ROD DONALD (Co-Leader—Green) : As I said before the dinner break, I agree with the Associate Minister of Justice, Rick Barker, when he says that an informed public is critical to good democratic processes, and the Green Party is obviously very pleased that the Government has finally seen fit to increase the election broadcasting funding, especially as it turned down a similar request from the Electoral Commission in May 2002. But it will not surprise anyone, especially members of the old two-party club, that the Greens are not pleased that National and Labour appointees have power to decide how much of that total allocation will be allocated to the Green Party. It is not just the money that we are concerned about; it is also the time allocation.

The motion before us belongs to the first-past-the-post era. It has no place in an MMP Parliament. Either no parties should have representatives on the Electoral Commission or all parties should have representatives on it, including those that are registered but not in Parliament and that total about 24 at the moment. But let us face it, the public already thinks that we have our snouts in the trough, and given that the party representatives are on the commission only to allocate money and time to parties, the argument for no political party appointees is compelling—indeed, so compelling that back in 1999 the commission itself recommended the removal of party hacks.

The commission’s report stated: “The commission again submits that it is not appropriate for the commission as an independent body to have membership of this nature when it carries out any of its statutory functions. This is particularly the case when the commission is able to require parties to provide information relating to the election campaigns, and where the commission reports to the police when it believes that a candidate or party may have committed an offence.” That statement was unanimous. Even the two-party representatives supported the abolition of their positions. That was 1999; this is 2005. It has taken the Labour Government 6 years to do nothing. Mind you, the previous National Government ignored similar Electoral Commission calls for party hacks to be removed.

Let me put this issue in terms that the two old parties will understand. Letting big party hacks divvy up the broadcasting money is like asking South Africa and Australia to set the rules for all the teams in the Rugby World Cup. Quite simply, players in the political game should not also be the referees. National and Labour are stuck in a time warp. Labour’s person at least represents a party with almost a majority of the seats. National has a representative, yet its person represents a party that does not command even half of the Opposition seats in this House. As the Government representative represents only the Labour Party and the Progressive Party, the National Party representative is meant to act in the best interests not only of New Zealand First, the ACT party, the Māori Party, and the Green Party but also of United Future, despite the fact that United Future has a confidence and supply agreement with the Government. Also, that person is meant to represent all the parties that are not in Parliament at all.

I do not challenge the personal integrity of the two nominees, David Caygill and John Isles, but I point out that this process undermines the integrity and independence of our electoral process. It is totally unreasonable for political parties to have to disclose their membership numbers to the National Party and Labour Party representatives, yet we have no choice if we want the criteria to be taken into account in the allocation. The Electoral Commissions in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, South Africa, and Australia are all free of political party representatives, and we should be too. In any case, it is totally unreasonable for Mr Isles to try to represent the competing interests of the six parties I mentioned before.

No matter how fair the members of the commission try to be—not just the party representatives but all the commissioners—no matter how wise they are, and no matter how comprehensive their criteria, they simply cannot accurately second-guess how parties will perform at this year’s election. Just look at what happened in 2002. They got the allocation badly wrong. Yes, it was fair for the Greens, compared with 1999 when we were badly disadvantaged, but there was still wide variability in the allocations. United Future got only 55c a vote. The Alliance got $3.88 a vote. National was given $1.17 a vote, while Labour received only 79c a vote.

The measure of whether the two political party representatives will act like a two-party club this year will be whether National is downgraded at this year’s election. Last time National got $617,000, the same as Labour. This time National is well behind in the polls and has only about half the number of seats. National should certainly get less than Labour if the criteria are to be properly taken into account.

But let us face it, the criteria are redundant in an MMP environment, and the Electoral Commission agrees. It wants a comprehensive review. In fact, it has been calling for a comprehensive review since 1996. It called for it in its 1999 report, and in its 2002 report it again stressed the need for a comprehensive review of the current legislation relating to election broadcasting. The select committee continues to kick for touch. It will not face up to the fundamental need to change how the electoral broadcasting regime is done. For that matter, it will not face up to the need for proper State funding of political parties.

