Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT in opposition to this Electoral Amendment Bill. I want to speak tonight especially to the members of the Labour Party about the heritage and history and values of their party a party whose constitution says that political power should be withheld or managed by regular free and fair elections with universal suffrage. I want those Labour members to think about the likes of Savage and Fraser Nash and Kirk and Rowling Lange Palmer Moore and Clark—men and women who were committed to something bigger than them. They were committed to the idea of a liberal democracy in the South Pacific and that put certain constraints on what they were prepared to do. None of those former Labour Governments would ever have dreamt of the arrogance of trying to entrench their own policies alongside our most basic democratic rights to vote but this one did. I don't think any of those previous Labour administrations would have unilaterally rushed through laws that changed the rules of the game for the next election just in time to advantage themselves before they go to the polls again. This is a low point for this Labour Party. They are doing something that is against their own heritage against the values of the men and women who have stood for Labour who actually stood for liberal democracy and wouldn't have dreamed of doing what this bill does today.What does this bill do? Well let's just deal with some of the better things that this bill does because it does a few things and they're not all bad. This bill requires that if somebody receives a donation to transmit to a political party then they must actually give the money to a political party that was nominated by the original donor; that's important. Why is that important? Well people might like to ask a slightly less salubrious party without the same values and history of Labour—that is New Zealand First—just why they had a foundation in which they put three-quarters of a million dollars of their money and some of it may or may not have actually got to New Zealand First. People need to ask themselves why you'd have a New Zealand First Foundation. This law means that if some other entity receives the money they must actually give it to the intended political party not exploit some loophole. ACT supports closing that loophole.This law also allows those New Zealanders trapped offshore due to COVID to come and have their vote without having been in the country in the last three years and we welcome that. And people listening offshore Kiwis stuck overseas who couldn't visit their country who may not be able to vote because they couldn't come here under Labour's two-year border closure well when the time comes around to vote you know what to do and this bill means that you'll be able to give your party vote to ACT.So those are the good parts of this legislation but there is another part and here it is: it reduces the amount that a New Zealand citizen or a permanent resident who lives here can give to a political party without being publicly named. Right now that amount is $15000. Under this law it will go down to $5000. Why would the Labour Party do that—unilaterally by themselves; not with agreement about what the electoral rules should be by all concerned for a free and fair election like their party constitution demands? Actually they're doing it by themselves and they're rushing it through. They want to make sure that it gets done in time that those rules are in place for the 2023 calendar year which as we all know is an election year. Why are they doing this? Well they tell us—Minister Kiritapu Allan got up Arena Williams got up and they talked about trust. They talked about democracy. They say that they're going to build trust in democracy by unilaterally changing the rules of the game right before an election year. I don't think so. But what problem are they trying to solve? Well it's actually a difficult one; I'll give them some credit. It is difficult because if the threshold is too low then there will be few people who will give money and political parties will find it hard to be funded—they'll find it hard to get their message across. People upset with the direction of the country will find it hard to contribute and help people of like-minded views share their values and communicate to their fellow New Zealanders and win an election—something we call democracy. So if it's too low we'll know who all the donors are but there won't be much democracy going on.Here's the alternative. If it's too high then it's true you could have people giving significant amounts of money enough to change the course of a political party or an election and no one would know who it was. It is difficult to choose what that number should be. But nowhere in this debate or in any of the documentation has this Labour Party explained why the law should be $5000 instead of $15000. What they should have done is shown examples of people that gave between $5000 and $15000 who was it known who they were we would have greater trust in democracy. They haven't stood up and given one example because there is not one.Why wouldn't someone want to be named? Well I happen to have been the chief fundraiser for the ACT Party for the last eight years and I've raised quite a lot of money and the people on the Labour benches would love to know how much. Actually if they read they could find out. But I can tell them that when I talk to people a lot of people give just under the public disclosure limit. Is it because they are nefarious people that want to secretly influence me? Can you get the ACT Party to bend from its principles for $14999? No you can't. They are people that have contracts with Government departments. They are people who like their privacy. They are people who have seen other political donors being publicly attacked for their political views. They're people whose friends or family might politically disagree with them. They want to participate and help like-minded New Zealanders communicate their views by advertising and campaigning to others but they don't want to blow their cover for a whole variety of perfectly reasonable reasons and I think that's okay.But what's the other thing that this change will make? Well it's not going to somehow increase trust or transparency because nobody is seriously arguing that $5000 is a better number than $15000. Nobody is seriously arguing that there is undue influence on political parties for $15000. But what they are arguing and what they know but will not say is that if people decide to give only $5000 instead of $15000 to remove public reporting here's what that will mean for the parties: altogether there would be $1.2 million less donated to democracy that's compared with 2020 figures. Which parties would get less money? Well the Green Party after the speech we just heard you can understand they don't raise much. Not many people give money to the Green Party and you can understand why. They would have lost $67000. And the Labour Party you only get a 30-second speech from them so not many people donate to them either. They would have raised $147000 less in 2020. Now the National Party—not all donors are wise—they would have raised $600000 less obviously not based on the quality of speeches in this instance. The ACT Party would have raised $300000 less.So this Labour Party that used to believe in democracy it's bringing in a bill unilaterally rushed through with a shortened process to be in place in time for next year when there's an election. And why? It's because it is going to rip off their opponents by $900000 and it's going to rip them off by about $200000. This is a Labour Party that cannot make the argument there'll be more transparency. They can't explain why $5000 is a better number than $15000 but they know that they are screwing the scrum kneecapping their opponents undermining their opponents' fundraising ability and all they are doing is eroding trust in democracy. They are eroding trust in them. They're eroding their adherence to their own constitutional principles. But I've got some good news for the Labour Party: people who want a change of Government are smart and they know that the law changes on 31 December. I can tell the people in the Labour Party they aren't holding back from filling up ACT's coffers before the law changes. With that for this totally treasonous undemocratic Act next year we will bury you.