Dalziel Lianne: Local Electoral Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Dalziel Lianne: Local Electoral Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 20 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8761. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I want to congratulate the Minister of Local Government on his address to the House in relation to this bill the Local Electoral Amendment Bill (No 2) as the new Minister taking over this particular responsibility. I really wanted to endorse the words that he used. There were two words. They were “strengthen integrity”—strengthen integrity. That is actually what this bill is about. I just want to remind people about answers to a series of questions that were put to the Prime Minister last year. He said: “the issue of ethical standards applies to Ministers when they are holding their warrants.” He said: “As the member should know the  
Cabinet Manual 
 makes it quite clear that when it comes to ethics it is at the time the person holds their warrant.” He said: “I am satisfied that the Minister has given me an assurance which is the test that he has done everything in accordance with the law.” He said: “There is quite a wide definition of ethics … The test I have to apply is the law.” Well I just want to remind this House why we are debating the Local Electoral Amendment Bill (No 2). 
Sue Moroney 
: Yes why is that? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: It is because somebody could not define the difference between “compliance with the letter of the law” and an understanding of what “ethics” might actually stand for. 
Let me quote from the police report into the John Banks affair: “The Police investigation established that on 24 May 2010 Mayor John Banks met with the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Skycity Entertainment Group Limited. At that meeting Mayor Banks received a sealed envelope containing a $15000.00 cheque written out to ‘Team Banksie 2010’.” 
Denis O’Rourke 
: Why was it in an envelope? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: Well I think it was in an envelope because that enabled things to be sort of—well I think it allowed brain fade to take effect. I have actually renamed this bill the “Brain Fade Bill” because what it does away with is the capacity for individuals to suffer from brain fade. Anonymous donations beyond $1500 will actually be referred to the Electoral Commission. The police report said: “Team Banksie was the name given to Mr Bank’s campaign organisation. This donation was subsequently recorded in the Electoral Return by the Treasurer for Team Banksie as anonymous.” Did Mr Banks know where the money had come from? Yes he did. Did he know that it had been recorded subsequently as anonymous? No. That is where the grey area was and that is how he wriggled out of that particular prosecution. 
What the police said was that they were “therefore of the view that there is insufficient evidence to consider a prosecution”—not because they did not think that Banks knew where the money came from; he just did not know that they had recorded it as anonymous. We believe that. The police report said: “Police have established that in September 2010 Mr John Banks personally solicited a request for help from a Donor who prefers to remain anonymous for the purpose of this correspondence.”—quoting from the police report—“As a result of a discussion between the two it was agreed that the Donor would help with a donation of radio advertising for the campaign. The donation was recorded on the return by the Treasurer for Team Banksie as an ‘Anonymous’ donation … Police were unable to establish that Mr Banks had the necessary knowledge that the donation had been recorded as anonymous in the return before he signed and submitted it.” 
Let us quote a little bit further. It says “Police have established that on 09 June 2010 Mr John Banks personally solicited a donation from Mr Kim Dotcom. This request resulted in Mr Kim Dotcom paying two $25000.00 donations … Both donations were subsequently recorded … as anonymous.”—and here is the quote again from the police report—“Police were unable to establish that Mr Banks had the necessary knowledge that the donation had been recorded as anonymous …”. We are here debating this legislation on a subject that the Minister of Local Government completely failed to mention. We are here because John Banks failed to act in an appropriate way when he was standing for the mayoralty of Auckland—and actually he did not win the mayoralty of Auckland and Aucklanders are very grateful for that fact. But he has come to Parliament and he has found that it does not matter how he behaved when he was a candidate for the mayoralty because our Prime Minister thinks it is OK to behave that way when you are a candidate for the mayoralty as long as you do not have a ministerial warrant in your hand. Well I do not think that that is acceptable and the people of New Zealand do not think it is acceptable either. 
I still find it utterly extraordinary that John Banks cannot remember flying in a helicopter to a large ostentatious property owned by a large ostentatious multimillionaire. I do not know any ostentatious multimillionaires myself but the reality is that this is not an everyday activity for anyone and yet he has completely and utterly overlooked the fact that nobody can accept that. If we think of the amount of time and effort that Parliament has had to invest in addressing this particular matter one has to ask whether this is the best use of Parliament’s time if we are not even prepared to front up and talk about the real reasons why we are here. 
We had a Prime Minister who campaigned from one end of the country to the other in 2008 on holding a referendum on MMP. He said: “We are going to have a referendum on MMP. We are going to let the people of New Zealand kick the tyres.” I remember him saying “kick the tyres” because it is an expression that he used to use quite a bit. He said we were going to kick the tyres on MMP. The referendum was held. What happened with the referendum? Did we get rid of MMP as he wanted? No we did not. We kept MMP. So what was the trade-off for keeping MMP? We were going to have a review of MMP because there were elements of it that people knew they wanted to see changed. What has happened to the review? Well the Electoral Commission held its own review because the Government refused to provide it with any terms of reference. It went to the Government and said: “Have you got any terms of reference for us?” and the Government just did not even reply. So the Electoral Commission feeling that it had a responsibility went ahead and held its review of MMP and it came up with some suggestions. 
A pretty major suggestion also comes back to John Banks and the major suggestion that it came back with was that we had to fix the thresholds. We had to reduce the threshold from 5 percent to 4 percent but more important that was the quid pro quo for getting rid of the one-seat threshold—the John Banks threshold the cup of tea threshold—that everyone now knows the people of New Zealand do not want. But the Government has not introduced any legislation to address that issue. We are dealing with the other John Banks issue: the issue of brain fade. I think it is really important that this Government actually looks at what the real recommendations are in this area and at what we need to be doing in order to ensure that we have a robust electoral law system in this country. If the Prime Minister wanted to address those real issues we would not be addressing this now; we would be addressing those other issues so that when we get to the general election next year we deal with those fundamental changes that people want. John Banks has rorted one system after another. That is what John Banks is responsible for. That is his legacy to this House. 
We are fixing one of those rorts tonight and yes we will support this legislation for that reason. It does need to be addressed. We do need to align the general election law with the local body law. That is what we need to do but there is another law that needs to change as well and that is our general election law. We need to make sure that the rort that John Banks also stands for on the other side of it is dealt with as well. We have to find ourselves addressing the excesses of behaviour on both sides of that spectrum and I believe that it is absolutely irresponsible of the Prime Minister of New Zealand not to front up to this most basic of issues in the House.