Williamson Maurice: Appropriation (Parliamentary Expenditure Validation) Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee Third Reading 
Williamson Maurice: Appropriation (Parliamentary Expenditure Validation) Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:634;Page:5835] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) 
: 
 I start by alerting the people who are listening to this debate about the rules on election spending. The rules on election spending down at the electorate level are incredibly strict. They state that if candidates knowingly spend more than $20000 they have committed a corrupt practice and they are gone from Parliament. That happened in the Wairarapa in the 1987 election when a candidate for Labour called Reg Boorman was found to have knowingly spent more than the limit. I think in those days the figure was $10000 because electorates were smaller and it was a smaller limit; in fact it was probably not even stated in dollars but might have been in pounds back then. Reg Boorman was found to have done that and he was gone from Parliament. 
I would say the public think that is a particularly good regime to have. I think the public—more than anything—have been gobsmacked of recent times to find that whereas those very strict rules apply to each MP down at the local electorate level they do not apply to an overall political party that does exactly the same thing as that: it knowingly spends more than its limit. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: Did the Deputy Prime Minister know? 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: My colleague Tony Ryall asked whether the Deputy Prime Minister knew at the time. I guess the answer hinges on the word “knowingly”. 
Now I want to explore just one thing and I would be very keen for the Minister in the chair the Hon Dr Michael Cullen to respond to it. I have heard—and he can confirm this or not—that the former Chief Electoral Officer David Henry—he is now gone but he was the Chief Electoral Officer back in September of last year—wrote a letter. Not only did he do that but he started off with a phone call. The phone call and the letter both told the Labour Party that if it went ahead with the pledge card and distributed it then that would be accountable election expenditure and Labour would be over the limit. If David Henry did not write such a letter I want the Minister in the chair to tell us— 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: Did he send the letter? 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: Well I do not know. The Minister has a good chance to tell us. 
Bob Clarkson went under the blowtorch for his expenditure in Tauranga. Fortunately he was like most of us who always leave a little bit of leeway so that we never spend an amount quite close to 20 grand in case we are in trouble. I always make sure I am way under that so I cannot be caught. That is what we have to do in order to stay in compliance with the law. 
But if the Chief Electoral Officer wrote to the Labour Party in early September and said that if the party put out that pledge card—even if we forget about the fact that it was funded by the taxpayers which is another outrage—then it would breach the cap I say that makes this Government an illegitimate Government. It is an illegitimate Government if by breaching the spending cap it broke the law of the land—and for an illegitimate Government to be now trying to legitimise itself in Parliament would make Robert Mugabe happy. That is what this legislation would do. If members got here by false pretences and they now use the false mandate they acquired in order to make themselves the legitimate Government of the land it would be laughable in any despotic regime in the Horn of Africa. Someone such as Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlins would have pulled off that sort of trick in order to make himself part of a legitimate Government. 
So the central question that this Parliament needs to know the answer to today is whether Labour was informed in advance that if it spent the money on the pledge card it would be accountable because that would take it to over its limit and it would breach the spending cap that applies to political parties. 
Bob Clarkson 
: They’re crooks! 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: If Labour members did know that in advance—my colleague Mr Clarkson calls out that they are crooks—in my view they are guilty of a corrupt practice because that is the term the Electoral Act uses. I am not trying to get into pejorative terms or nasty words; I am trying to explain what the Act actually states which is that that is a corrupt practice. If that is not the case and the Labour Party says it does not care about the spending cap—that it will spend whatever it likes then face the consequences afterwards—then let us just get rid of any spending limitations and let the situation be a free-for-all. Would Labour be prepared to do that? No it would not. It would want the strict limits to be enforced on everybody else. 
But David Henry is the key to this issue. The Chief Electoral Officer wrote to the party—not after the event not after the election not some time later—and then it went: “Oh dear these are the rules. Maybe they have changed and maybe we have been caught out.” No sirree he wrote to Labour before the election and it ignored him.