HEATHER ROY (Deputy Leader—ACT) : 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. That may come as a bit of a surprise, but I do. The current electoral law, the Electoral Act and the Broadcasting Act in particular, has significant flaws that restrict the operation of fair and open democracy. It is unfortunate, therefore, that this Government has done nothing at all in this 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 television 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, which I heard 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 the Australians attempted to introduce these and as they are in the United States. 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 of electorate candidates 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 the traditional 90 days before an election to an entire election year. It sounds like Labour Party members have been reading their hero comrade 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 that 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 to have 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 the Prime Minister saying on National Radio yesterday morning that it 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 those were taken note of and others have been completely ignored.

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.

Chris Auchinvole: They have done it twice, now.

HEATHER ROY: That is right, they have.

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 time this week, but I think that, to a certain extent, the public are ill-prepared and do not know exactly just 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 his or her 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 that writing a letter to an editor under a pen-name and writing an anonymous blog posting 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 want merely 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 spent 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 great 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 just a couple of the things there. This bill is not actually about restraining Parliament or parliamentarians; it is actually 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.”

Chris Auchinvole: And Labour doesn’t like democracy any more.

HEATHER ROY: That is right. 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. Thank you.

CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (National) : As is tolerably clear by now, National opposes the second reading of this dreadful Electoral Finance Bill, and we oppose it for a number of reasons.

First, there has been no cross-party consensus in developing this bill. The National Party tried to have a reasonable discussion on issues like donations—not in its own interests but in the public interest—but all overtures were firmly rebuffed. The reality of this matter is that this is utu legislation, the rationale for which was best expressed by the member for Dunedin South when, in response to a question from Mr Ryall about the reason for the legislation, he started going on about the red and blue billboards that littered the country in 2005. So that is what it is all about; it is payback for the National Party’s highly effective billboard campaign at the last election.

As can be seen from the National Party’s minority view, another major concern was the procedural failings of the Justice and Electoral Committee. I will not go into these at any length; I have been allocated only 10 minutes to speak, not a week. Where does one start to outline the litany of failures? The committee was ineptly chaired, except when I briefly took over when the Labour Party general secretary, Michael Smith, appeared. He was treated courteously by me, and given an extension of time. However, courtesy stopped with the National Party. The chair, Lynne Pillay, was rude to a number of witnesses. On one occasion she berated witnesses for apparently being late, even though they turned up at the time the committee clerk had told them to appear. Mr Benson-Pope did not like the evidence of one witness and told him to go and join the Exclusive Brethren. And so it went on. The whole process was an embarrassment to Parliament.

Let us look at some of the procedural failings. The majority of the committee members were apparently very concerned about having the Human Rights Commission appear. The commission was initially offered two opportunities to appear, and when it could not meet the unrealistic deadlines imposed by the committee chair, the majority of the committee members decided they did not want to hear from it. Eventually, the commission did turn up, and its evidence was very good proof as to why the majority had been so anxious for the commission not to appear. The commission’s criticisms were devastating and courageous, and I expect that those people will all be fired very soon. I wanted them to come back after they had done some further work on the bill with Ministry of Justice officials, but the majority of the committee was not going to have any of that—once bitten, twice shy.

The donations regime was presented to the committee by the majority without any notice whatsoever. As National said in our minority view, the public had identified transparency of donations as a major issue, and the National Party was prepared to look at that issue. But no attempt was made to have a productive discussion. In the course of the Committee stage, I will have something to say about the Owen Glenn clause that Mr Ryall referred to—Owen Glenn being the Labour Party lovey who lives in Double Bay in Sydney, in that great Liberal seat of Wentworth, and so it will remain after next Saturday’s election.

Another major concern was the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. As is well known, I have said on a number of occasions in this House that the Attorney-General failed to provide a report on the bill in accordance with his obligations under section 7 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Instead, he relied on an opinion prepared by Crown Law. As the Human Rights Commission and hundreds of submitters said, this bill raised important New Zealand Bill of Rights Act issues. The Attorney-General missed all of them, and by elevating the interests of party above country, and by wilfully failing to provide a report on such important issues, the Attorney-General has brought his office into disrepute.

I for one am very disappointed in the attitude of the Green Party, given its self-proclaimed interest in human rights. The Greens are very interested in human rights for people like Ahmed Zaoui, but they are not quite so worried about human rights for 4.2 million New Zealanders. Metiria Turei needs to know that the issue of human rights is not a theoretical subject, not something one talks about just at hippy conventions; it is an issue that needs to be considered in the context of all legislation. But every time we tried to raise the issue of human rights, the Green member was not interested in listening. Those members are all talk. Rod Donald would never have supported this legislation.

