Macindoe Tim; Mallard TrevorHon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): For the benefit of those who may have only recently tuned into this debate I want to point out that the House and previously the committee has now been debating this measure for nearly three hours and 10 minutes this morning and that was the first contribution we've heard from the Green Party. That once proud party that has constantly claimed to be champions of democracy and defenders of constitutional precedents and freedoms has today been totally disengaged and failed—failed—to answer until a couple of minutes ago with Ms Ghahraman any of the important points that have been made.We have heard frequently in this debate highlighted—Hon Clare Curran: Apologise—first reading and second reading.Hon TIM MACINDOE: I have referred to the three hours and 10 minutes this morning Ms Curran and my claim was correct. We have been in committee all morning. She may not have been here but that is the fact: that was the first contribution all morning from the Green Party.Hon Clare Curran: Don't refer to a member not in the House.Hon TIM MACINDOE: Well you can abuse me now but you were wrong and it would be nice to hear your apology.Let me continue. We have been highlighting the fact that Henry Cooke made a very good observation that this is great politics but terrible lawmaking and that has been emphasised by the failure of Government parties to engage. What we've had is Government parties demonstrating their contempt for constitutional conventions which are very important when it comes to matters of electoral law and proper parliamentary scrutiny of which there has been very little because only the National Party has genuinely engaged in this debate. Now since I'm following Ms Ghahraman let me just point out that according to the regulatory impact statement it is the Green Party that have received more than 20 times the number of foreign donations than each of the Labour National and New Zealand First parties in recent times. Now we're not suggesting that that is an indication of something dodgy about the Green Party—I don't believe that is true. But it is a fact that theirs is the party that has been receiving vastly greater numbers of foreign donations and so I'm wondering if the Greens are perhaps acknowledging that they're the problem here. It's curious therefore that no member of the Greens took a call throughout the whole of the committee stage of the debate to explain their support for a measure that bans the means by which they receive much of their funding. I hope since they haven't done so in that contribution a moment ago either that they will at least do so to their public and their increasingly disenchanted supporters who we know are feeling badly let down by the failure of the Greens to deliver in Government the same sort of energy and principle that they constantly championed when they were in Opposition.It's also very disappointing that neither the Greens nor the Minister sponsoring this bill from the Labour Party Andrew Little demanded answers from their New Zealand First colleagues about the very murky circumstances and lack of transparency over the New Zealand First Party's foundation which has emerged as the elephant in the room in this debate. I'm quite sure that it is the matter that is going to receive the greatest media attention and public comment and rightly so because—and this is a very important point to put on the record—it's those three parties opposite that voted down Dr Nick Smith's tabled amendment which was designed to bring those foundations into this bill. Well what a disgrace that is.It looks as if Mr Patterson might be going to take the next call. If that is the case would he please explain to the House and to the public why New Zealand First voted down an amendment to bring those foundations into the ambit of this bill. If he doesn't give us that explanation then all of the doubt all of the concern and all of the murk will remain in the public arena.Now many observers have quite correctly observed that that's the key issue requiring exposure to the disinfectant of sunlight. Yet as I say today Labour New Zealand First and the Greens have voted to exclude foundations from this bill's valid objectives. We in the National Party say shame on them and it exposes utter hypocrisy in what they're doing. That's what the public wanted answers to. That as I say is what the media should highlight and it's why this bill is so inadequate and simply won't meet all of its stated objectives.Unfortunately I had to leave the House for the last half hour or so of the committee stage so I'm not sure if Minister Little answered Dr Nick Smith's query about the definition of an overseas person" but if he didn't it's another deficiency in this bill that the Government ought to seek to clarify as soon as possible because it appears to include someone who is in New Zealand on a work visa. Now a person who isn't a New Zealand citizen but is here on a work visa isn't residing outside New Zealand as is the terminology in the bill so the question to the Government is: is it the Minister's intention to enable people who are here on work visas to donate to our political parties? That's a legitimate question.Now I commented in earlier debates on this bill about other inadequacies in the drafting of this bill and as we now come towards its conclusion I want to focus on a couple more because these inadequacies mean that it will almost certainly need to be amended in the future. It'll come back to a future Parliament and they will be charged with putting it right.Now another example is that I cited the illogical and still unexplained failure to include foreign donations to local government candidates and entities. The Minister claimed during the committee stage to answer the question but quite frankly he didn't. He certainly didn't do it satisfactorily. Local body candidates and entities are just as susceptible—perhaps even more so—to foreign interference and we need to have an assurance that that is another area where that particular problem won't be allowed to continue in the future. But this bill won't stop that.Let me now turn to the issue of anonymous advertisements because there are measures in this bill to strengthen the requirements around advertising and they are welcome in order to ensure consistency across advertising. As we've said repeatedly there are intentions behind this bill or underpinning this bill that we all support and that's why National will continue to vote for it. But it isn't entirely clear that the change will capture those individuals and entities whom it's intended to capture. Clarity about that from the Government would have been appreciated during the debates but as I say they remained disengaged this morning and therefore that clarity again wasn't forthcoming. There are serious issues present that the Government has not considered that may well prove to be unworkable. Political parties including National always put authorisation statements on their advertisements online but if a third party puts up an advertisement with no authorisation statement and no contact details whether it's from a foreign country or domestically we want to know—we need to know—what measures will be in place for the Electoral Commission to contact them to take it down.Now someone can do a lot of damage in a day with misinformation and the wildfire of such misinformation going viral. That is deeply unsatisfactory. It's something that this Government ought to have wanted to stop because we know that it might take some time for the Electoral Commission to approach Facebook for example to get them to take that inappropriate content down. We've seen this problem with other big global tech companies online including Google and various streaming platforms who don't like being told what they can and can't have on their platforms. Yet here we have these problems.So in the last couple of minutes let me conclude with some general observations. We all acknowledge that this issue is about genuine foreign influence foreign powers and foreign interests influencing New Zealand's process. That is just wrong. We all agree with that. We all agree that this needs to change. Concern about the risks of foreign interference is growing and it's based on recent experience in overseas elections. That's why it would have been appropriate to do this job properly and to take a little bit more time. It could still have been resolved early in the new year with a proper select committee process but no that's been denied. We know that New Zealand intelligence agencies have advised the committee—that's a matter of public record—that they have seen actions taken by foreign State actors in New Zealand. That is of concern and I assume we all want to stop that.In New Zealand donation returns indicate that the level of foreign donations received by political parties is pretty low and we've had some figures quoted in this morning's debate which show that is pretty farcical that we're having to reduce it to $50 when the average one is only $66. But anyway we assume that the same is true for candidates. But in another illustration of this Government's total incompetence this bill doesn't actually do what the public is calling for. It's another example of poorly thought-out law that doesn't achieve its stated objectives. It's now part and parcel of this Government which is just failing to deliver across a whole range of issues.So we are left with the fact that trusts and foundations such as the dodgy New Zealand First Foundation which is currently at the centre of a $500000 scandal will still be allowed under this bill. National will continue to support this bill because of its better provisions but we're deeply disappointed that as a consequence of poor process unjustified urgency and an arrogant "we know best and don't need expert advice" approach from the Government. This incompetent Government has failed again and this matter will be back before a future Parliament to put things right that they're getting so badly wrong.SPEAKER: Before I call Ginny Andersen I'm going to do a general reminder that members are not to read their speeches."