Dalziel Lianne: Local Electoral Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Dalziel Lianne: Local Electoral Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 06 November 2012. Volume:685;Page:6331. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I guess that I was a little bit surprised to hear that the Minister of Local Government was described as having brought this bill the Local Electoral Amendment Bill (No 2) to the House with some alacrity because I would have thought that any member of that Government would be embarrassed as to why we were bringing this matter before the House now. I think it all goes back to a certain cup of tea when a certain Prime Minister sat down with a certain leader of a certain party in order to make certain that it was represented in Parliament after this general election. That was one Mr John Banks and the reason that Mr John Banks is so pertinent to this particular debate is a certain set of transactions that he remembers nothing about. 
I am absolutely gobsmacked that somebody with such an incredible role of responsibility in this Parliament cannot remember receiving the kinds of donations that he received from one Mr Kim Dotcom but nobody remembers Mr Kim Dotcom. I do not know about anyone else in this House but when I first heard his name which was actually quite some time ago I thought how prescient his parents were to have a surname like Dotcom not knowing that one day it would come to mean something quite different from what it meant in those days. But it certainly did strike me as a name that you would not forget. So if anyone ever heard the name Dotcom you would remember the name Dotcom would you not? It is just one of those particular names. But in actual fact— 
Hon Annette King 
: What if he was 6 foot 9 and 240 pounds? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: Well yes he is sort of the guy whom you would not forget meeting either unless you were somebody who could not remember a significant donation from somebody like a certain person whom you could not remember meeting such as that. 
But the point that I am trying to make is that I think the Government is playing ducks and drakes on this particular piece of legislation. The reason we did not turn our attention to the financing rules under the local electoral legislation is that there was not a case that had been brought to anyone’s attention in this Parliament until this very recent case in relation to Mr John Banks. That is why it behoves the House to address this issue and bring the legislation in line with the electoral finance rules that apply in a general election. So I think we would be dealing with this in the same order of events had that occurred at an earlier stage. We still would have addressed this issue in line with the general election rules if in fact this had arisen at the time. And of course it had not been brought to anyone’s attention. 
We think that it is a good idea to change the law to bring the local electoral rules into line with the central government rules but I do not think anyone in this House can pretend that any of this is particularly ideal because of course we all know that there are people in this House who have approached people to ask for anonymous donations and to have those anonymous donations immediately under the threshold—$1500 for an individual and $15000 for a party. An amount of $14999 is written out as a cheque to the National Party as a donation of course anonymously not having to be disclosed because that was the point at which the non-disclosure would have prevailed. 
So I believe that we have to face up to the fact that in actual fact there are a number of instances where there are attempts to avoid the donation rules wherever they apply. But this particular one I guess does raise some serious concerns and I am actually glad that it is coming to the Justice and Electoral Committee because I think we need to face up to the reality that people in this situation have actually worked to technically stay within the rules of the law but when they have breached the spirit of transparency that New Zealanders expect around political donations I think people can feel justifiably let down. 
I think people have been justifiably let down or have felt disappointed in the way that the Government has responded to this particular issue. A lot of people felt that when John Key stood in front of the people of New Zealand in 2008 and said that he wanted to achieve things for this country they believed in him and I believe that a lot of people are disappointed in what he has failed to deliver and the way that he stuck up for John Banks I believe adds to that sense of disappointment in a very very particular way. 
People felt that there was no reason for the Prime Minister to stick up for Mr Banks when it became absolutely crystal clear that he had received donations in his role as a mayoral candidate even though he was not a Minister at the time. To accept that that person could remain a Minister with that lack of integrity in the way that he dealt with donations at that time I believe is absolutely relevant to whether he should be a Minister today. There is not actually a person in New Zealand who disagrees with that with perhaps the exception of Mr John Banks. 
I believe that most New Zealanders are absolutely committed to the idea that the integrity in that role traverses the experience of when he was standing for the mayoral candidacy and when he is in a ministerial position. If the people of New Zealand cannot trust one of their own Cabinet Ministers or Ministers outside Cabinet to actually have that degree of integrity in his role as a mayoral candidate then I believe that they are quite justifiably sceptical about the degree of trust that they can put in his role as a Minister. I think it is a shame that there has been no acceptance on the other side of the House that this has come about because of the circumstances that were revealed in a way that would not have come to the public attention if it had not been exposed in the way that it was. 
We put legislation into a member’s bill at the time that this became an issue so that we could align the Local Electoral Act with the Electoral Act and it was raised as a particular point of view I think by one of my colleagues Grant Robertson who was commenting on the lack of consistency saying quite clearly that what we have seen in Mr Banks’ case is that although he might be able to claim that he has not technically broken the law he has clearly breached the spirit of transparency that New Zealanders would expect around political campaigns. 
So despite the fact that we had legislation in the name of one of our Opposition members the Government really was not taking this seriously until it felt that it really could not back away from it any further. So there has been a degree of—and I am not allowed to use a certain word to describe what it does look like but it does seem— 
Andrew Little 
: You can have a hypocritical position. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: Can you have a hypocritical position? 
Hon Annette King 
: Yes you can. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: OK. I think that there have been hypocritical positions adopted in this particular matter and that there are issues that I believe the Government has to front up to on this point. 
I think that there has been too much memory loss over this particular matter. First of all we had the memory loss relating to Mr Banks himself. He could not remember various things that had happened. Then there was the deliberate decision I think of the Prime Minister not to read certain information or not to have advice provided to him on certain information. 
Andrew Little 
: Wilful blindness. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: That is called wilful blindness. So we have memory loss and wilful blindness and I believe that that is not good enough. I think that the people of New Zealand actually require of their politicians that we have a corruption-free environment and that we do not have the degree of undisclosed interests that dominate the environment in other countries and we are observing an election in another country at the moment. 
Of course the amount of money that people see being collected and spent in that environment is something that we would never want to see in this country. Part of what protects us from that is absolute upfront disclosure. That is why we will be supporting this bill.