Mapp Wayne: Electoral Finance Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Mapp Wayne: Electoral Finance Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:644;Page:13539] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 I want the Committee and the public of New Zealand to know that back in February this year Bill English made an offer to the Government. That offer was to talk about the electoral law and in particular donations. That offer has been standing for months and months. We have to ask ourselves this question: why has Labour never offered a genuine multiparty conference on electoral law? That offer has been standing for over 1 year and the smug member for the Green Party Metiria Turei knows the truth of that. I can tell members why Labour has refused to do that. The reason is that Labour members never intended that there would be any kind of bipartisan approach. That was not their purpose. What they wanted to do and what they are attempting to do today is to have a partisan self-serving law to meet their own ends. They knew they could not do that if they talked to the National Party. They knew that if they talked to us then there would have been a consensus just like there was in 1993 and in 1956. 
In the past this country has always created its electoral law on a consensus basis but that did not serve the purposes of the Government this time because it knows perfectly well that it wants its own law to suit its own purposes. I would turn the Government’s attention specifically to anonymous donations. It is all very well for Green Party members to say that they have done something around that and have fixed it up and so forth but the Green Party in coalition with its mates in Labour has deliberately designed a manoeuvre that is intended to stop all donations. Those members know perfectly well that if someone is required to give the money to the Government—because effectively they desire that the money be given to a Government bureaucracy—then that will stop. 
What is wrong with trusting people? We were prepared to have a reasonable regime around anonymous donations but surely people should be able to donate to parties even anonymously and of course subject to reasonable rules. The amount of money raised that was mentioned by Metiria Turei $36000 is probably reasonable but the device of deliberately inserting the Electoral Commission as the recipient is designed to chill contributions made by the public. Those members know that that will be the effect and that is why they have done it in that way. They did not get involved in a discussion with the National Party because they knew we would not agree with such a self-serving shallow approach to electoral law. 
So this bill is actually all about petty payback. I have sat in this Chamber over the last couple of days and heard those members prattle on about Nicky Hager’s book as if it is some kind of testament as to why this law is necessary and that actually shows their motivation does it not? Those members’ motivation is petty payback. I say to the Government that one does not construct constitutional law on that basis. I say to the Green Party which always says that it believes in integrity and in consensus that this law will not endure because those members have gone about it in a self-serving selfish way for their own purposes. I tell the Government that it did not have to have the  
New Zealand Herald  
running a whole campaign against it because it has brought that on itself by the construction of this law and the donations regime in it. In truth by doing that and by serving its own purposes it will be defeated.