I turn now to the substantive matters. The bill will require close and careful analysis in the Committee stage. The select committee, under the chaotic chairmanship of Lynne Pillay, has sent back to the House a bill that is so awful that the Prime Minister is already telling the public to write directly to the Minister of Justice on what amendments they think could be made to it. What a joke!

Where does one start to look at the inadequacies? In the first place, this is typical Labour fare; it is a regulatory nightmare. It is anything but clear. If we look at clause 3, which sets out the purposes of the legislation—

Chris Auchinvole: What does it say?

CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: Paragraph (e), I say to Mr Auchinvole, states that one of the purposes is to ensure that the controls on the conduct of election campaigns are clear and can be efficiently administered. The auditing regime—so says the Institute of Chartered Accountants—is anything but clear. The institute says it is unenforceable. It says it will diminish confidence in the electoral system. Just this morning Dr Catt from the Electoral Commission has been saying that parts of the bill are incredibly hard to understand—and not just the auditing requirement.

Chris Auchinvole: She was at every meeting.

CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: She was at every meeting, as Mr Auchinvole says—and she is the expert. Importantly, Labour and the majority of the select committee members have gone to great lengths to ensure that the regulated period remains 12 months. They were not even prepared to discuss the issue. This clause is payback for the National billboards.

Over the last few days, in question time Mr English and I have been focusing on clause 5, which sets out the meaning of “election advertisement”. We have looked at two issues: what an advertisement is and whether editorial material can be caught. Let us look at just one of those issues—editorial material. If we look at clause 5(2)(c), we immediately see a problem, because in order to be exempted from being an election advertisement, the editorial material must be selected—and note this word—“solely” for the purpose of informing, enlightening, or entertaining readers.

Chris Auchinvole: Solely.

CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: Note that word “solely”, I say to Mr Auchinvole. It does not mean “primarily” or “principally”; it means “for one purpose only”. These are important questions, dismissed by the Prime Minister from afar as nitpicking.

The Minister of Justice lamely said that people could go to the Electoral Commission, but that is not an answer. The Electoral Commission is the body that is supposed to be supervising all these advertisements, and it does not understand this appallingly badly worded legislation.

Then the Minister said that we could apply the law of common sense. I am very interested in this new concept. Indeed, over the past few days I have been studying textbooks on jurisprudence to find out where it comes from. Does it come from the United States Supreme Court? Is it from the statements of some judgment of the Supreme Court of New Zealand? Was it from a great legal theorist like Professor Jeremy Waldron of New York University, who is possibly one of the greatest legal brains in New Zealand’s history—with the possible exception of Mr Chauvel, the once and possibly future private secretary to the Attorney-General? No, my careful research has discovered that the inspiration for “King’s law”, as it is now known throughout the international legal community, is apparently Pauline Hanson, who stated on many occasions that her view on issues is based on common sense and her experience as a businesswoman running a fish and chip shop. So there we have it. Annette King is proof in person of the observation that people may change their climate but they cannot change their nature. She who goes out a fool cannot ride or sail herself into common sense.

Clause 5 is a shocker, and the questions that Mr English and I have been asking this week show that paragraph (ii) of clause 5(1)(a) is just as extreme as paragraph (iii), which was struck out of the bill, and clause 5(2) is unacceptably vague. We tried to have a discussion on this at the select committee but we were shut down, just as we were shut down on every issue we endeavoured to raise. So we will be spending quite some time on this clause in the Committee stage. The select committee’s hearings had all the objectivity of a Stalinist show trial.

The bill is unintelligible, unclear, and overly complex, it breaches the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and it requires substantial rewriting. If this bill becomes law, there is but one certainty for 2008, and that is that there will be a bucket load of litigation, and, ultimately, there will be injustice to the people of New Zealand. There will be more about this at the Committee stage. Suffice it to say, as is perhaps tolerably clear by now, National will not support the second reading.

CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) : That was an extraordinary contribution from a member of Parliament who, on 22 March 2007, said this in his interview with GayNZ.com: “I am not interested in the abuse, nastiness, and petty point-scoring that consume my opponents.” Well, if the sorts of discussions we have just heard about Ms Pillay and me are Mr Finlayson’s contribution to the debate on these issues, then “bring it on”, I say.