I call on the Government to get the review under way. The Associate Minister of Justice, Rick Barker, keeps talking about it, but it does not happen. It is time to get a review under way. We have only to look as far as Australia to see what is needed—that is, a very straightforward system that will lead to political parties receiving State funding immediately after the election in direct relation to their vote at the election. So it is very much a performance-based system that I am sure some of my colleagues would support. There will be no issues about the commission having to weigh up how parties performed at the last election, whether to take the electorate vote into account—which, of course, should not be taken into account, because electorate candidates can do their own television and radio advertising—what to do with any by-election results, how many members parties have, and what the political polling is at any point in time, then try to weigh up all the criteria and come up with a conclusion. It is simply unreasonable to expect the members of the commission to second-guess what the voters will do at the election and try to predict the outcome. It is time we got rid of a system where the variations are so wide.

As I said before, instead of at the one extreme parties like United Future getting only 55c and at the other extreme parties like the Alliance getting $3.88, there would be a straightforward formula where parties would get, for example, $2 a vote after the election. Obviously, parties would need to do a lot of fundraising beforehand and perhaps even take out some loans in the knowledge that they would get some funding after the election, but it is by far a fairer system than the one we have now.

I might also add a personal note that I think it is time we looked at the issue of parties being able to spend their own money for election broadcasting. It is not a Green Party policy, but there is a certain inequality at the moment that the two old parties each got $600,000 at the last election and the next ranked parties got $166,000. There is a big gap in between. It perpetuates the system that the two old parties got three times as much exposure through the broadcasting media than any other party. I think it is time for that to be looked at, and I am pleased that the commission keeps calling for it to happen. However, I am disappointed that the Government is not getting on with it. It should get on with it now. The Government should get this inquiry under way before the election, because it never seems to happen in the period following an election. Now is the time to start.

MURRAY SMITH (United Future) : I rise to speak on the motion moved by the Hon Rick Barker. United Future opposes this motion, and we will vote against it.

I start by saying that that is no reflection whatsoever on John Isles and it is not a personal reflection on his ability to do the job, but it is because we, like the other smaller parties in this House, believe that the provision of political representatives on the Electoral Commission and on the Representation Commission is anachronistic. It is really one of the last, if not the last, vestige of first past the post. It seems strange to me that the major parties want to hold on to something that is anachronistic and harking back to first-past-the-post days, when we are now well advanced in terms of the mixed-member proportional system. It is time that those parties started to release that last area and to recognise that it is no longer appropriate to have, in this day and age.

Under the proposal, the Government parties—that is, the Labour Party and the Progressive Party—would have one representative, while the Opposition parties, which comprise six diverse parties, all non-Government parties, would have one representative to represent all their diverse views. In fact, it is not as simple as saying, as the motion does, “Government” parties and “Opposition parties”, because United Future is neither one nor the other. We are a party that generally, but not exclusively, supports the Government from outside Government. In that regard, we represent a positioning between Government and Opposition that is really a new creation of MMP, and that United Future has given strong effect to, in this term of Parliament.

In previous MMP Governments, as people will know, a small party has generally been part of the Government and has supported it, but in both previous cases those parties failed to go the full distance and therefore caused huge instability in terms of Government in this country. After the last election United Future deliberately took a whole new pathway, which is the pathway of being neither in Government nor in Opposition. Instead, we are a party that has the freedom to move from one side to the other, in terms of supporting the Government or opposing it, but our pledge is not to bring about instability in our political system.

It is quite arguable, and it is probably the case, that the Greens are in a similar sort of position—albeit more tenuous in terms of their relationship with Labour. Once again, it is hard to classify the Greens as comprising a pure Opposition party: though outside Government they have a similar sort of relationship with the Government. That means that they support the Government from time to time, but oppose it most of the time.

That is a feature of MMP that makes this whole dichotomy, between Government on the one hand and Opposition on the other, a real farce. We are not in a first-past-the-post situation where two parties swap places every few years, and where one is for everything and the other is against everything. We now have a diverse range of parties, and the interests of those parties will necessarily be very different.

