Ryall Tony: Electoral Matters Bill — In Committee 
Ryall Tony: Electoral Matters Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:622;Page:17267] 
Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay Of Plenty) 
: 
 There are two or three particular areas that I would like to draw to the Minister’s attention and seek his comments on. The first relates to clause 26 inserting new section 80A “Duty to report suspected offences”. The reason why I raise it with the Minister is that I seek his comment on whether there should be some element of discretion for the Electoral Commission not to refer minor breaches of the Broadcasting Act to the police. Members who have been in the House for any length of time will recall the debacle we had in 1996 when I think a quarter of the members of Parliament who were elected had their spending returns referred to the police. Their spending returns were referred to the police because of a myriad of minor technical details. 
For example I am aware that a number of returns were referred to the police by the electoral office because members had failed to put on their returns the street number of a company that they had paid an election expense to and a number of spending returns were referred to the police because members had failed to identify correctly the address or the name of the person to whom an election payment was made. As I recall the situation I think every party in the Parliament had members’ spending returns referred to the police. Now that was patently ridiculous because the electoral office did not seek that information from the members involved but the members had to put up with having their returns referred to the police and the uncertainty that was attached to that. Thank goodness the police exercised their discretion and decided that that was a complete and utter nonsense and a waste of police time. So I would like the Minister to consider whether there is an option for the Electoral Commission to either have opportunities for people to remedy any potential breaches or have some discretion in respect of minor breaches. New section 80A “Duty to report suspected offences” inserted by clause 26 does mean that if United Future as it did last time fails to put its spending return in on time but puts it in the next day or if United Future fails to state the address of a person to whom it paid a cheque then that return technically has to be referred to the police. Indeed that happened in 1996 and again in 1999. 
A second point I would like the Minister to comment on is why we are continuing with the charade of opening and closing addresses. I wonder why he is not prepared to entertain the idea of allowing parties the choice of whether to spend their resources on producing opening and closing addresses. Frankly there is such a plethora of media now that very few people tune into the opening and closing addresses. Some of them are pretty awful and they do not maintain the public’s interest. I suspect if we were to pick up on the point that Mr Franks raised about the opportunity for parties to successfully put their message to the voters we would realise the resources being spent on producing opening and closing addresses and the free time that is contributed to them would be much better spent elsewhere. So why can parties not have the choice of how that taxpayer resource is spent? 
I wonder whether the Minister can also comment on why we are continuing with the prohibition on paid election programmes in section 70(2)(c)(ii) of the principal Act which is amended by clause 13. Essentially that is a restriction on the ability of individual candidates to promote their election outside the election period. What that means is that candidates who have been selected by the National Party—such as Gil Stehbens who is going to be the next National MP in Rotorua or David Bennett the next National MP in Hamilton East do not have an opportunity to advertise their candidacy and their availability on the radio but sitting members of Parliament do. Sitting members of Parliament are able to advertise their candidacy under the cloak of their constituency services. I have been in parts of the country where electorate MPs advertise their availability on the radio which in my view skirts around the restrictions on the ability of individual candidates to promote themselves.