Hodgson Pete: Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill — Second Readings 
Hodgson Pete: Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill — Second Readings 
[Volume:669;Page:15838] 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 I will just start off my speech on the Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill and the Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill where the previous speaker Amy Adams more or less left off. When one runs for office in this country whether one is the general secretary of a party or a candidate in a seat one is limited by the amount that one can spend in the period leading up to the election. Those limits are all set down in law and they are all pretty well policed. If anyone breaks those limits they lose their seat or they go to jail or both. That is to say electioneering is a highly regulated activity. But if one is not standing in a general plebiscite or if one is not the general secretary of a party involved in a general plebiscite until now—or at least until 2008—there were no limits on what a third party could do. That of course was dumb and it was rendered dumb not in the first instance by the Exclusive Brethren in the 2005 election but in earlier times. I think Michael Laws might have been the first one I came across. I think he got the SPCA to endorse him or something equally unlikely. That might have been the 1990 Hawke’s Bay election. 
Hon Member 
: Ha ha! Ironic. 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: It would be ironic if that were the case. It certainly involved Michael Laws I recall but it was not a big issue. So we sort of hectored and badgered and grumped and harrumphed through the 1990s on both sides of the House. National members would say the Engineering Printing and Manufacturing Union had too much say in the Labour Party campaigns and on the debate went argy-bargy back and forth. But it was all small beer.  
Then in 2005 it became large beer and Lianne Dalziel laid that out in her contribution. I do not intend to go back over those most interesting of times; there is a whole book to be read on it if one wishes to. It gave rise to legislation in 2008 which was not agreed to in a bipartisan way about the limit on third parties about the limit on non-participants in an election and about people who were wanting to sway an election but who were not standing for an election.  
This legislation in 2010 for the first time represents a bipartisan—not a multipartisan but a bipartisan—approach to the idea of third-party limits: limits on Federated Farmers if we want to isolate them or on the Cooks and Stewards Union. Do we still have one of those? I cannot be sure but we used to dislike those unionists so maybe we could still dislike them if they exist. Whomever we dislike—the people we want to hold up as the ones we want to constrain for our own partisan reasons—we now have an ability to do that constraining.  
The level of constraint is the point of compromise. It is a point too far I suspect for the Greens and too far in the other direction I suspect for the ACT Party. But it is a point that has been reached between Labour and National. I am not sure of the position of the Progressives the Maori Party or United Future but certainly the bulk of the House is saying that $300000 will do.  
Let me make a prediction: the amount will not stay there. It will go up or it will go down or it will have constraints put on it in some other way because we are doing this in a bipartisan way for the first time. Like every other aspect of electoral law it will take a while to bed in and we will find ourselves fretting about the mistakes that we have made. Indeed I can name and describe the loopholes in the legislation now but it does not matter. The point is that this House is about to take I think the step of saying that the majority of people amongst us are of the view that third parties like those who are standing for election should also be constrained in how much they can say.  
Lianne Dalziel spoke about the difference between paid speech and free speech and I would like to say that I have never understood the position of say the  
New Zealand Herald 
. I do not mean to isolate it and I do not mean to attack it in any way. I have just never understood why even when the $300000 compromise was reached the  
New Zealand Herald  
took a position not dissimilar to the ACT Party which was that that was mildly or moderately—or even more than moderately—outrageous.  
I do not get that; I genuinely do not get it. I am sure that the  
New Zealand Herald  
and other papers that have a similar view are not acting in self-interest and are not trying to maximise their advertising revenue in a plebiscite. I am sure the  
New Zealand Herald 
’s view is based on principle rather than on revenue but I do not understand its principle. I do not understand why our country would be better if it were the case that someone who was rich could go and materially influence the plebiscite by expending a bunch of money. I do not understand why that would make New Zealand a better place. The  
New Zealand Herald  
seems to think that it would and I just do not get that.  
I certainly do not think that this legislation introduces a constraint on free speech. Free speech is being able to get on one’s soapbox to get one’s letter to the editor printed in the aforementioned  
New Zealand Herald 
 to arrange a march down Queen Street and be covered by the entire media of the nation or whatever it might be—that is free speech. Free speech in my view is not buying out all of the advertising space of this or that medium of the country in the last week or two leading up to an election. In respect of that aspect I just do not understand where the  
New Zealand Herald  
is coming from.  
There are a couple of other things I want to say about electoral law in New Zealand. The first thing is that the report of the Royal Commission on the Electoral System  
Towards a Better Democracy 
 was a cracker. It is now 24 years old and we have picked up only half of it and we have got on top of only some of its wisdom. The main thing we did pick up was the bit that said we should have MMP and we all know that in legislation that is coming in front of the House later today we will be putting that question back to a referendum. But 25 years ago the royal commission said we should do it and then about 17 years ago we did it. We have had MMP elections ever since so that change came from that royal commission report.  
Lots of other things have not come about yet and one of them is the idea of third-party limits on spending. The commission got there long before the Exclusive Brethren did—20 years before. The commission said: “Hang on a minute folks. It’s dumb to constrain this candidate but not to constrain this non-candidate.” It said we should be careful about that. It started to do that thinking back then.  
Another thing the commission suggested which has not come to pass but I think will come to pass was that there should be some measurable degree of State funding of political parties according to this that or the other formula. The commission offered up some formulae and suggested that if we calculated it at $2 a vote—or whatever it was I have forgotten the details now—we would know what to expect each political party would have. On top of that of course political parties would want to fund-raise and who would not? But I think that issue is something that needs to be examined.  
We have always been too scared to implement State funding as it is called. My personal view is that our democracy would be better off for it. In Australia where they do have it they say that it is not high enough. Well that is a different debate. We do not have it here at all. Of course we do have State funding in the sense that we have some television time allocated to us as the ACT Party is quick to point out whenever these debates arise but we do not have it in a way that is transparent. I think transparency is the name of the game here. 
The last thing I will say before I sit down is that understandably the National Party—and I make no criticism here—said that it would not bind its Prime Minister to a specific date for an election. No Prime Minister in his or her right mind would do that and I understand that because I have been around Prime Ministers on the other side who have been disinclined to give that power away. I think it will happen one day that we will move to a set date. Of course we would need to have an ability to move away from that set date if ever the confidence of the House was lost and that is reasonable but I do think those changes are forthcoming. With those remarks I look forward to the passage of this legislation.