How can Mr Isles wear six different hats in representing National’s view on the Electoral Commission while at the same time representing the views of New Zealand First, ACT, the Greens, United Future, and the Māori Party? That is simply impossible. In my experience of situations where people are trying to represent a diverse range of views, inevitably they end up being completely impotent in terms of what they want to do. They have to go along and say: “Speaking with my National hat on I think such and such, but speaking with these other hats I think so and so.”, and so on. At best they are indecisive, and at the end they are completely unable to reach a position because their various representations prohibit them from doing so.

There really is no need for political representation on the Electoral Commission or on the Representation Commission. I reiterate comments that have already been made that in 1996 the Electoral Commission recommended unanimously that those provisions be removed, and in 1995 the Representation Commission commented adversely on the presence of political representation.

The key reason is that if there are to be political appointees, then the perception quite clearly is—even with the best of intentions, in this case, of Messrs Caygill and Isles—that there is political interference in the work of those two supposedly independent commissions. The commissions have important roles—the Representation Commission in setting electoral boundaries and the Electoral Commission in being called upon to determine issues relating to the election process. It is absolutely imperative that both of those bodies are not only apolitical in terms of their approach to making their decisions but are also seen to be apolitical.

Putting political representatives on the commissions totally undermines that process, therefore it is not surprising that both of those commissions have come out very strongly, saying: “Please take them away from us. We don’t want them. They are anachronistic. They are detrimental to our endeavour to try to create an image that we are apolitical and will treat all parties so—not just the parties already represented in Parliament but the ones yet to be represented. We are there to act in a totally unbiased way and will not give any political party preference over any other.”

It is clear, however—and it is to their shame—that Labour and National do not trust the Electoral Commission and the Representation Commission to do the job without those parties having representatives on the commissions. Labour and National are the big boys, and they want to influence the decisions of those two bodies. Why else would they put their political representatives on them? Why else would only Labour and National support the motion and all other parties, which have arisen largely as a result of MMP, oppose it? Why else would there be political appointments if they did not want politically to influence the decisions of those bodies?

What is also strange is that the Government already appoints the commissioners, anyway. If it wants to have a political influence, it has tons of opportunity for that. The Government can already put on to the commissions people that it feels will do the best job. What is it trying to do, then, by putting a representative on who has a political hat? If the Government wanted another way to do that, and if it felt that somehow the Opposition representative would counteract its political influence, it could get a cross-party agreement of all caucuses on the appointment of commissioners, to ensure that there was an apolitical element to the process.

But the Government does not need to go down that path. This is a silly provision; it needs to go. This motion, of course, would not remove it even if the motion was defeated, but it would mean that the positions remained vacant. We believe that until the parties—the Government parties in particular at the present time, but also the National Party—wake up to the facts that this is an anachronistic provision, that it is a last vestige of first past the post, and that it is time to let it go, the best option is that the positions remain vacant so that the commissions can get on and do their job in an apolitical fashion and without any perception of bias. We will oppose the motion.

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (ACT) : I have come down to the Chamber to speak against this motion, because I think it is a very, very important one. With it we are setting in some of the rules for the next election. The Government, with the help of the National Party, is nominating a representative to go on the Electoral Commission, which will hand out the money and allocate the amount of time a party can advertise on television. So we are actually seeing an example of the two old parties joining together.

Labour and National very rarely vote together against the rest of the House, and I think the media should be taking some notice of that. Why are they doing it? We know it is because this is a massive handicap system that works in favour of the two old parties. As an example, in the last election, and in the two elections before that, the two old parties agreed that whatever funding the Labour Party got the National Party would get, and vice versa. That gives those parties a huge advantage, especially when one discovers that New Zealand is one of the few countries in the world where it is illegal for a political party to buy radio or television time. The only time allowed is the time the State allocates, and if the State allocates most of the time to the two major parties, then of course they will be major parties. If they were allocated the same time as other parties, would the result of the election be different? Of course it would. Politics is a mixture of publicity, money, people, and policy and this measure ensures that money and publicity are given to the two major parties.

We have the farcical situation whereby a Mr John Isles is nominated to represent all the Opposition parties, and, as the various parties he is supposed to represent have already said, we know that he will not represent us. I know that David Caygill will not represent the Progressive Party, because once he represented me.

Hon Brian Donnelly: Did he?

