitting to the Justice and Electoral Committee on this Bill, of saying that it very rarely - if ever - recommended that a Bill should be scrapped and that we should go back to the drawing board.  But that is exactly the recommendation that it made on this Bill.

I have talked about those defects, and I am going to bring to the House an example of some of those defects.  They have been talked about during Question Times this week but I think that, to a certain extent, the public is ill-prepared and just do not know exactly what this legislation coming into force will mean to them in an election year.

Here are some examples.  Firstly, the definition of publishing an election advertisement includes the use of a megaphone at a protest rally and will require the protester to state their name and address.  The Minister of Justice stood up at Question Time today and said that was not right, but I suggest she reads the legislation because that is exactly what it implies.

Another defect is writing a letter to the editor under a pen name and writing an anonymous blog will be legal - but writing an anonymous post on an internet chat board will be illegal.  It is absolutely bizarre.  There are many examples where two things that are traditionally thought of as exactly the same, and the same in their effect, will be in the position now of one being legal and the other being illegal.

A TV news channel will be able to publish a video of a campaign speech on its website, but it will be illegal for a member of the public to post exactly the same video on YouTube without publishing the person's name and address.

The Electoral Act protects the anonymity of voters if their personal circumstances mean that they would be at risk if their addresses were published on the Electoral Roll.  However, if people merely want to encourage a member of the public to vote for a Party, they will need to disclose their full names and addresses.

There are many other defects, but I do not have time to go into them all.  ACT rejects the suggestion that money spend on advertising can buy an election.  The Green Party has constantly promoted the fact that one dollar means one vote.  Well, if that were the case, I would like to say that this House today would be absolutely jam-packed full of ACT MPs - and would that not be a great thing for this country of ours?

That one dollar buys one vote is absolute rubbish - absolute rubbish.  ACT New Zealand has put a very strong minority view in the commentary on this Bill, and I will highlight a couple of the things there.

This Bill is not actually about restraining Parliament or Parliamentarians; it is about, very sadly, restricting the freedom of speech of ordinary New Zealanders.  As we state in the commentary: "Freedom of speech is vital to a democratic system and this Bill indefensibly restricts the ability of New Zealanders to fully participate in the political process."

I quote again from our minority view: "We believe that most often individuals make donations to a Party that best represents their own political views.  The new disclosure requirements for donations will result in such individuals being publicly identified with a Party.  We believe that the right of citizens to cast a secret vote is compromised by such requirements."

And: "ACT considers it entirely inappropriate for major changes to be made to electoral law this close to any election."

We have here an unholy race to restrict the freedom of speech of New Zealanders.

ENDS