Hipkins ChrisCHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I am very pleased to take a call on the Broadcasting (Election Programmes and Election Advertising) Amendment Bill at its Committee stage. I want to welcome some of the provisions in this bill because it seems to me they are simply catching up with technology and catching up with modern reality and we certainly need to do that. I note that this bill for example removes the requirements for Television New Zealand and Radio New Zealand to provide time for the opening and closing addresses in a party's political campaign. Of course when these were introduced there were only a couple of TV channels—TV1 and TV2. Most people would watch them and they would watch intently as those opening and closing addresses were broadcast. Now the reality is that there are many many more channels and the result has been that when those opening and closing broadcasts are aired most people simply change the channel and watch something else. The viewership of those opening and closing broadcasts has not been great. If the intention is to ensure that voters are informed when they make their decisions at the ballot box it simply is not meeting it and therefore removing that requirement is a very sensible thing.It is also sensible to allow parties to use their allocations to pay for advertising on the internet. As a result of technology convergence of course many people are now watching their television on the internet. Parties should be able to purchase advertising during for example live streaming of television content and other forms of internet advertising. That is just keeping up with technology so I welcome those provisions.But I do have some questions. I note that the bill removes the current requirement for broadcasters to submit returns of all election programmes broadcast. I have some concern about this. Although I recognise the practical difficulty in encouraging internet content providers to provide such a breakdown one of the historical things that this requirement has highlighted is where a party has overspent its allocation. If we go back to 2005 when the National Party claimed that it did not know that GST was supposed to be included in its expenditure that was actually highlighted by the broadcasters' returns which showed that the National Party had significantly overspent its broadcasting allocation and was therefore in breach of the law. That would not have been known had these returns from the broadcasters not been required.My question is: if we are not going to have the expense returns—which it seems to me are no longer practical to have—will there be a requirement in the expense returns for the political parties to specify in some detail what advertising has been purchased with their broadcasting allocation? It seems to me that simply saying that they purchased a package of broadcast time that is worth X dollars does not actually provide the level of detail that will allow the public to determine whether or not the allocation has been appropriately spent or overspent. Will that return require a level of detail that will ensure that there is transparency and that all political parties are actually complying with the law? As I said going back to the 2005 election it was those returns from the broadcasters that allowed the public to identify that one of the political parties had significantly overspent its allocation.The second clause that I want to turn my attention to—if I can just find it—is the clause that deals with candidate advertising. At the moment candidates can broadcast an advertisement that is only for themselves and effectively does not mention their party or encourage their voters to vote for their party. It is purely about them winning a constituency seat and cannot be a party political broadcast or a party advertisement but it can be an advertisement for the candidate. If we look at new section 70(3)(e) inserted by clause 4 basically it allows a broadcaster to broadcast a candidate's advertisement for a fee that may but need not be paid from money allocated to a party or group of related parties". What this is doing if I am correct is it is allowing candidates to use a share of their party's broadcast allocation for a candidate campaign and that will then need to be declared as a donation to that candidate.Candidates at the moment are restricted to expenditure of just over $25000—I know that the limit is adjusted for each campaign. They are restricted to being able to spend that much money on their campaign and that includes their broadcasting. At the moment if they pay for broadcasting and they pay for it out of their own personal campaign expenses it is deemed to be their expense and they would have to find the money for that from their donations or from their personal contributions to the campaign. If it is paid for out of their party's broadcast allocation and therefore has to be treated as a donation does that not effectively lower the overall spending limit for that party?At the moment the party will have its party allocation of what it is allowed to spend of its own money. It will have each individual candidate's expenditure limits and then it will have what is currently the broadcast allocation on top of that. The way this new section seems to be worded if a party spends some of the broadcast allocation on the candidate and thereby treats it as a donation to the candidate it is actually reducing the overall amount that that party can spend in total. Some clarity around that would I think be useful because that does not seem to be particularly clear.The criteria that the Electoral Commission uses when determining the allocation of funding to each political party include things like support at by-elections support at opinion polls and support at previous general elections. Those are all quantifiable and easy measures to identify but the one that is a little bit more subjective is in new section 78(2)(d) inserted by clause 4 which says that the commission would consider in making this allocation "any relationships that exist between a party and any other party;".That is a very subjective thing and I wonder what sorts of relationships the commission would take into account. For example there are coalition governing arrangements between parties on the governing side or in the absence of coalition arrangements there are often cooperation arrangements between governing parties and there are now some cooperation arrangements on this side of the House. Would those be the types of agreements that would be taken into consideration when determining the allocation? Because it seems to me that it would probably not be appropriate. On the other hand if parties were going to campaign on a joint ticket for example then that might be something the commission would take into account.Therefore I guess I would like to see some clarity around what the arrangements are that the commission would take into account and what the arrangements are that would clearly fall outside of that. It seems to me that the clause is relatively broadly worded at the moment and that could allow the commission to take into account matters that the Parliament did not intend for it to take into account and that is simply because we have allowed that with a fairly broad wording of the bill. So I am looking forward to the contributions that the Minister might want to make on that. Those are the main I guess questions that I have at this point on this particular bill."