Turei Metiria: Electoral Finance Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Turei Metiria: Electoral Finance Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:644;Page:13536] 
METIRIA TUREI (Green) 
: 
 In 2005 the Labour Party received $400000 in anonymous donations and the National Party received $2.2 million from secret trusts—including the Waitemata Trust for example from which it received $1.2 million. These of course are only donations that are over $10000 so who knows how much money either of those parties receive in lots under $10000? The public simply does not know. What we do know is that with the National Party for example many of its donors through secret trusts and by other secret measures were Business Roundtable members. Millions of dollars were funnelled to the National Party by these means. Names that have been bandied around include those of Alan Gibbs David Richwhite Doug Myers and Peter Shirtcliffe. People of that ilk have been donating to the National Party. 
In the US and Australia large secret donors expect payback for the money they contribute to political parties. In Australia just last year that was made more obvious by a former Premier of Victoria who said that in his country Australia $10000 would buy one a meeting with the Prime Minister. This is corruption—cancerous corruption. It arises because either there are flawed controls on secret money being funnelled to political parties or indeed there are no controls on secret money being funnelled to political parties. 
Unfortunately in New Zealand at the moment there are no controls on secret money flowing to political parties so hence the $1.2 million sent to the National Party by people who had be revealed by other means. This is a very poor system for a country that prides itself on its transparent democracy—a very poor system. So the Greens are very proud that in the negotiations and in the select committee work around this bill we have severely restricted the anonymous donations and secret money that parties can receive during election campaigns. The Greens have made sure to the best of our ability that we have inoculated our electoral system against that cancerous corruption that the National Party is so desperate to protect. We have set up in the bill a protected disclosure regime. This is not our policy. We would prefer to see a ban on all anonymous donations over $1000 but this protected disclosure regime goes quite some way towards that policy objective. 
Some people do have good reasons—family reasons—why they have to keep their donations to political parties secret from the party and the public. So recognising that there may be some legitimate reasons we have a system whereby if people want to donate more than $1000 to a political party but do not want the party or the public to know then they give it to the Electoral Commission they say whom they want the money to go to and they give their names and addresses. The Electoral Commission will then send that money on to the political party at various times during the 3 years between elections. That is a way of keeping the donor and the political party separate so the party cannot pretend to not know who gave the money. Parties cannot pretend not to know which is what happened in previous elections. Parties pretended they did not know who gave them money when in fact they did but they did not have to declare it to the public. 
We have also made sure in the bill that there are limits on donations so that parties do not become dependent on very large donors as we have seen happen in Australia and the US. For example under this regime an individual may donate up to $36000 secretly through the Electoral Commission’s protected disclosure process. That process limits how much an individual can give and a party may receive only $240000 of secret money funnelled through the Electoral Commission process. The reason for that is that $240000 is 10 percent of the maximum amount that a party can spend in an election campaign. 
What the Greens have done is to make sure that a party cannot acquire more than 10 percent of its total spending cap through secret means. This is a mechanism for keeping those large secret donors like Business Roundtable members from secretly funnelling into political parties millions of dollars that the public does not know about. We expect that the system will work well. It is similar to a system used in other jurisdictions. One must remember that National receives nearly 100 percent of its total spending cap from anonymous donations. Last election it received in total $2.2 million in secret money.