King Annette: Local Electoral Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
King Annette: Local Electoral Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 06 November 2012. Volume:685;Page:6328. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai) 
: 
 The Labour Party will be supporting the Local Electoral Amendment Bill (No 2). As we have heard this bill amends the Local Electoral Act 2001 and the Local Electoral Regulations 2001 to implement the Government’s decision on amendments to the legislation. I think it is important to point out what the purpose is—it is threefold—“It will improve provisions for the conduct of local elections; increase transparency and accountability in the provision receipt disclosure recording and reporting by candidates of electoral donations; and strengthen the integrity and efficiency of the local electoral system. As a result public confidence in local elections will increase.” according to the explanation on the bill we are talking about tonight. 
I have also looked at the regulatory impact statement on this bill. It says this: “In the Department’s view the analysis and consultations it undertook to develop the proposals meet the adequacy standards. The analysis provides a sound basis for decisions to amend the Local Electoral Act. The proposed amendments will provide clear consistent robust and reasonable legislation.” Well let us be honest about what the sound basis for this bill is. It is mentioned but not named in the regulatory impact statement. This bill should be called the “John Banks Bill” because this bill is about straightening up the behaviour of one of the National Government’s Ministers. 
You see Labour had a bill in the ballot for months that addressed the ridiculous situation we have seen with John Banks and his so-called anonymous donations. It was in the name of David Cunliffe. It was a bill that does just what this Government bill does. 
Hon Simon Bridges 
: It’s David Carter. 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: It was in the name of David Cunliffe for the member who has obviously got bad hearing. It was set down by the Labour Party for months. For months the Government took no notice of it mainly because it was an Opposition bill. Of course nothing the Opposition ever does could be good enough for this Government. It was set down for us to be able to debate such a bill. It was ignored. It was not good enough. And then hello we have got a Government bill that is almost identical to the one that was set down by Labour. I wonder why the Government could not have picked up the bill that was already there. 
When you have a look at the timetable from the Government announcing that it was going to have a bill there is a little discrepancy. In Parliament when the Deputy Prime Minister was asked whether he would support such a bill by Grant Robertson Bill English said that yes in fact he would. Bill English said: “Yes the Government would be likely to support such a law. It seems to make sense that the disclosure laws for local government political donations would be similar to those for central government political donations.” Grant Robertson then sought to table the Labour bill. Hello it was turned down by the National members. But later that day in what the media described as a surprise announcement the Minister of Local Government David Carter said that work was already under way and the Government was making good progress on a Government bill. Well 6 weeks later Mr Carter’s announcement on the Wednesday did not include a new bill but said that it would be introduced early next month in order to enact the changes by May 2013. What it showed was that in fact no work had been done on a bill from the time of the surprise announcement through to the time when he announced that there would be a bill later on. To me that was not quite honest because announcing that work was being done that good progress was being made and that the Government was already on top of this issue was an effort to cover up what John Banks had been doing. 
Well in fact the Government was not on top of this issue and so what we have had I think has been something that has been bad for this Parliament and bad for local government—that is the behaviour of one of our members in this House a member who knowingly received and has been shown to knowingly receive donations and then forget that he received them. We cannot have a system where one person can bring so much odium on the rest of us because he cannot remember whether he got those donations. 
And then we have the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister said: “Well you know there is a wide definition of ethics.” when it came to John Banks. That is a direct quote from the Prime Minister. He said: “There’s a wide definition of ethics.” Well I would say to Mr Key that there is one definition of ethics that ought to be applied to members in this House and particularly to Cabinet Ministers and that is that they ought to be able to remember whether they received donations. These donations for John Banks came when he was standing for Mayor of Auckland. These donations he did not make transparent. He did not declare that he knew they existed although he took a cheque from Skycity in an envelope. He instructed Dotcom as to how he ought to pay these donations. We had a candidate a candidate of long standing—a person who had been a member in this House and who had been a former Minister of Police—who was prepared to forget that he had donations. Well that is not good enough. We needed this legislation some time ago. It is not appropriate for a Prime Minister to allow that sort of behaviour from a local government candidate to be brought into this House and bring the rest of us into disrepute. That is exactly what has happened. 
I deplore the double standards that have been applied over the years particularly by the Prime Minister. Some of us can remember John Key saying in 2008: “It is no longer acceptable or credible for Helen Clark to assert a facade of confidence in her Foreign Affairs Minister and to fail to ask the plain questions of him that she has a duty to the public to ask.” That is a direct quote from John Key about Helen Clark and Winston Peters in 2008. Then we come to 2012 and to John Banks and his donations that he received knowingly. John Key said: “It’s not my responsibility to ask questions. If someone thinks John Banks isn’t telling the truth it’s a very simple remedy: go to the police. It’s not my job to do a forensic examination.” That is not what he said about Helen Clark. He said: “… Helen Clark must stand Mr Peters down as a Minister. That is what I would do if I were Prime Minister.” Well Mr Key has failed to stand down a Minister who knowingly received donations who by the police’s own admission knows he received those donations and who has brought local government and this place into disrepute. 
This bill goes some way to fixing those problems in terms of donations. There is going to be a much more transparent process for the future. It aims to prevent the situation we have seen with John Banks. It aims to have the same requirements for candidates in local elections or polls in relation to donations their disclosure and the filing of electoral returns as those that are already in place for candidates in the parliamentary elections. It is also going to ensure that there is consistency between the Local Electoral Act 2001 and the Electoral Act 1993. The provisions in the Electoral Act 1993 are stronger and they are clearer in terms of accountability required by a candidate in an election. So we will support this bill but it ought to be called the “John Banks Bill” because it relates to the Government hastily trying to fix something that the Prime Minister said was not a problem—that John Banks had—