“The business community cannot give us enough votes to win, but they can provide us with money.” That is what the previous leader of the National Party said when asking his caucus to take the party’s leadership away from Bill English, and that is the attitude that still lies behind the National Party’s opposition to the Electoral Finance Bill. We would not be here unless those National members opposite thought that democracy was for sale. We need to ensure that our system, in the words of the Green Party, is based on the principle of one person one vote, not one dollar one vote. As a member of the Justice and Electoral Committee, I am proud to observe that the public obviously agrees with that sentiment. Public participation in the select committee process was extensive and admirable. The committee has recommended extremely significant changes to the original bill, and those changes are based on the evidence that the members of the committee heard. In other words, the select committee process worked as it was intended to—the Government introduced a bill, extensive public submissions were heard on it, and the select committee recommended changes. The House is now considering those changes in the bill as reported back and, presumably in the week in which the House next sits, we will consider them in more detail in the Committee of the whole House. That is democracy at work. That is how the Standing Orders envisage this Parliament working, and the process, I am pleased to report, is healthy.

I want to run though some of the significant changes that the committee has recommended to the House. It was pointed out to us that after the National Party and the Labour Party the biggest single spender in the 2005 election was—guess who? It was the Exclusive Brethren.

Chris Auchinvole: The unions.

CHARLES CHAUVEL: No, not the unions; the Exclusive Brethren. Their spending doubled the effective amount of money available to the National Party, which was doubled again through collusion with the Maxim Institute, the so-called Fair Tax lobby, and through donations from the very wealthy, which were laundered through secret trusts. Clearly, it is necessary to close these loopholes by regulating the expenditure of political actors not registered as parties—the sort of soft money regime that has caused so many problems for democracy in the United States. The bill as reported back liberalises the originally proposed spending limits to apply to those third parties. One submitter, who I see is in the public gallery now, Mr Graeme Edgeler, made some very helpful suggestions to the committee. He suggested that the limit should be increased “to allow a nationwide pamphlet or nationwide newspaper advertising campaign”. In accordance with that recommendation, clause 103 doubles the originally proposed spending cap. A third party can spend $4,000 on candidate advertisements in an electorate, and $120,000 for other purposes.

Chris Auchinvole: Tinkering with this law doesn’t make it good.

CHARLES CHAUVEL: Another important change—and I know Mr Auchinvole will be listening carefully to this—in the area of regulated forms of expression, relates to the definition of “election advertisement”. The Human Rights Commission and many non-governmental organisations pointed out that the original definition was unduly restrictive of freedom of speech. So in response the committee recommended a change to the definition of “election advertisement”. [Interruption] Mr Auchinvole should listen carefully; I know it is difficult for him to understand, but he will get hold of it.

Clause 5(1)(a)(iii) has been deleted in line with a suggestion by the Human Rights Commission, amongst others. There we see the process working again—submissions were made, and the committee listened and reported back to the House accordingly. This clarifies that taking a stand on issues, as opposed to advocating for a party or candidate, will not fall under the definition of “election advertisement” for the purposes of this bill. Any person or organisation will remain free to say whatever they like about any matter. It is only when they enter into advocacy for or against a party or candidate, as Peter Dunne has said, that their actions or expressions will be regulated.

In accordance with the further submissions of the Human Rights Commission, it has been made clear in clause 5(2) that the term “periodical” should exclude media activities and the practice of blogging in order to give full effect to the freedom of the press and to freedom of speech. Also clearly excluded is communication between companies and shareholders, in response to a submission from Mr Bruce Plested, executive chair of Mainfreight. That is further evidence of the committee listening to submissions and acting accordingly.

It has also been made clear that provided a third party’s membership includes a majority of New Zealand citizens or residents it is eligible to register as such. Also, Kiwis under the age of 18 are included in the ability to become third parties or members thereof. These changes, along with others, mean that the bill provides an appropriate balance between, on the one hand, the need to protect freedom of expression, and, on the other hand, the desirability of keeping democracy open to all regardless of income. These are changes that respond to a host of submissions made by groups and individuals such as Presbyterian Support New Zealand.

Chris Auchinvole: This is getting a bit boring. Wind it up.

CHARLES CHAUVEL: Mr Auchinvole may not be interested in the views of Presbyterian Support, but members on this side of the House are. We listened carefully to them, to Business New Zealand, to Professor Andrew Geddis, and to the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society, all of whom asked for the changes that I have just outlined. We listened carefully, and we recommended those changes, by majority, to the House.

