Walker Holly: Local Electoral Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Walker Holly: Local Electoral Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 20 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8766. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
HOLLY WALKER (Green) 
: 
Tena koe Mr Speaker. Tena koutou e te Whare. The Green Party is pleased to support the modernisation of our local electoral law and to support greater transparency about candidate donations in local body elections. Clearly there are unfortunate gaps in our existing legislation which have allowed candidates to exploit the so-called anonymous donation provision and thanks to the Hon John Banks we all know about this and are finally doing something about it. I am not going to spend a great deal of time talking about John Banks in my contribution this evening largely because as he is the single member of an irrelevant party I think it is really not a great use of this House’s time. We have heard at length from our Labour colleagues about what gave rise to this bill and why it became apparent to the Government that we needed to update and reform our local electoral laws. And after this bill passes I think we will agree that we will have a significant improvement to those local electoral rules and processes. After it passes anyone who works with a candidate and knows the identity of someone who makes a donation of over $1500 must declare the identity of that donor to the candidate. That is a good change and it is one that the Green Party supports and for that reason the Green Party will continue to support this bill. 
However the bill unfortunately is a missed opportunity to even more closely align the rules for local body elections with those governing general elections and the ones that govern us as parliamentary candidates. Both the Minister and our Labour colleagues have identified that one of the aims of this legislation is to bring the provisions governing local body elections more closely into line with those governing general elections. We in the Green Party agree but unfortunately this bill does not go very far towards doing that apart from the change it makes to the rules around anonymous donations. It has been designed to clear up what was identified as the mess that John Banks left but it actually has not taken much of a wider view on what else needs tidying up in our local electoral law. 
The Green Party also has a member’s bill in the name of my colleague Denise Roche here that would do exactly that. It would actually align the provisions governing local body elections much more closely than this bill does with the provisions governing general elections. That would include a $5000 cap on donations by any person or group to a candidate. It would include a lower $500 limit on anonymous donations. It would include a ban on overseas donations. It would include penalties—which I think is very important in the context of the example we have heard—for avoiding rules relating to donations. Very important it would include regulation of third-party spending in local body election campaigns and I will return to that in a moment. It would include a pecuniary interest register for members of local authorities. In an era where unfortunately we are seeing a trend towards greater council amalgamations—and certainly in the era of the Auckland super-city as the John Banks example has demonstrated—campaigning for local election is a big deal and it deserves the same level of scrutiny and public transparency as that for a general election. There is a lot at stake for someone campaigning for the Auckland mayoralty and the public has a right to the same level of transparency about the conduct of those candidates for the Auckland mayoralty as they do for us as parliamentary candidates. 
So when the time comes we intend to move amendments in the Committee stage to implement some of these more substantive changes which would achieve the effect that the Minister himself identified of actually more closely aligning the provisions for local body elections with those of general elections. 
However if there is one area that the House could pull out of what I have just outlined and adopt—if it turned its mind to it in the Committee stage—it would be the regulation of third-party spending in local body campaigns as it seems clear that this is a major gap in this bill. This bill does not change any of the rules relating to how third parties can engage and campaign in local body elections. Just to outline the problem with the current provisions which this bill does not change the current provisions for example would allow for unlimited spending by third parties that campaign against certain candidates. In that situation it would give no obligations for those third parties to disclose what they have spent would impose no cap on what they could spend and would basically require them to meet no regulation at all. I believe that a campaign of this nature—and we heard about this at the Justice and Electoral Committee—is actually planned in 2013 in Hamilton. An individual with the means to do this who does not like any of the incumbent candidates has declared his intention to campaign against the re-election of any of the incumbent councillors in Hamilton. There is absolutely nothing in the current provisions around third-party spending in local body elections to prevent that person from doing that to place any restriction on how much money they can spend doing that or to place any disclosure requirements on that person on what they do and that seems a clear problem in the context of provisions that do impose spending caps in local body elections. 
Similarly third parties may choose to make donations to a campaign ticket. Increasingly it is a common thing in local body elections for candidates to stand under a common ticket. If a third party decided to make a donation to that ticket but not to the individual candidate on that ticket that again would be subject to no additional scrutiny. There is no requirement to disclose the donation and no cap on the spending. That could be spent on general advertising for the ticket effectively promoting those candidates but as long as it was not assigned to one of them in particular it would not be captured by the provisions in this bill. That seems clearly unfair and clearly against the spirit of having campaign spending caps in local body elections. It is my view and the view of the Green Party that this issue should have been given greater attention in this bill but I was pleased to see that it was recognised by the committee in its report which noted that the regulation of third-party spending is “absolutely necessary to prevent inequities in the future.” I want to congratulate my fellow members on the select committee on this item and I am really pleased to see it recognised. It is just a shame that we could not get that provision into this bill in time for it to come back at the second reading. I was encouraged however to hear the chair of the committee Scott Simpson in his contribution earlier express the hope that the Government might consider regulating the spending of third parties through a Supplementary Order Paper in the Committee stage and I hope very much that we will see that in this House. 
Another area of concern to us in this bill is the new powers given to the Minister of Local Government to adjourn local body elections in the case of a natural disaster or similar disruption. Currently the electoral officer is allowed to adjourn the close of voting by up to 14 days and certainly in light of the experience in Christchurch with the devastating earthquakes we can see that there is a rationale for granting some greater flexibility to suspend for longer and to suspend other parts of the election as well as just the close of voting—nomination day for example. But we do not see why it should be the Minister of Local Government through Order in Council who has this discretion to do that particularly given the current Government’s enthusiasm for postponing local elections at Environment Canterbury. It is not especially encouraging to give this power to the Minister and it is our submission that that power should be exercised not by the Minister of Local Government but by the electoral officer who is the proper person to make that judgment and to suspend the election. If we have to give extra powers it should be to the electoral officer and not to the Minister. Again we intend to move amendments to that effect when the time comes. 
There are other provisions we support in this bill that we have heard a little bit about from the Government members. Greater information about candidates will be made available including whether they live within the boundaries although a useful clarification from the select committee is to point out that they do not have to disclose their address in order to disclose that. The exclusion of goods and services of a value of $300 or less—again a sensible amendment made by the select committee. Broadly speaking we support the provisions of this bill but to sum up the basic change made by this bill is an improvement on the status quo and we support it. But it could have done so much more perhaps most important to regulate third-party spending in local body elections. It is a missed opportunity to achieve what the Minister himself has said was the aim of this legislation to bring it into line with the provisions for general elections. It is a great shame that it does not do that but we do support the bill.