Tisch Lindsay: Electoral Matters Bill — Second Reading 
Tisch Lindsay: Electoral Matters Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:621;Page:16749] 
LINDSAY TISCH (National—Piako) 
: 
 National supports this legislation. The Minister Rick Barker commented on the Supplementary Order Paper that he will be introducing and that we heard about for the first time last week. It is not something that National will rush into lightly. We are concerned that there has not been any consultation on the areas he mentioned. The Minister mentioned that they were matters outside the scope of the Justice and Electoral Committee report. That is exactly right; that is why we did not take them any further. One would think that if they were outside the scope of the bill that would be the end of the matter until further discussions could be held. 
We cannot dictate to councils what they should be doing. We acknowledge there are differences in the way councils operate under their bylaws. Some councils in my area do not allow signage at all. One particular district council allows only two signs per candidate in its area. In other areas it is open slather—one can have as many signs as one likes. There is an inconsistency and that is acknowledged. But the Minister has come out with a draft Supplementary Order Paper without any consultation with the parties as to what is intended—such as regarding the colour one can use on a sign. Certainly National will not want to use red colours on its hoardings but that could be dictated in the final determination on that issue. In terms of size a 3 square metre sign is quite big. We could probably accommodate a 3 square metre sign but at the same time to be allowed to put it up only 2 months in advance is something we could not support. Nothing in the Electoral Act states that one could not put up one’s signs today. I have been looking at section 214 of the Electoral Act which states that signs could go up now but the Minister’s draft Supplementary Order Paper states that we could not put up signs until 2 months out from the election. That would mean that section 214 of the Electoral Act would need to be changed. 
In section 214B(1)(b) “election activity” refers to a number of things and promotes posters billboards signage and whatever. Paragraph (d) refers to election activities occurring in the 3-month period before polling day but the Minister has just said that we cannot put up signs until 2 months before an election. That means that the Electoral Act would have to be changed just to accommodate the 2-month provision he mentioned. I do not know that the Minister has thought this through. The current law states that I can put up my signs now. They still have to be authorised. It has been suggested that they should be authorised by the Electoral Commission and the Chief Electoral Office. I have been in touch with both those organisations in the last couple of days so I am not speaking off the cuff on this. I have done some research in this area and there is nothing to suggest that those signs cannot go up right at this very moment. So when the Minister says: “Ha! You can put up the signs only 2 months out from the election.” I say to him that some major changes will have to occur to section 214 of the Electoral Act. At the moment I can put up those signs today. 
 I do not have the provision in front of me but I think that section 214B talks about signage in the 3-month period as being when the $20000 we would have to account for comes into effect [ 
Interruption 
]—I am not confused at all; I have this in writing. That is a major concern. It is one of the reasons why we will not be supporting the Supplementary Order Paper. Although the intent of it is fine—and I was on the select committee that looked at this—we are certainly not going to rush into something just because of the whim of the Minister that it needs to happen. 
I come back to the bill and to some of the other provisions that we think are important. Although I said at the outset that we will be supporting the bill it is interesting to see in the introduction to the commentary on the bill that the Electoral Commission will no longer be required to invite broadcasters to provide free or discounted time. That is an interesting point because it is really only Television New Zealand and Radio New Zealand that actually do so. When I was involved in the 1996 election campaign as National’s campaign manager I found that the possibility of getting any free or discounted time from broadcasters was pretty remote. So we have no difficulty with the commission saving itself a lot of time by going specifically in future to those broadcasters which are State-owned. 
The next point in the commentary which is that only registered parties will be eligible for allocations of time and money is also important. The current law has provided that a political party can get an allocation of funds for its broadcasting activities right up to the time of allocations. This bill states quite clearly—and it is something we agree with—that the party has to be registered at the time the election is called. I think it will limit a lot of the fly-by-nighters—parties that come along at the end of the day. Although it is not specifically mentioned in the bill—certainly I mentioned it in the first reading debate—I think the increase in the allocation for broadcasting money from $2 million to $3.12 million including GST is significant. Over time there have been increases in costs. It is not specifically mentioned here but we certainly discussed the fact that over time we have seen huge increases in costs. What we need to be able to identify and use with those costs is a fair allocation of time. 
One of the areas we have major concerns about is the creation of vacancies. It is interesting that we were in urgency on 6 August 2003 when we went through all the stages of the Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill which overrode section 55 of the Electoral Act to allow a member sitting here this evening—the Hon Harry Duynhoven—to remain a member of Parliament. Section 55(1)(b) of the Electoral Act provides that a seat becomes vacant when a member swears allegiance to a foreign State or power. Section 55(1)(c) provides that a member’s seat be vacated if the member is a citizen of or takes out citizenship of another country or takes some other action like renewing a passport. We voted against that piece of legislation. We said that it was a cynical manipulation of Parliament and that it was absolutely outrageous that the law could be changed retrospectively where someone had broken it. 
The point I make here is that when we look at page 2 of the commentary on the bill we see that that member would not be a member of Parliament under this provision in the clarification of the current legislation. It states quite clearly: “We support the requirement that a member of Parliament seek a fresh mandate from voters …”. That is what we said at the time. We said that there should have been a by-election and that is what the commentary states—that there should be “a fresh mandate … if he or she acquires a fresh foreign allegiance while in office.” It goes on to state: “We also recommend that new section 55(1)(cb) be clarified so that a member of Parliament will have to vacate his or her seat if he or she accepts nomination as a candidate for or agrees to appointment to a governing body which might not have been included in the term ‘country’ for example an Australian state.”—and it goes further than that. 
So here we have in the bill which National is supporting a provision that clarifies the law. Had this provision been in the legislation at the time the member who was able to get in under the Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Act would not be here today. These are major concerns. Although we support this piece of legislation it cannot go by without our saying that the provision enacted at that time under urgency was a manipulation of the system that in my view and in National’s view brought Parliament into disrepute. This bill tidies it up and that is why we are supporting it.