The author of the No Right Turn blog has an interesting item on scoop.co.nz today. His is only one of many voices writing in praise of the bill as reported back, but his perspective is not featured, funnily enough, in the Dominion Post or the , which is consistent with those newspapers’ historically unchanged editorial leanings. On Scoop today the author of the No Right Turn blog says this: “the upshot,”—that is what has come back from the committee—“is a bill which has no effect whatsoever on the freedom of speech of ordinary people or NGOs, while properly restricting the ability of the rich to circumvent party spending limits with parallel campaigns and so buy elections. … And judging by the wailing and gnashing of teeth over on the right, it looks like the bill will have exactly the desired effect: limiting the pernicious influence of money over our elections, and ensuring that each of us has an equal political voice.” [] Members opposite may wail and gnash their teeth, but they should remember that the reason we are here today is that they tried to rort the system in the last election. They were the ones who breached the longstanding convention in this country that a party declares where it gets its money from in an election campaign. Labour does so with the unions. We do not seek covert funding of $5 million from various groups and try to get around the rules. Members opposite may have managed to disguise this well from the media, but we understand what they did, and we will make sure that it cannot happen again, and that in this country democracy is not for sale.

HONE HARAWIRA (Māori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) : Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker. Kia ora tātou e te Whare. I come to this debate as the representative of the Māori Party, which is neither a coalition partner, an associate of this Government, nor in the pocket of the National Party, so it is probably the only truly independent voice in this debate.

Over the last couple of months we have seen all kinds of groups and individuals opposing the Electoral Finance Bill and interpreting it as “almost impossible”, very difficult, messy and expensive, and overly complex. Yet here we are today discussing a bill that leading justice agencies still have major reservations about.

As we reviewed the select committee report I was reminded of a comment in Te Pūtātara, a column by Ross Himona, which described the National and Labour “two-party power culture” as having created a sham democracy around the bastion of privilege called Parliament; an illusion of representative government. He said: “In the coming election campaign they will argue that one has more ‘integrity’ than the other. They will argue that one is more ‘competent’ than the other. They will argue about the ‘decent society’ that they claim to represent. They will argue about who cares most for the ‘people’. None of that matters. They are but two halves of the same dragon; there is no difference between the parties.”

Himona said his analysis is of a Parliament ruled by an unwritten constitution and the myth of parliamentary sovereignty, which dominates the control of information that ordinary citizens receive. He concluded: “It has been able to keep most of the country in ignorance about the parlous state of democracy in New Zealand, and it has been able to keep most of the country in ignorance as it dipped into the coffers and delivered power and wealth to the favoured few.”

Ross Himona’s analysis was written way back in 1990, some 17 years before this bill even came up, but in many respects Te Pūtātara could be put alongside the views of the Human Rights Commission, the Electoral Commission, the Law Society, and many of the other 575 public submissions on this bill that called for accountability, transparency, and integrity in the laws around electoral financing. It is a position very much supported by the Māori Party, because we firmly believe, after examining the rules governing election campaign expenditure and the sources of campaign finance, that maintaining integrity and honesty is essential to the whole process.

The Māori Party supports Government driven by participation, discussion, and debate; the Māori Party supports treating public moneys with respect; the Māori Party supports the right of the electorate to be informed; and the Māori Party supports elections conducted in an environment of transparency. They are principles that we have supported right through this debate; principles encapsulated in an address by Professor Whatarangi Winiata at the symposium on political party and election campaign funding held in June this year, when he described the pursuit of tikanga, such as accountability, transparency, and integrity, as giving expression to the principles of rangatiratanga and kaitiakitanga.

We welcome the tightening of rules around political donations, particularly the rules on anonymous donations, to ensure that financial power does not determine electoral success. We understand the thinking behind clear recording and reporting procedures for donations, but there is a big difference between supporting the general principle and supporting this bill. When the Electoral Commission says that the clause differentiating between election expenses and daily MP duties is almost impossible to interpret, then the House has a real problem. The boss of the Electoral Commission suggested that this clause would make it almost impossible to interpret parts of the bill, and she was not the only one.

