Fitzsimons Jeanette: Appropriation (Parliamentary Expenditure Validation) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: Appropriation (Parliamentary Expenditure Validation) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
[Volume:634;Page:5795] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 The Greens will abstain from voting on this bill in accordance with our cooperation agreement with the Government on all matters of confidence and supply. A month ago I announced that the Greens would pay the full amount found to have been spent outside the scope of our parliamentary appropriation but that we would not support validation legislation on the principle that MPs should not use their power to legislate in order to remove themselves from accountability. Since then it has been clarified that the form taken by the legislation makes it a matter of confidence and supply so there would need to be an extremely good reason not to observe our commitment under the cooperation agreement which is to abstain. It is also clear that this legislation is actually required by the Public Finance Act and the House cannot really get around that. 
We would be entirely happy not to oppose the bill at all if all parties had committed themselves to their moral obligation to repay any spending that has been found to be outside the scope of the appropriation. However two parties have yet to make that commitment. We would be very concerned if this legislation was used by them as an excuse not to pay the money back. The obligation is simply a moral one. We can find no legal obligation on any party to make restitution for what is found to have been spent in error. But the passing of validation legislation does not absolve anyone from that moral obligation onerous though it must be for parties that like our party have reduced representation this term compared with that in the previous term. 
In the Committee stage we will support those clauses that set out the rules from here on. If the bill could be split into two we would support those clauses at the third reading too but it appears that it will not be. It is essential that the law gives us some guidance as to the meaning of “parliamentary purposes” and “electioneering”; otherwise none of us know what we can and cannot do with our leaders’ budgets right now. It is true that we were all warned that we could not use parliamentary appropriations for electioneering and I think we all agree with that. It is also true that electioneering has never been defined so we all followed a rule of thumb that we could not ask for votes for a candidate or a party and that we could not solicit money or membership in any way. 
 The Auditor-General’s 2005 report did not clarify electioneering any further than that. To the extent that it did try to clarify the rules those criteria are not applied in the Auditor-General’s 2006 report. Our 2006 spending has been audited using a different set of rules from those set out in the Auditor-General’s 2005 report. For example the 2005 report identifies a principle of democratic interaction saying that dialogue between representatives and the public is a valid and fundamental part of a democracy. Yet newspaper advertisements that invited the public to discussions with me on climate change and oil depletion were ruled out of order though they made no reference whatever to the election. 
We also have a new rule that the legality of an action changes dramatically 3 months before an election. That is despite the opinion of the Solicitor-General which the Auditor-General says he relies on that explicitly says that things lawful for the rest of a parliamentary term do not suddenly become unlawful 3 months before an election. The Auditor-General relies on the Electoral Act for that ruling which is never applied to the spending of the Parliamentary Service appropriation. It is a particularly difficult ruling to apply given that one never knows that the 3-month period had started until the election has been called which usually occurs at least a month later. So we are meant to try to second-guess when the election will be held in order to determine when spending suddenly becomes unlawful. 
The Auditor-General has applied a ruling that any mention of the future or of a vision by a party constitutes electioneering. That would seem to favour parties that wish only to preserve the status quo. I also fail to understand the application of a criterion of wide dispersal where the more widely a communication has been dispersed the more it is held to be electioneering. Under MMP list members and parties have nationwide constituencies. Surely if a communication is lawful in one place it is lawful in several places. I raised my concerns regarding all those newly imposed criteria with Mr Brady when I asked to see him and I have still not had any satisfactory explanation of the criteria that he has used. 
Since the election the Auditor-General has defined as electioneering any discussion on matters not actually before the House. No such ruling was given to us before the election and it advantages members of the Government who are likely to want to talk about legislation they are promoting rather than Opposition parties who prefer to discuss with the public legislation they would like to introduce but have not had the opportunity to introduce. 
Clause 7 defines “parliamentary purposes” in the way they have been understood for some time: excluding the seeking of votes money or members. At least with that through we can continue to do our jobs as MPs in the interim while new rules are developed before the next election. The Greens look forward to participating in that process. 
Some very serious issues of democratic principle are raised by this investigation and this ruling. Members and parties are elected to pursue certain policies on behalf of the public. Elections are or should be a contest of policies. The business of Parliament is partly about ensuring stable government and much of its lawmaking is not particularly contentious. But it is also about a contest of ideas for the future of our country. A central question is whether MPs are allowed to use parliamentary funding to discuss their policies with the public. That goes to the heart of the issue. If they are not permitted to do that then parties without rich backers will have difficulty in informing the public about what they propose and a poorly informed public cannot support a democracy. The ruling from the Auditor-General says that we may not use our leaders’ budgets to tell the public about the policies we are advocating. It is hard to see what we can then use them for. Can Dr Brash for example give the House his word that no letters were sent from his office in the 3 months before the election outlining the National Party’s policies or is it just that there is no audit trail for that sort of activity as distinct from advertisements taken out in newspapers? 
It will always be difficult to draw a line between where work as a parliamentarian stops and electioneering starts. That is why we need clear guidelines if the line is to be drawn in a different place from where we always thought it was drawn. In particular this report is a very partial audit of parliamentary funding for parties. It has looked only at advertising expenditure. If the advertising budget cannot be used to discuss our policies with the public then surely neither can our staffing budget our travel budget our accommodation budget or our phone budget. 
If staff are not allowed to prepare responses to questions from the public and the media about our policy positions it is difficult to see what they can do in the period after the House rises for the election. There is no parliamentary business for them to assist with. Parliament is in recess then in order to allow the democratic process of electing representatives to occur at which time the overwhelming public interest is in learning factually about the policies the parties are proposing. No one has ever told us that all staff must be sacked on the day after the House rises for the election which would be the consequence of applying the criterion the Auditor-General has proposed. 
The report also raises questions about the use of money allocated for MPs’ travel and other expenses during that period. It is surely absurd that we cannot use parliamentary money to invite people to a meeting to discuss our policy but we can use it for the leaders to travel to the TV debates which are totally about electioneering. 
Those are all matters that the Parliamentary Service committee must consider in order to have new rules in place before the next election. It may be that the definition of “parliamentary purposes” should be somewhat narrower than that set out in clause 7. Advertisements that do not solicit votes or money but that nevertheless make disparaging comments about other parties or simply carry slogans with no information or content might equally be held not to be for parliamentary purposes and to be solely for electioneering purposes. That is for the Parliamentary Service committee to determine in its deliberations. For the moment we have the guidance we need in order to continue to do our work as MPs.