English Bill: Electoral Finance Bill — In Committee 
English Bill: Electoral Finance Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:644;Page:13605] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 Part 3 of the Electoral Finance Bill outlines the liability of candidates party secretaries and third parties; describes issues about search warrants; and sets out the punishment for things like corrupt practice. One group of people who can be guilty of corrupt practice are MPs. They can be guilty of it. We have attempted in the last couple of weeks to find out from the Minister what MPs have to do to make sure they are not guilty of corrupt practice. Why would we worry about that? We worry about it because one bunch of MPs in the last election committed a corrupt practice and got away with it. The Labour Party broke the ceiling on election expenditure and escaped only because the police decided not to prosecute. 
For the next election I want to avoid committing a corrupt practice. We have spent a couple of weeks asking the Minister what constitutes acceptable activity for members of Parliament who are excluded from the coverage of this bill. She cannot tell us. She has tried three times now and got it wrong. Today she did not keep an undertaking to the House to give us her interpretation. The reason for that is that the last interpretation she gave was wrong. I would be guilty of corrupt practice if I exceeded the limit on candidate spending by going out and saying: “When we become the Government we will cut taxes.” I would be liable for prosecution and punishment of $40000 or a term of imprisonment if I did that because the Minister of Justice—the stupid incompetent and lazy Minister of Justice— 
Hon Annette King 
: I raise a point of order Madam Chair. I think the public deserve to have a debate that is seemly and is not filled with personal abuse. That member is known for being personally abusive. The public have just heard it again today. You need to take action against a man who is angry and wants to throw around invective against people in this Committee. It is not seemly. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: What is your point of order? 
Hon Annette King 
: That is my point of order. It is a point of order. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: I say to the member that he should avoid using personal abuse. It brings disorder to the Committee and I ask him to desist. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: The Minister of Justice has shown her incompetence to the House. Members of Parliament after 2 years of the Government making policy and after 6 months of the select committee looking at this bill still have no idea what the law means as applied to MPs. And that is just us let alone everybody else. Everybody else can face punishments for an illegal practice. It is $40000 in the case of someone who is a financial agent and $10000 in the case of any member of the public. The member of the public who is reading this law still will not know what constitutes an election advertisement and still will feel very concerned at the breadth of the definition of what amounts to publishing an election advertisement. It still includes anything someone says that indicates a preference for a political party said in any manner. If we get it wrong there is a $10000 fine. 
The Minister has said that the way to deal with this stupid law is to ignore it and apply common sense. Well the courts cannot. How is any member of the public able to predict what the court will decide is inconsequential? How can we tell? There is no precedent. There is no interpretation from the Minister the incompetent Minister of Justice. People have no protection from the punishment in this law in making up their own idea making up their own version of what amounts to inconsequential. 
I say to the Minister that there is no law of common sense; there is only the law. People deserve to know what the law means when they face such stiff penalties for breaking it. I will make this forecast now: hundreds if not thousands of people will break this law next year. That is certain. It is just that they will not know they are doing it. Well-intentioned people law-abiding people who are trying to comply with the law will break it. 
Of course the effect of this is what Labour wants. Going out and telling people that if they have a political opinion that breaks the rules they will incur a $10000 fine will of course have a freezing effect. As the Prime Minister has said for the benefit of the Greens if we want to have an opinion we had better consult a lawyer. I agree. If we want to have a political opinion next year that costs more than 10c then we had better consult a lawyer. 
The Minister of Justice the incompetent Minister of Justice does not know what it means. If we get it wrong we can face a $10000 fine. 
David Benson-Pope 
: Nasty angry former leader. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: That member can talk about incompetence. Look what happened to him. Has he not seen the display put on by the Minister of Justice in this Chamber? She came down to the Chamber to give an interpretation of the law and had to come down 2 days later and say it was wrong. And it was wrong because the interpretation she gave was stupid. It said that a member of the Opposition could not say what he or she was going to do after the election. What do we think elections are for? What do we think the public are listening to? Labour says that Opposition members could break the law if they tell the public what they will do if they are elected. Is that not stupid? What is the word for it? Well among Labour members it is the paranoid arrogant expression of their desire to clamp down on political opinion and fine someone $10000 if he or she gets it wrong.