O'Rourke Denis: Electoral Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Rourke Denis: Electoral Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 04 March 2014. Volume:696;Page:16309. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): Yes it was a pleasure to work with the Justice and Electoral Committee on a number of very worthwhile amendments to the Electoral Act and yes I did make a small contribution by suggesting some amendments. I thank the Minister of Justice for her comments earlier in the day about that. But she is right in that New Zealand First is nevertheless still going to vote against this bill the Electoral Amendment Bill and the reason for that is quite different. It is not because of what this bill proposes in it; it is because of what this bill leaves out that we are voting against it because we have no other choice as a way of expressing our disapproval about what has been left out. So it is not a matter of what is in the bill; it is a matter of what is not in the bill.There are two major concerns. One is the fact that the rules concerning broadcasting have not been dealt with as they should have been according to recommendations made by the committee itself. They are totally left out of the bill altogether. Specifically the Electoral Commission noted that the statutory tests of what constitutes an election programme in the Broadcasting Act and an election advertisement in the Electoral Act have significant differences which does cause difficulties when the commission is called upon to consider complaints about broadcasting as it was in fact required to do in the last election about some National Party broadcasting errors if I can put it that way. In both Acts the tests require an assessment of whether the programme or advertisement appears to encourage voters to vote or not vote for a party or candidate but these two provisions differ in the exemptions they make. In the Broadcasting Act it is stated that nothing in the prohibition on paid election programmes “restricts the broadcasting in relation to an election of news or of comments or of current affairs programmes.” The corresponding exemption in the Electoral Act is not restricted to news or current affairs but applies to “editorial content of—(i) a periodical: (ii) a radio or television programme: (iii) a publication on a news media Internet site:”. So there are two quite different exemptions.There were some very good submissions made to the committee favouring the removal of the electoral broadcasting provisions from the Broadcasting Act and combining them only with those in the Electoral Act—very sensible and worthwhile submissions. I am flabbergasted that this bill does not do anything about solving that issue. As I have said the Justice and Electoral Committee actually recommended aligning these two tests but nothing has been done. And there is no explanation from the Government. I can assume only that it is not including the amendments required to address this problem because of its own particular internal interests.The other glaring omission regarding this bill concerns the MMP system itself. The issue is the so-called coat-tailing provision by which one electorate seat creates a threshold itself for list seats. There needs to be an end to that provision. It should have been attended to at the same time in this particular amendment bill. We have seen why that is necessary many times over in the last two or three or more elections because it runs against the interests of the MMP system itself with a reasonable threshold. It is something that recent polling shows the vast majority of people in this country want to see an end of. It is time that simply winning an electorate seat should not result in coat-tailing for whatever low percentage of the party vote currently enables a party without 5 percent of the list vote to bring more members into Parliament when others without an electorate seat need 5 percent. It just does not make sense and it needs to be attended to.