Dunne Peter: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDunne Peter: General Debate[Sitting date: 18 June 2014. Volume:699;Page:18628. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PETER DUNNE (Minister of Internal Affairs):Tempted as I am to do otherwise I will give Mr Cunliffe the charity of my silence as he seeks to work his way out of a nigh impossible predicament. I want to talk about another couple of issues that are in a similar vein and have the potential to adversely impact upon the current election campaign.It used to be said that every New Zealander enjoyed one vote of equal value. What we are seeing through the antics of Mr Dotcom and Mr Craig is a sense of people with large sums of personal wealth to divert the political process in such a way to promote their own objectives. I think that is reprehensible and I think strongly particularly when you think of some of the crackpot notions they are both promoting that it is something that New Zealand can well do without. In Australia another crackpot called Clive Palmer the man who brings a new car to Parliament every day spent $12 million to buy his way into the federal Parliament at the last election. An eccentric football team manager in the United Kingdom spent £1.5 million funding the United Kingdom Independence Party to spread a poisonous racist message through Britain during the last European and local elections. We are now seeing the same trend starting to appear in New Zealand.So one of the tasks that the Electoral Commission and the appropriate select committee in the next Parliament will need to confront in my view is examining the level and limit of personal donations to political parties. I have no objection to people supporting political parties—funding them making their donations in a way that is open and accountable—but I think there is a clear line to be drawn between that sort of upfront open process and rich boys with their toys simply funding political parties to promote their own selfish objectives. I think most New Zealanders would agree with that objection.The second point that I want to raise relates to an issue that has been around this House from time to time. It has got the colloquial name of waka jumping. We have got it on the agenda at the moment because of the Mana-Internet agreement which actually ceases to be 6 weeks after the election. So in the event that Mr Harawira retains his seat a whole number of Dotcom MPs arrive here and clearly after 6 weeks they walk away from the arrangement. They have got no legal status no moral authority and yet they sit in this Parliament draw the privileges the allowances and the money and promote Mr Dotcom’s continued residence in New Zealand.It is time for this Parliament to revisit the legislation that was in place some years ago but that was stalled in the end because of high horses. Members of Parliament who are elected in constituencies are accountable to those constituencies. But members of Parliament elected on a party’s list are primarily accountable to that party and when they choose to leave that party their moral and political mandate goes with them and they should be required to leave this Parliament.We need to revisit that situation and amend the electoral legislation again to make it clear that list members of Parliament who for whatever reason usually incredibly ill-founded and ill-considered decide to leave their party during the term of a Parliament do so but they leave Parliament as well. Otherwise we face the prospect in the next Parliament of a loose unit group of MPs coming in here on someone’s coat-tails—and we have had a lot of debate about coat-tailing provisions—but actually intending to desert the coat-tail as soon as they get here. What could be more reprehensible than that?So when we are talking about standards and the debate today has generally focused on the political standards of the Leader of the Opposition there are broader standards here in question. When we are talking about them let us look at the system. Let us ensure that no one can buy an election in New Zealand in the way that we are seeing two characters trying to do at the moment. Let us also ensure that people who are elected to this Parliament by the voters of New Zealand serve their terms on the basis of the allegiance for which they were elected. If times move on and an electorate MP feels that they cannot do that then they face the judgment of their electorate at the next election. They have that authority. But if a list MP does not and we have had one case already in the term of this Parliament then that person leaves Parliament full stop.There ought to be a consensus around this House that that is the case and there ought to be a move for amending the Electoral Act accordingly in the new Parliament to make sure that we deal with that aberration at the very least. Unless we deal with the former question I think we are headed into a very sad shoddy and potentially corrupt period of New Zealand politics.