Heatley Phil: Electoral Finance Bill — In Committee 
Heatley Phil: Electoral Finance Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:644;Page:13660] 
PHIL HEATLEY (National—Whangarei) 
: 
 I would like to challenge the statement made by Annette King earlier which came as quite a shock to this side of the Chamber and certainly it would have come as a shock to those listening. She said there is not a third party across New Zealand—any lobby group or one of those groups interested in the political environment or in laws passing through Parliament—that is in any way stopped or prevented from freely expressing its view in election year. If she is saying that such third parties are not impeded in any way that tells us in the National Party that Annette King and the Labour Government just do not get it. There used to be a time when Plunket Women’s Refuge the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society or any one of a myriad of organisations in New Zealand could just put ads in the paper or could picket or pick up a megaphone or send out pamphlets and freely criticise what any political party was saying in election year. Members of those organisations could just get up in the morning and go out and protest or they could run an ad in the  
New Zealand Herald 
. Members of the Littlies Lobby Plunket Women’s Refuge or the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society could get up in the morning and deliver pamphlets. 
That is what they used to be able to do before this legislation. Now those organisations or any other organisation have to fill in forms and go through some sort of bureaucracy. They have to send those forms into the Electoral Commission saying everything they want to do and what ads they will run—whatever. That is the first thing. They have to go through all this bureaucracy just to have a view. Secondly they have to employ a financial officer to oversee what little money they have to spend in an election year putting forward their view. 
So first they have to go through all this bureaucracy; secondly they have to start employing administrators in order to submit their spending returns their advertising and their pamphlets. So what we have is these organisations across New Zealand which by far in the majority are voluntary and which struggle to raise funds for women’s refuges for the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society for Plunket or for whatever it might be having to spend time money and resources on bureaucracy on the one hand and on administrators on the other hand just to have their say as Kiwis as New Zealanders. 
New Zealand First does not care about that for two reasons. One is that there is no private citizen in New Zealand who wants to give it any money any more to help its campaign. New Zealand First is bleeding votes and no one wants to send it a cheque. Secondly it does not care whether the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society Plunket Women’s Refuge or any other organisation in this country wants to have its say because those organisations speak against New Zealand First. New Zealand First is against freedom of speech and of course those organisations want freedom of speech. That is why New Zealand First opposes that and it is why Winston Peters is now sniffing out Tauranga again. It is because the vote for New Zealand First is way down at 2 percent and for the Labour Party the vote is way down at about 30 percent. 
Here is how absurd this legislation is. The Minister who promoted this legislation did not realise that it does not relate just to cash given to political parties. It could be timber for signage. It could be crayfish for some sort of fund-raiser. When that was pointed out to her by the Electoral Commission itself she was shocked to find that a lot of people give donations in kind not just cash to political parties. She had arranged that all those donations whether they were cash signage crayfish or whatever would have to be sent to Wellington and put through the system.