Chauvel Charles: Electoral Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Chauvel Charles: Electoral Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:652;Page:1348] 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 I welcome the outline that the Minister of Justice gave in his third reading speech on the Electoral Amendment Bill on the process intended to be adopted in respect of devising new electoral law. As I understood it he said there would be an issues document there would be a discussion there would be a draft bill and there would be a select committee process. I think David Parker’s observation—that some ability and willingness to compromise and some generosity of spirit from the Government in this area will enable the possibility of some enduring electoral law to emerge—is absolutely right. I would like to repeat what he has urged on the Government: that in order to get something worthwhile out of this exercise it will be important to approach it with an open mind. It would be helpful in that regard if the Minister would ensure that the issues document he referred to embraced as many questions as possible on the electoral system. 
It is essential that the issues document should include a continued commitment to a high level of transparency over donations. Surely it must canvass the issue of additional funding for political parties. I refer to Mr Boscawen’s comments in an earlier part of the debate in this regard. He said: “Goodness do we not think that the political parties are already funded; what is this all about?”. Well of course the problem with the existing funding regime includes that it applies only to parties represented in Parliament. And it is an opaque system. Those members who have had any experience of attempting over the last couple of years to work with the Parliamentary Service bureaucracy to get spending authorised for as an example a simple electorate office ad will know that we cannot persist with the current system—it is not satisfactory. The public are not clear as to what is or is not included. It is not always clear to members. The point has been fairly made that there is no public funding for candidates or parties not currently represented in Parliament. We need to take a long hard look at whether all this is a desirable state of affairs if we want this House of Representatives to live up to its name. 
Clearly the transparency that the issues paper will have to canvass means that we will need to look at all “actors” in the political process—let us use that term for candidates political parties and pressure groups who seek to spend money on media in order to influence a citizen’s most sacred duty and right the duty and right to vote. Of course all such groups should be subject to scrutiny and transparency. People should be able to know who is seeking to influence the process. They should be able to know who is spending what and whether that is being done in any sort of collusive arrangement with other “actors” in the system. If we do not have that transparency applying across the board then we do not have a healthy democratic process. 
We need to look at limits on donations and spending and at the question of the regulated period. In my personal view the donation and spending limits must err on the low side as to amounts and the regulated period needs to err on the high side. The Obama precedent has been quoted in this debate and surely it is a healthy thing for democracy that a whole lot of small donations are sourced from a large range of people. If political parties and candidates can follow that precedent then they should be able to prove that they have a programme and personalities that attract popular support. That has to be a good thing; that has to be something that our system has to incentivise. We must if we are to have a discussion of public funding also get the mix between public funding and spending limits right. We must not go down the road that the Australians went for many years where they had public funding of public parties and that funding formed the floor for the spending of the political parties. Then there was a bidding war amongst corporates and other donors as to where to get all the other money from. That is not a healthy democratic system to have. That striking of the balance must be a question for the issues document that the Minister mentions. 
 As far as the regulated period is concerned unless and until we move to a fixed term of Parliament—which in my personal view we should do—there has to be certainty as to what the regulated period is. It should not be a period measured with reference to when the election is called. It should be a certain period that everybody can know rather than just say 3 months 6 months or 12 months before the general election the date of which is known to only one person—that is the person advising that date to the Governor-General. That is not an ideal situation as we go forward and write the laws anew. 
We should also look very closely at the question of the agencies that police our election law. Indeed the question of whether there should be just one agency rather than the three that are currently set up to deal with the various questions in this area needs a careful look. We should have a good look at whether there are sufficient resources for that agency or for the agencies that exist at the moment to do the job. There surely ought to be independent forensic police and enforcement resources in that agency rather than it having to rely on the New Zealand Police rationing its scarce resources to chase up allegations of electoral offences where it does not have the expertise or the time to do that job properly. I mentioned earlier the importance of having a good look at the voting age because it is appropriate in these times in my view to consider whether people who are under the current voting age might well make a good contribution to the system by being enfranchised. 
I conclude my remarks by acknowledging that we will not have a utopia come out of this review; clearly there will have to be give and take on all sides and I hope we see that happen. But we should aspire to the best system and the best set of laws that we possibly can. We have done that in the past when we led the world in enfranchising all our citizens and we did it with great success. I hope that this is the beginning of a period when we will do that again. Thank you.