Little AndrewThird ReadingHon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): I move That the Electoral Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a third time. I'm very thankful for the very thoroughgoing examination of this bill by the House at the committee stage and I know members are always uncomfortable—members on this side of the House certainly when we were in Opposition and including members opposite now that they are in Opposition—on matters that go through under urgency. It is very important therefore that when we do consider legislation under urgency we try to keep it confined to very discrete specific points and that is what we're aiming to do here. The reason why this bill is here in its form and being considered under urgency is because we had expected or I had certainly expected that the very thoroughgoing inquiry that the Justice Committee has been conducting into the 2017 general election amongst other things might have been completed by now and we might have had the benefit of their wisdom and their report-back that would have informed changes relevant to the 2020 general election. That has not happened and I draw no conclusions as a result of that—that is just a fact. We are drawing very rapidly to the close of this year and next year is a general election year. I know from the advice I've received from our independent Electoral Commission that any statutory changes that they are required to act under and possibly to administer they need to have advance notice of well in advance of the election and well in advance of the regulated period. So if we want to make changes that are important that are significant and that are necessary then we have to make them really well in time for the next general election and I regard that as before the beginning of the year that is the general election year. So that is what has brought us here. This bill deals with a very real risk. I don't have to canvass that yet again but it is known to members of this House that members of the Justice Committee have seen and heard the evidence that has been public—and in fact it's pretty clear they've seen and heard evidence that is certainly not yet public—and it is pretty clear that like many democracies around the world ours is vulnerable to those abroad who would seek to interfere in our democratic processes and influence the outcome. One way of doing that is by financing political parties or candidates and sometimes causes and so this bill seeks to address that very real risk. I've seen some commentary that says it doesn't deal with that risk. I've seen commentary from some pretty esteemed academics actually who say that. Now I have to say this to the House: they are wrong—they are wrong.What this bill does through a combination of factors: banning foreign donations with the exception of the $50 de minimis threshold; secondly placing a clear due diligence requirement on party general secretaries that will apply effectively—because the only way of fulfilling that due diligence duty can happen is by applying it to all donations over $50 and party general secretaries will await the guidance from the Electoral Commission about how that will work in practice. But I say to this House that my expectation is that the application of that due diligence requirement will be proportionate to the level of the donation. The smaller the donation the less evident activity there needs to be but the bigger the donation then the more due diligence is required and it is pretty standard—has been for many decades as anybody who has been involved in New Zealand politics will know for many decades—that many provisions in the Electoral Act are subject to guidance by the Electoral Commission. That's standard—that's pretty standard. Nothing unusual about that at all—no constitutional crisis to see here. So there's the due diligence requirement and then the third element—the belt and braces element—is the defence to a charge relating to the failure to disclose or to properly deal with a foreign donation is that the party general secretary needs to point to the reasonable steps taken in the circumstances that they undertook. There is a slightly technical argument in relation to the due diligence requirements where it refers to a donation" followed by a reference to "the donation" and I know that even in a third reading speech we shouldn't be sort of dancing on the heads of various pins but those words are important. As this House hears many times from members all across the House words mean something. Those words do mean something and so the commentators the academics and most importantly the members opposite need to look closely at those words and when they do—and when they divorce themselves from the contemporary issues of who is trying to defeat the spirit of the Electoral Act worst—they will see that these words actually do mean something. These provisions will make a serious difference and help us to attenuate that real risk that has become evident of undue foreign interference and undue influence. So on that basis I'm very thankful for the scrutiny that has been applied from the House. I'm very thankful for the overwhelming support that the bill has received. I believe it will serve the members in this House the parties who are represented here the parties who are not represented here and in the end the most important people in our democracy—the voters—very well as we head into the 2020 general election."