The Law Society also described the sheer complexity of the law as one of its major flaws, referring in particular to the new part of the bill, which takes over five pages to describe the rules around anonymous donations. It is a complexity that descends into outright absurdity when we find that if someone brings 300 kōura to a hui, those juicy crayfish might actually have to be sent to the Electoral Commission to get stamped before being sent back to the hui. And before anyone tries to tell me that the limit applies only to political events, believe me when I say that any hui for Māori is a political hui. The bill also adds a special level of regulation requiring third parties to disclose election-specific donations for amounts over $5,000, but the Human Rights Commission was particularly concerned at the way in which third parties might be fined for not complying with the requirement to register.

The Māori Party is concerned that the new definition of election advertising to cover the whole last year in a 3-year election cycle is so wide that it is likely to catch any comment made during election year. The Māori Party is concerned that the new definition of election advertising will effectively curtail freedom of expression in Aotearoa in that year, and the Māori Party is concerned that this bill may gag anyone not registered as a third party with the threat of conviction if they dare to speak out—a huge concern for Māori, who consider that they have the right to speak out wherever and whenever they feel like it.

The Māori Party supports the suggestion of the Law Society for there to be wider discussion on electoral reform. The Māori Party supports the submission of the Human Rights Commission that this whole issue should have been given back to the public for full discussion and wider debate. The Māori Party supports the advice from the Electoral Commission that clarity and public ownership are needed to prevent any further loss of public confidence in the election campaign process. The Māori Party supports the right of the public to be able to determine the way in which our Governments are chosen. And the Māori Party supports the call for a publicly appointed independent body to be set up to oversee such a process.

Electoral finance laws should not be designed and determined by politicians and parties in isolation of the people; nor should they be designed and determined by the coalition of parties that make up only the majority party and its associates. No Government should ever be so arrogant as to make changes to the way in which we elect our representatives without first taking such an important principle to the people for discussion.

As the independent Māori voice in Parliament, the Māori Party shares the concern of the Human Rights Commission, which is hardly a doyen of the wealthy elite, that this bill is a dramatic assault on fundamental human rights—freedom of expression and the right to participate in the election process. The Māori Party will not be party to a bill that restricts freedom of speech, whatever the financial argument, and we will not be party to a bill that penalises people for daring to speak freely. Hoi nā nō, tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker. Kia ora tātou katoa.

ANNE TOLLEY (National—East Coast) : There was a headline in the New Zealand Herald last week that read: “Democracy under attack”. It was not about Pakistan and it was not about Zimbabwe; it was about New Zealand.

I was a member of the Justice and Electoral Committee that examined the Electoral Finance Bill, heard submissions on it, and reported back to Parliament. I concur with that headline. In this bill, democracy is under attack in this country from Labour, from the Greens, from New Zealand First, from Jim Anderton’s Progressive party, and from United Future. They connived, they manipulated, they stage-managed, they bullied, they outvoted, and they controlled the entire process from start to finish. MPs normally find—

R Doug Woolerton: It’s called democracy.

ANNE TOLLEY: That is an interesting comment from Mr Woolerton.

Chris Auchinvole: What did he say?

ANNE TOLLEY: He said it is about democracy. That is absolutely right. It was about whoever had the most votes getting their wishes in the select committee.

Most MPs who go into a select committee process on a bill enjoy it because, whether or not they are in favour of the bill, there is normally an atmosphere where everyone takes part, where everyone talks, and where there is an opportunity to explore and discuss the proposed legislation. I have to say that the chair of this select committee, Lynne Pillay, and her Government cronies made sure that that did not happen in this select committee. We were not allowed to ask questions, we were not allowed to take part in the debate, we were kept on edge the whole time, and we were kept out of the process.

Electoral law has been previously developed on a cross-party basis. We have had to do that for the legislation to be endurable. The last thing this country wants is, every 3 years, for those who have the power to turn round and change the rules. It has not always been peace, joy, holding hands, and singing “Kumbaya”. There have been some really strong opposing philosophies. But in the end, because there has been a determination and an understanding that we need to have cross-party involvement, there has previously been cross-party agreement to any legislative change.

The process has been just as important as the content of the law. National, ACT, and Māori Party members, when they were able to attend select committee meetings, tried to point that out on many occasions to the members sitting on the other side of the room.

Chris Auchinvole: Did they listen?

ANNE TOLLEY: No, they did not. They shut us down. Even the officials made a plea to the select committee. After days of seeing this manipulation, the officials appealed to the Government members to try to get cross-party agreement, because that was what was needed to make the legislation endurable.

Christopher Finlayson: Record in the House what Marian Hobbs said.

