Parker David: Electoral (Administration) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Parker David: Electoral (Administration) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
: 
 The Labour Opposition will be supporting the Electoral (Administration) Amendment Bill. I thank the Minister of Justice for the consultative process that has surrounded this bill. He has properly engaged with Labour as indeed I am sure he has with other parties in this House in the preparation of this bill. As a consequence of that Labour members are happy to support it in its reference to a select committee. 
Initially the Electoral Commission which is a new body set up by this bill and not the current Electoral Commission was to include the Secretary for Justice as a member. Labour and I understand some other parties said that would not be right. Of course the Secretary for Justice is the head of a Government department so it would not be appropriate for that office holder to hold a role on the new Electoral Commission. The Minister agreed with that so the commission will now be fully independent and we agree that that is appropriate. I think there is still a question as to how the commission should be appointed. I have heard some people suggest that the commission ought to be appointed by Parliament rather than by the Minister as part of the Government. I think that some people may submit on that issue to the select committee. We in Labour would be interested to hear from submitters and be informed by them on that matter. 
We agree that the new entity—which as the previous speaker Nathan Guy speaking on behalf of the Minister of Justice has said merges the functions of the current Chief Electoral Officer and the current Electoral Commission—will provide an improvement in the way in which elections are run in New Zealand. New Zealand has a proud history of having non-corrupt elections. One of the reasons why we have those is our tradition of having strongly independent regulatory bodies to enforce the rules that surround elections so that the public can have faith that they have an uncorrupted honest and transparent election process. That means they can trust the election result. That in turn means that people because they think that our elections are open and honest are more likely to participate in them. If we had a cloud over the transparency of our electoral processes some people would be turned off from the electoral process and would not vote. That of itself would undermine people’s faith in democracy because in the minds of some people it would be seen to be less representative of their interests than it currently is. They would not participate in the voting process nor would they value the democratic institutions that we are endeavouring to protect. So Labour members agree with this legislation and we will be supporting it. 
I will make one negative comment which is that this bill does not clean up the problem that we have in New Zealand about the lack of transparency of donations. It is all very well for the Government to say it wants to have agreement on issues relating to electoral law but when agreement on issues relating to electoral law cannot be obtained because the Government refuses to move on its positions then I say that is self-serving on the part of the Government. The Government could improve the degree of transparency around donations to political parties. 
Paul Quinn 
: I can’t believe this. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: Mr Quinn who says he cannot believe this sat on the Justice and Electoral Committee inquiry into the 2008 general election. After every election in New Zealand we have an inquiry. It is part of the normal processes of Government; it happens every time that there is a general election. We look at the things that can be improved and in that way we have a gradual improvement in our electoral system and it is updated to take account of recent events. This year’s inquiry amongst other things looked at whether we had transparency around donations. Mr Dave Henry who is the chief executive of the Electoral Commission gave evidence at the inquiry into the 2008 general election and in particular he answered questions about donations. 
In the select committee report back to Parliament which I have before me there is a record of the spending on the electoral process that was declared by the different parties. For example the Labour Party disclosed expenditure of about $2.2 million and the National Party’s expenditure was about the same. Other parties spent less than that: the Green Party spent $1.4 million and the ACT Party spent $1.1 million. If there was transparency around donations we would expect that for the majority of that expenditure corresponding donations would be recorded for which we would know the source. But the only donations that we have transparency on were those to the Labour Party—a total of $422000 of donations. There was $2.2 million of expenditure but we knew the source of only $422000 of donations. That is not transparent enough. If we think that was not good enough I say transparency in relation to donations to the National Party was even worse. National disclosed far less than 10 percent of its sources of funds. It spent $2.2 million and disclosed the source of only $130000 of donations. The provision of transparency about donations is one of the ambitions of our electoral laws but they are not working when the source of less than 10 percent of the donations that came to the National Party was disclosed. In fact that figure was very close to 5 percent; it was closer to 5 percent than to 10 percent. Between 90 and 95 percent of National’s donations were secret and that is wrong in principle. 
We ought to have transparency around donations. No one is calling for there to be transparency around donations of $5 $10 or $100; we do not need to have that kind of level of transparency. But we do need to have transparency in terms of larger donations. The amount that at least in theory we are supposed to make transparent as to the source of donations at a constituency level is $1000. The Labour Party says that is what the figure should be in respect of donations to parties as well. Without that kind of transparency public confidence in our electoral system is undermined. We never know what policy is for sale. 
Before the election Merrill Lynch Australia said that if accident compensation was privatised—and National’s euphemism for that is “opening the work account to competition”—there would be $2 billion of accident compensation levy revenue up for grabs and $200 million of additional profit would be earned by Australian insurers. That is not in a report from me; that is in a report from Merrill Lynch Australia in June 2008. We all know that private insurers stand to gain from the privatisation of accident compensation; there is no doubt about that. But what we do not know is whether those same private insurers were contributing to the National Party. I can never prove that they were but it is wrong for our democracy to be tainted by that accusation. It is wrong for it to happen—and it may have happened; I cannot prove it—but it is also wrong even if it did not happen for our election process to be tainted by the implication that it might have happened. That in itself undermines public confidence in our electoral processes. 
There is nothing wrong with people making donations to political parties. We rely upon donations to go about the business of democracy. But we should have transparency about who is making those donations so that people can assess whether politicians are too accountable or whether they owe too much if you like to their donors in a way that reflects on a policy outcome. That is not fixed by this legislation. The Government says that is because there is no consensus around the issue of donations. But that is because the Government refuses to be part of the consensus. It is a self-fulfilling outcome which National refuses to fix. I think there is a glaring problem with our electoral system: we do not have transparency around donations. This legislation does not fix that problem.