Goldsmith PaulELECTORAL AMENDMENT BILLThird ReadingDebate resumed.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's not my pleasure it's my duty to speak on the Electoral Amendment Bill third reading introduced by this Labour Government that has run out of ideas it's tired and it's heading towards the denouement with which it deserves.Funnily enough we heard earlier this week from the Prime Minister that she had come to the point where she was advising her Ministers that they needed to prioritise and they needed to go back over there—what they're doing their programmes—and ask themselves if what they're doing all the things that they're doing: are they actually helpful? And should they be prioritised? What are their priorities and maybe they should just focus on it. That was her message to Ministers.When we think of the justice area and we think of this as a bill coming from Kiri Allan indicating that this Electoral Amendment Bill—which is focused on changing the rules with which parties are funded for campaigns—is one of her priorities. Then we look at the justice sector broadly and we think of the 500 percent increase in ram raids we think of the chaos on our street we think of youth crime out of control we look at the 40 percent increase in violent crime in our communities and the increased numbers of victims of crime and we think of the long delays to justice and the courts system and we think of those things that most normal people would think would be a priority for this Government in justice. Then we come to this bill and it ranks alongside the hate speech and it ranks alongside the decision that the Government's going to introduce a bill to reduce the voting age to 16—which nobody much agrees with—and this one is around changing the electoral financing regime so the rules of the games for how parties are funded.They've brought this to the House and they're trying to ram this through against the opposition of the National Party and the whole Opposition in fact. We've had quite a few lectures about the importance of some kind of bipartisan support for electoral bills—and on this one they've chosen to ignore that and try and ram through a piece of legislation that skews the system frankly in the favour of Labour and the Greens.Now how does it do that? Well it does that by fundamentally making it more difficult for parties to raise funds. Now why is that a problem? It's because in a democracy political parties need to campaign and that doesn't happen for free. You might have noticed if you were living in Hamilton West recently if you were driving around you will find billboards stuck to people's fences and you'll find flashing billboards on intersections and you'll see people walking around with T-shirts and they're handing out pamphlets—and all those sorts of things cost money. So the question is: well how do you fund that? There's a simple choice between at one end allowing people voluntarily to give money to parties that they support in order to fund them; or at the other end of the spectrum is what I think this Government wants—and certainly what the Greens want—which is that taxpayers fund political parties and they give them to them.They've cloaked this in the argument that that will mean that people with money will have less influence. But what it means fundamentally is that incumbent parties will be protected from new players coming in and causing difficulties because if it's a taxpayer-funded regime it's much more difficult for new people to come in and disrupt things.So that's why we're fundamentally opposed to this legislation: because at the bottom it's about making it more difficult for political parties to raise funds. Now how does it do that? The main mechanism that it does that through is by reducing the threshold in which people are obliged to be publicly named as a donor to a party. Currently—for the last 15 or so years since the previous Labour Government—the threshold has been $15000 for a party donation. So if somebody were to donate $14500 in New Zealand for the last 15 years they don't have to put their name up in lights; they can do that anonymously.If you think in the context of a political party's fund-raising efforts a major party that's going to stand in all the seats is allowed to spend about $3 million or a bit more than $3 million in a campaign-regulated period three months before an election. So a donation of $14000 would represent less than one-half of 1 percent of the amount that a party could spend. So the rationale that was brought forward by the previous Labour Government under Helen Clark and others was that they would have thought that's a reasonable threshold because it would be reasonably unlikely that a party would be completely overthrown and persuaded to follow a policy path by somebody that had donated less than one-half of 1 percent of what they were raising for the period of the election.So that's where it's been: $15000. The world hasn't come to an end. There's been a few issues around political fund-raising over the last couple of years not related to the threshold but related to people trying to cheat the system in theory—or the allegation was that people were splitting up donations to donate a much larger sum by dividing that up between a number of people. So a total irrelevance to what's been discussed in this bill.What this bill does is reduce that $15000 to $5000. There's been nothing put forward by the Government to say that this will make any particular difference. There's no rationale put behind it other than to say that it will make it more difficult for political parties that raise their funds from people voluntarily giving them money—because there is a large number of people who are happy to donate to a party but they don't want their names up in lights.Why would they not want their names made public? Well I can think of a whole host of reasons. The most obvious one would be that they'd be worried if they happen to have contracts with Governments that they might be discriminated against in some way or form—that's a perfectly legitimate concern. They might also be worried that they might be targeted for complaints or criticism publicly. There's a whole host of reasons why people don't particularly want to have their names up in lights when they donate to political parties.So this bill reduces that threshold from $15000 to $5000. Surprise surprise: most of the people who donate money in those groups are people who donate not to the Labour Party or to the Green Party. But it still leaves the fundamental issue: well if you're going to make it more difficult for parties to raise funds through voluntary donations how are they going to get their money? What the Greens are openly campaigning for—and what the Labour Government is more sneakily campaigning for—is a shift of the system away from donations from individuals voluntarily to fund parties moving towards taxpayer funding of political parties. They don't admit it but that's where this bill is taking the country. That's why we oppose it. And most New Zealanders oppose it too because they don't want to have their taxes seized off them to go to fund backroom staffers in the Labour and Green parties campaigning a way to continue in a Government that has promised so much and delivered so little and that's why they want to see change in this country.That is why ultimately the last resort of a Government that is going down the gurgler is to start fiddling around with electoral laws and that's what we've seen over the last year or two: a Government that has lost its way has demonstrated its inability to deliver anything that it's promised and now what is it doing? Well it's turning to fiddling around with the electoral laws to try and skew the system a little bit in its favour to give itself a little bit of a push.That's why we oppose it. We don't agree with it we're not going to support it we don't support it and we're not going to vote for it. Thank you Madam Speaker. And on that basis I won't commend this bill to the House.