Smith Murray: Electoral Matters Bill — Second Reading 
Smith Murray: Electoral Matters Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:621;Page:16754] 
MURRAY SMITH (United Future) 
: 
 The Electoral Matters Bill covers a small range of matters in terms of elections. There is meant to be a more profound review which has been called for by justice and electoral committees for several years but this bill really deals with two principal matters: the Electoral Act and the Broadcasting Act. In terms of the Electoral Act the key provisions relate to the vacating of a seat by a member of Parliament and the membership of the Electoral Commission. In terms of the Broadcasting Act there are really three matters that are being dealt with in this bill. They are the provision for all broadcasters to provide indications of broadcasting time for elections the provisions to give broadcasting funding to political parties or parties standing candidates and the opening and closing addresses. I will deal with the latter matters first which are smaller matters. There will be an opportunity no doubt during the Committee stage to deal with the membership issue and I will save my comments till then. 
In terms of the Electoral Commission membership the minor parties in this Parliament are very unhappy about the fact that Labour and National have members on the Electoral Commission and believe that that is quite contrary to the MMP environment we have. I note and people who have read the bill as reported back from the Justice and Electoral Committee will also have noted that ACT United Future and the Greens were all unanimous in their view that effectively there should not be political party representation on the Electoral Commission. New Zealand First by way of interest took the view that New Zealand First should be on it but nobody else apart from National and Labour should be which shows the degree of arrogance that has been built into New Zealand First. However certainly when the Electoral Commission is dealing with things that are matters of the election process which is owned by all New Zealanders and is critical to our democratic institutions in that it involves the election of a new Parliament it is quite inappropriate that political parties have representation on that commission and particularly it is inappropriate that only two of the political parties that exist and only two of the nine that are represented in this House are represented on it and are able to have input into it while the others are not. That ought to be changed but my guess is that while we have the domination by Labour and National they will not be prepared to let that go. 
In terms of the Broadcasting Act as the Act currently stands the Electoral Commission must approach every single broadcaster in the country and ask it to indicate what free time it might make available. I have been involved in the administration of the last three elections in the last two as party secretary of Future New Zealand and United Future respectively. I know how much of a nightmare that issue has been for the Electoral Commission. It has to send out hundreds and hundreds of letters and to follow up all the replies from the broadcasters which invariably come back and say they will not provide any free election programmes but offer to make available discounted time. I think there will be quite a saving of the Electoral Commission’s time during the very busy election period in that it will not have to send letters to all those broadcasters. In fact there are only two that it will need to deal with—that is Television New Zealand and Radio New Zealand. I think that is a good move. It makes a lot of sense and it certainly saves a huge amount of time for everybody who is involved in the electoral process from the Electoral Commission down to the political parties and their secretaries at the time. 
In terms of the provision of election financial support currently the law provides that registered parties and parties that will stand at least five electorate candidates are eligible. In three MMP elections we have seen that no party has put up at least five electorate candidates without also being a registered party. That is not at all surprising; as we know the list vote is really the critical vote and the chance of independent people representing either themselves or small parties that have only a very few candidates getting representation through the electorate vote is highly unlikely. Therefore I think it makes sense that effectively registered parties should be the only ones that are eligible. Any party that stands an electorate candidate who has a reasonable opportunity of winning a seat will inevitably register as a party because that might mean it gets a second seat if it does well through that process. 
The critical issue though in this part of the bill is the opening and closing addresses. Here we are really just talking about TVNZ and Radio New Zealand and the fact that Radio New Zealand is non-commercial means that when we talk about the advertising during the period of the opening and closing addresses it is really only TVNZ that we are talking about. Certainly in response to TVNZ’s submission the committee’s view was that we should not place undue restrictions on the ability of TVNZ to sell advertising during the time of the opening addresses in particular. We felt that on balance that was an unnecessary restriction. Essentially the opening and closing addresses are to take place between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. and we have provided that the closing addresses will take place on only 1 day. Typically in the past TVNZ has allowed about 35 minutes for all parties’ closing addresses which is a relatively brief time. Therefore we thought it was quite reasonable to have those closing addresses one after the other without any break for advertising. In terms of the opening addresses however they can easily be spread over more than 1 day—a longer period. Therefore we felt it was appropriate to allow advertising. 
When we are talking about advertising it is important that we distinguish between advertising programmes and election programmes with election programmes being ones that encourage a person to vote for or support or not to vote for or support a particular party. They will be banned during the period that opening addresses are being conducted. We felt that was quite appropriate so that people do not get unfair advantage in terms of that period. That means there will not be able to be advertising in the middle of an election opening address but there will be able to be advertising in-between opening addresses. In particular and importantly there will be able to be advertising between 9 p.m. on 1 day and 7 p.m. on the next day if the broadcaster decides to have the opening addresses over 2 days. Of course it would have been a bit of a farce to have a situation where the broadcaster was unable to have any advertising for a 24-hour or 26-hour period so it was important to address that. The bill as it stood was quite ambiguous in that regard and we have tidied it up with the amendments that have been reported back. 
There are opportunities for abuse. In particular there are opportunities for abuse by people advertising in-between two parties’ opening addresses. For example United Future might well want to see an advertisement for sexual services of one sort or another put before and after the Labour Party’s opening address. That might go down well! However there would also have been opportunities for abuse if we had not allowed that advertising. In particular it was pointed out that effectively if we did not allow it then people who had opening addresses on the first night might be able to advertise during that day and that evening the fact that their opening addresses were going to come up that night whereas the next night that could not happen. Conversely people whose opening addresses were on the second night could then follow up with advertising after their addresses had finished. So there was the prospect of manipulation there. Because of the opportunity for abuse we felt that at the end of the day it was for the broadcaster to make sure that advertisements that were broadcast in-between the opening programmes were not effectively election programmes and were not advocating election things. We felt that given that the broadcaster would commit an offence if it allowed that it would take a conservative approach to ensure as far as it can that advertising that occurs between the opening addresses is not of the kind that is influential on voters or potential voters who are watching those opening addresses. 
One thing that I was concerned about is a relatively small point. Clause 18 provides that where there are unused funds funds the invoices for which have not come into the Electoral Commission within the stipulated 50-working day period the Electoral Commission is banned from paying out on them. The effect of that will be that if a broadcaster sends its invoice through to a party and the party does not pass it on in the due time then the broadcaster will not be paid and the political party will not be able to pay it either. That is a concern I have and I will address it more at the Committee stage.