Dalziel Lianne: Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Dalziel Lianne: Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:662;Page:10718] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 Labour will support the Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill going to the Electoral Legislation Committee. I begin by acknowledging the Government for following a comparatively good consultation process. First of all we had an issues paper which was open to public submissions. Then we had a proposal document which was open to public submissions. Throughout the process there was consultation with parliamentary parties. I have a slight problem with what happened after that although I think it was not as deliberate as perhaps the Acting Minister of Justice Nathan Guy may have suggested in his contribution. 
I might as well deal with this now because I think it is an issue that we will have to address at the select committee. I refer to the definition of “regulated period” because certainly no agreement was reached on the nature of how that would best be provided for in our law. We accept on our side of the House that National when it was in Opposition never agreed with taking the regulated period back to the beginning of the year. We accept that there was going to be change in that regard. We have stuck to a single-minded position on this in that we are willing to make changes in that regard. The alternative that we put to all the consultative processes that we were engaged in was 1 May. The usefulness of 1 May was that it was sufficiently far through the year to enable people to be undertaking activities as they would do in the normal course of events not knowing exactly the date of the election but it was a date that would by all means assure that any spending after that date would be caught within a regulated period regardless of when the election was called. 
I think that when we do not have a fixed date for a general election it is better to have a set date at which the regulated period will begin if there has been no earlier calling of an election. That has been the position the Labour Opposition has taken all the way through. We have pulled back from our original position that it had to be for the entire year and we put up 1 May as an alternative. That date sits very well with almost all of the elections that we have had certainly in the time that I have been in Parliament. Almost all would have been picked up apart from the one I think that was called in July 2002 which was called on a date that did not give a 3-month period of regulated activities. 
I find regulatory impact statements very useful and interesting documents. I will read from the regulatory impact statement of the bill: “The regulated campaign period during which political parties and constituency candidates are subject to campaign expenditure limits currently runs from the date three months before the election date until election day. The purpose of this period is to define the official campaign period during which the expenditure controls imposed under the Electoral Act 1993 are imposed. Because New Zealand does not have a fixed election date”—and I agree with this point—“the three month regulated campaign period can operate ‘retrospectively’. That is where the Prime Minister announces that an election will take place in less than three months time the regulated period effectively starts before the announcement took place. This creates compliance problems for constituency candidates political parties and the general public—who effectively can be required to comply with rules that were not in force at the time their actions took place.” 
The problem with this definition of the problem is that it sets up a solution that was not resolved for consideration in this bill by the process that I described before. That is the single issue I have with how this has been handled. It was referred to the Parliamentary Service Commission as part of resolving the issues about the conflict that can arise between an electoral expense and a legitimate parliamentary expense as applied by a member of Parliament. It was right and proper that that issue was referred to the Parliamentary Service Commission where the parties are fully engaged in the process; it really was a very good process. The trouble was that this issue got tied up with the broader issue and I think the Parliamentary Service Commission ended up unwittingly being part of the contribution to this bill when it thought it was no longer part of it. This bill leads the commission to the position where it has unwittingly ignored the consultative process that was going on. 
I thought it might be a good idea to explain exactly what has happened. I am being very sincere in the concern that I am raising here because I think the select committee can address this problem and resolve it. The statement that the Minister put out last week describing the bill that we are addressing tonight talked about several developments having occurred since the February announcement. The first statement that he made in that regard said: “The proposal to clarify the relationship between the Electoral Act 1993 and Parliamentary Service legislation will now be addressed in a stand-alone bill to amend the Parliamentary Service Act 2000.” I think everyone who was engaged in that process within the Parliamentary Service Commission thought that that is where things now lay. Little did they know that in fact their engagement in this process went on from there: “The proposal for a three-month regulated period for election advertising has also been amended. Following consultation by the Speaker with all parliamentary parties”—and that is a reference to the Parliamentary Service Commission; I checked with the Minister’s office today because I was not quite sure what it meant—“it was agreed that the regulated period could also be triggered where an election is called less 
than three months from polling day to avoid retrospective application to prior spending.” That may well be what people have taken from the discussion but I can assure the House that that is not how people who participated in that decision understood it would be translated into the bill before us today. 
I do not think there is any subterfuge or any attempt to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes. I honestly think that it is a genuine misunderstanding and certainly a misunderstanding of the policy position that our party has had throughout this process. I believe that during the select committee process we can resolve the problem. I want to work through the nature of the problem so that everyone fully understands it; I have no time to talk about parallel campaigners but I am sure my colleagues will pick up that serious matter. It is worth having this on record because it is something we will have to address. The bill talks about a default day meaning “the day that is 3 months before the last possible polling day for the general election” and therefore we read those words for the words “default day”. The bill states: “If before the close of the default day the Prime Minister gives public notice of the day that is to be polling day for the election the regulated period—(a) commences on the later of the following days: (i) the day after the date on which the Prime Minister gives that public notice: (ii) the day that is 3 months before polling day; and (b) ends with the close of the day before polling day.” 
The later date will always be 3 months before polling day unless 3 months’ notice of the general election is not given. Given that the Government decides the date of the general election it gives the Government an unfair advantage. It can spend for an entire month if not longer—perhaps if it gave only 6 weeks’ notice of the general election—in the knowledge that none of that spending will be counted as part of the regulated period. That is the Opposition’s issue with that provision. I know that this issue will be drawn on in our party submissions to the select committee. We have made it absolutely clear that we should avoid retrospectivity but we should also minimise the risk of unregulated election spending occurring less than 3 months before an election. That is the position we have always had and that is the position we wish to retain.