Wilkinson Kate: Electoral Finance Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Wilkinson Kate: Electoral Finance Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:644;Page:13533] 
KATE WILKINSON (National) 
: 
 I am pleased to take a call on this part of the bill. I sought some calls yesterday but unfortunately I was not one of the chosen ones. I will devote my time firstly to clause 38 then if I have time look at the definition of “type of party” which is included in election advertisements in clause 53 I think it is. 
Clause 38 “Return of party donation received from same donor exceeding $20000” is part of the legal minefield that this Government is creating with this bill. It is part of the confusion part of the complexity because this clause will require every financial agent—who will of course have to be the candidate as nobody else will want to be a financial agent because of the onerous obligations and responsibilities—to file a return a special return of donations within 10 working days when a particular donor’s running total of donations for the past 12 months exceeds $20000. As if candidates do not have enough to do without working out how many donors there are and when their running totals will actually exceed $20000! They have to fill in bureaucratic forms and file a return setting out the donor’s name the address of the donor the amount of the donation and the date of the donation. This return has to be filed in the correct form with the Electoral Commission and that has to be done within 10 working days of the donation being received. 
Clause 38 is just one of many clauses that have been born out of paranoia that a donor will give a lot of money to a party in an election year but that this fact will not be revealed until the annual return of donations that comes out the year after the election. Donations exceeding $20000 are hardly uncommon. In 2005 only 16 percent of Labour’s total revealed donations were donations of $20000 or less. Most of Labour’s revealed donations exceeded $20000. 
This bill is pure bureaucracy at its worst and even more of a bureaucratic burden on financial agents—and for what? I would like the Minister to tell us how many more staff will be required in the Electoral Commission office not only to deal with anonymous donations—to be the receptacle of a bank account for anonymous donations—but now to receive files and to note all the returns from financial agents for donations where the running total exceeds $20000. This clause is not needed which is why there is a Supplementary Order Paper from my colleague Chris Finlayson deleting it in its entirety. 
This bill has been drafted in undue haste and its implications have obviously been poorly considered if considered at all. But as has been said it is a great example of how when it comes to making law more haste can actually mean less speed. 
I turn now to clause 53 of this part which defines election advertisements. I do that because I want to refer back to the interpretation clause and in particular to the phrase “type of party”. I ask what is actually meant by “type of party”. As a comparison I say if one builds a house and the foundations for that house are not right the house will never be right. In a sense the law is like that. The definition clauses and the interpretation of a bill are the foundations of that legislation and these definitions are flawed. 
In clause 5(1)(a) which talks about “election advertisement” and refers to “words or graphics” to encourage “voters to vote or not to vote” the particular words I am interested in are “for a type of party”. I would like to know for example what a “type of party” is. The question that has been asked is whether the Government is a type of party. Does “type of party” mean centre parties Opposition parties or Government parties? We know that the Electoral Commission has said that given that there is more than one party in Government then yes a Government party is a type of party. However the Minister has answered the question in the Chamber with the response: “I certainly do not believe that this is the case. It depends on the context in which the advertisement is used.” And then she said “It is not my job to interpret that.” But it is the Minister’s job to ensure that legislation passed under her watch is clear unambiguous and certain and this has not happened in relation to this clause or in fact in relation to many other clauses.