English Bill: Appropriation (Parliamentary Expenditure Validation) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
English Bill: Appropriation (Parliamentary Expenditure Validation) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
[Volume:634;Page:5804] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) 
: 
 In order to remind the House of why we are debating the Appropriation (Parliamentary Expenditure Validation) Bill today let us go back to 22 August last year. On that day Labour Party volunteers all around the country went to their electorate offices and campaign headquarters and picked up boxes of the pledge card. Those volunteers set off to every corner of every suburb in every town to deliver that pledge card. They put it in mailboxes street by street. 
The families young people and pensioners of New Zealand went out to the mailbox picked up their mail and took the pledge card back inside. Some of them just threw it in the rubbish because they were sick of the election already and some of them had a quick look and saw Helen Clark’s face on the card—nothing new—and did not take any more notice of it. Others picked up that pledge card and looked at it. They saw promises of a rates rebate; of 250 new community police which made them think about the burglary down the street last week; and of a $10000 grant to young couples who were trying to buy their first home. Then they looked at the TV and saw pictures of the political leaders going about the business of election campaigning. Those good citizens of New Zealand thought they were in an election campaign. And so did the Labour Party volunteers who were delivering that pledge card. 
But if members read the evidence that the Labour Party gave to the police when they investigated complaints under the Electoral Act they will find that two people at least thought Labour was not in an election campaign. They were the people who were running it: Helen Clark and Heather Simpson. 
Phil Heatley 
: Pete Hodgson thought they weren’t. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Everyone else thought they were in an election campaign. Some of those mums and dads might have made up their minds on that night but it was still 3 weeks until election day. Over those 3 weeks those mums and dads faced a barrage of advertisements in the newspaper and on TV that tried to change their minds about how to vote. Do members remember the newspaper ads in the last week of the campaign—“Don’t take the risk.”? 
Labour told the police that its spending was legal and that the pledge card was not electioneering but normal parliamentary business. Who ever believed that Labour believed what it was saying? The truth was that all that advertising in the last week or so before the election was unlawful because it was paid for by taxpayers’ money in the first place and more important because it broke the cap on electoral spending in a campaign. 
We are told that the law is unclear. Well the law on electioneering and the election spending cap are very clear. That has been laid down by the courts and the consequences of a failure to comply are very clear. Members should ask Reg Boorman who was ejected from Parliament and Bob Clarkson who could have been ejected about that. 
We have order in a community when people obey unenforceable law. If a sign says “No dogs allowed” people do not take their dogs there; if there is a red traffic light at 2 o’clock in the morning people do not run that red light. That is order in a community. It has turned out that the electoral law that caps campaign expenditure is unenforceable. The Labour Party dared the police to prosecute a Government that had just won an election and the police decided not to do so. So it has turned out that that law is unenforceable. That is why the Labour Party has breached the bond of trust with the New Zealand public. It did those things knowing full well what it was doing. How do we know that? Well the Auditor-General warned us—all of us—that the conduct of politicians had been too loose. The Chief Electoral Officer put that in writing to the Labour Party and said that it must count that spending as electoral expenses. But Labour ignored that letter. 
You see respect for the rule of law is a positive quality; it is not just obedience under the fear of discovery and punishment. It is clear now that although there has been a discovery of Labour’s breach of the electoral law there has been no punishment for that. The positive quality of respect for the rule of law must be exhibited particularly by those who make the law because a Government has more power than anyone else. It has more opportunity and more temptation to breach the law and more capacity to fight its corner if it breaks the rules. Of course a Government has the deepest pockets. It can take anyone to court at any time and it can put up with any attack from anybody. 
We are here because the Labour Party breached the bond of trust and lost its moral authority. It showed no respect for the law for its officers or for the consequences of breaking the law. At some stage we all have broken the law and we have respected those consequences. But this Government does not respect them. It has exploited the privilege of power. It has bullied browbeaten and used every tool at its command—including this parliamentary process—to avoid the consequences of breaching a law it knew it was breaching. What does it say about a party that was founded on the principles of defending the poor and vulnerable that Labour has shown in the last 12 months in New Zealand an ugly and a fierce willingness to use the privileges of power totally in the service of its own political ends—not the public interest? 
Who could possibly argue that the behaviour of the Prime Minister Helen Clark has been in the public interest in the last 6 months? It has not been; it has been in the interest of the Labour Party. It is just one more round of a record that has gone round and round: “paintergate” “speedgate” and “Doone-gate”. I ask members to remember the attitude of the Prime Minister then. She said: “by definition the Prime Minister cannot leak.” 
Today we have found out that by definition Labour cannot misuse public money because it thinks the money belongs to it and because it thinks it is so morally superior in its use of public money that any use of it by definition must be right. Of course it is not. When one strips back the technicalities the legislation the convenient legal opinions and the procedural manipulation one finds that Labour believes deep in its heart that it is entitled to make any use of the tax derived from the hard-earned incomes of New Zealanders—and in Labour’s interest not in the public interest. We have unmasked an ugly and a fierce sense of entitlement. The Labour Party is willing to do anything say anything and bully anyone in order to defend that sense of entitlement. In fact if one had listened to the debate on this issue over recent months one would think the wronged party was the Labour Party. One would think Labour was being unjustly attacked. One would think that Labour was the one whose money had been put up in good faith and misused. One would think Labour was the injured party. 
We have seen that deep and ugly sense of entitlement in the attacks on the Auditor-General.