ANNE TOLLEY: When the official said that in his long experience cross-party agreement was needed for enduring legislation, Marian Hobbs told him: “That’s our kaupapa, not yours.”

Wide political representation was essentially shut out. I note that the Minister of Justice made a big fuss in her opening speech today about how the Government had widened the representation on the select committee so that all parties in Parliament could be represented. It did do that, but it was a sham. Like the process, it was a sham, because the meeting schedule was set up so that it actually shut out minor parties. By meeting every Monday from 9 until 3, or 9 until 6, which was when the substantive discussions took place, small parties like ACT, the Māori Party, and even United Future were unable to take part in those discussions. They were unable to play an essential role in the development of this legislation. It was a sham; it was stage-managed, again, to look as if the discussion was cross-party, when in fact it was not.

With this bill being rushed bill through in such a short time frame, there was no time to explore or discuss the substantive issues in it. My colleague Tony Ryall, when he was talking about the regulated period, tried to find out from the officials what the underlying policy reasoning was. He asked in a very reasonable manner, again and again. Did we hear the underlying reason for the regulated period being extended out to almost one-third of the electoral cycle? No, we did not. We did get an agreement from the Ministry of Justice officials that the people taking part in an election spend the majority of their money close to the election. That is the critical period. The officials admitted that. If Hallensteins is to have a sale in the weekend, it wants to advertise the sale on the Thursday and Friday night. But when the officials were asked how they could then justify a regulated period that went right back to the beginning of the year, they had no answer. In fact, the chair shut down the discussion by saying that we were bullying and pressuring the officials, and we got the proverbial “We have decided. Move on.”

I move to speak about the donations regime. At one point, the officials were halfway through presenting their analysis of the submissions that had been made; they were halfway through that process when the meeting started. We had already been told by the officials that this presentation was only part of their report, and that the analysis of all the submissions relating to the donations part of the bill would be presented the following week. We got into the meeting at 9 o’clock and immediately the Greens put on the table—actually, they did not put it on the table; they blurted it out verbally—a donations regime that they had made up. It became very clear in the discussions between the chair and Metiria Turei, the Greens’ representative, that the chair was well aware of the donations regime that was being proposed. The other Labour members were also well aware of the regime that was being proposed, and, actually, New Zealand First members were aware of it, too.

We asked whether there was anything in writing. We were scribbling down notes on the very complicated regime that was being proposed, while the chair was saying to the officials: “We want you to go away and draft this up. We have decided. You draft it up.” We were told there was a paper that had been made available to the members on the other side, but it could not possibly be made available to National, ACT, or the Māori Party, for obvious reasons.

I am not sure to this day what those obvious reasons were. In fact, National had signalled quite early on in the whole process that we felt that the donations regime was something we could work on constructively. We agreed that there was a need for transparency. We agreed that the public were concerned about the donations regime. We would have quite happily entered into any negotiations.

I want to finish by talking about two particular issues. Firstly, I want to talk about the Human Rights Commission, which was almost shut out of the process. If it had not been for the constant work of the ACT members, we would not have had an oral submission from the Human Rights Commission. The chair and the select committee would have missed that very damning report—

Christopher Finlayson: Deliberately.

ANNE TOLLEY: —oral hearing—from the Human Rights Commission, quite deliberately. Again, there is misrepresentation of the Human Rights Commission’s position in the report back from the select committee, because the commission’s most important requirement—even after changes had been made—was that this bill go back out for public submissions, go back out for the public to have another say. The select committee, by a majority of one, voted that down. The Human Rights Commission says that in its own press release that it put out publicly yesterday.

Secondly, I compliment the Electoral Commission and its chief executive, Dr Catt. I think she did a superb job. The comments and suggestions that the commission made on this bill were excellent, particularly those around third-party spending. The commission had given it a great deal of thought and had an excellent rationale. The Electoral Commission still says we have got it wrong because the threshold is too low. It recommends that a threshold of $40,000 is reasonable for a third party, and would be easy for the commission to monitor. The commission’s press release today states that it does not know how it will trawl through community newspapers to find $12,000 of spending—to find people who have to register. Another excellent suggestion was made by the Electoral Commission. It had done some work around what amount a third party might want to spend in order to run a campaign. The Electoral Commission recommended $250,000 to $300,000. But the Greens would not have it, because it might drown out their voices.

That is typical of this whole bill. It is about whose voice can be heard. National says everyone’s voice has a right to be heard. Labour says only their and their mates’ voices should be heard.