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE: Yes, under the same sort of rule. He is always put up by the Labour Party. I discovered that he was representing me on the boundaries commission. When the boundaries came out I received the most unfavourable boundaries that could possibly be mathematically drawn—so unfavourable that although my vote went up in Wellington Central, I lost. The reason was that Mr Caygill and the rest of the commission decided that Cashmere and Khandallah should be taken out of the Wellington Central electorate and Newtown, for the first time ever, be put in it.

Hon Brian Donnelly: Didn’t you pick up the Newtown electorate?

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE: I actually did quite well in Newtown; but it is a bit of a handicap. What did my representative do? Of course he represented the interests of the Labour Party. I am sure that Mr Isles will go on the commission and claim that the Opposition parties think the National Party should get the same funding as the Labour Party. He has no moral right to do that, at all. Some people have been saying that those two gentlemen are men of integrity. I say that they are not. People of integrity would not accept that position, because this is a squalid political deal that has only one purpose: to rig the next election. It is a handicap system.

I put this point: the third parties that will be penalised by this—New Zealand First, the Greens, ACT, and United Future—have only themselves to blame. When the coalition agreement was being negotiated, it would have been the easiest thing in the world for the Greens and United Future to say that they would not give the Government support unless it set up a fair system for elections. I do not intend to be in Parliament next year, but I say that the third parties should get together, because it would be in their interests to have an honest, open, and transparent electoral system. It is no good deciding in election year that they should have raised the matter. I do not think that United Future will get another chance at coalition, but if it does, then before Peter Dunne sits down and decides how big his doormat is to be, he should think about putting in a clause that there has to be a fair election system.

In the US Supreme Court, this law would be struck down as being unconstitutional. The Australian High Court struck down its rules about this. These ones are even more outrageous. We could have a whole lot of alternatives. We could be like the United States, where people decide how good a party is by how well it raises money. They have a dollar for dollar subsidy on what is raised. In New Zealand a major party may have no support whatsoever yet still get the same support as the other old party.

I draw the House’s attention to this interesting situation. The Māori Party, I think, will win all the Māori seats.

Government Member: Ha, ha!

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE: The member can laugh. It does not help me to put that forward. I am just stating a fact. That is seven seats. That is about a quarter of what the National Party will get on present polling. Does anybody think that the Māori Party will get a quarter of National’s funding? Of course it will not. But the system is even more unfair than that: the two representatives decide what the television allocations will be on Television One. Who thinks that the Māori Party would want its allocation to be on Television One? Of course it would not. So not only do third parties get unfair allocations but they are then told where they have to advertise.

I have yet another criticism. If Mr Caygill and Mr Isles were any good, they would also be pointing out that the political parties do not get a good deal. Advertising time is allocated on a schedule basis. No advertiser pays the schedule rate. I have bought television advertising in the past—sometimes I have bought it for a quarter of the schedule price. I object to the fact that State television jacks up its schedule just so it can gouge the taxpayer—that is the only reason I can think of that it has a schedule—and charge twice as much per minute as it charges anyone else to be on television.

I say to the two representatives that if they really want to help Parliament, they should basically say to the commission that there should be a dollar for dollar subsidy, then let New Zealand First go out and do whatever deal it can. If New Zealand First wants to be on Sky television rather than on Television One, that should be its choice. Why are third parties forced, just because we have two old parties who cannot think past State television, to go on to that travesty of a programme? I am told by the ACT party’s advertising managers, who are supposed to be the best in the business, that the amount of seconds that third parties are given on television is not enough for them to be able to win over any votes. It is enough time only to be able to make a fool of oneself.

What is the point of spending a large sum of taxpayers’ money? At the last election I seriously suggested to the ACT party that we should just put up a sign on our space that read: “The ACT party objects to taxpayer-funded election expenses and we refuse to advertise.” We would have done just as well with a placard like that rather than having me being forced to walk along the beach or doing something equally ridiculous, which is apparently supposed to help people vote for me.

This measure is a shame on Parliament. It is a shame on the two major parties, and it is a shame on the fourth estate that they do not criticise them. When will State television point out what a rip-off this system actually is?