Penk ChrisCHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you very much Madam Speaker. Like my colleague and friend the Hon Paul Goldsmith I rise not with pleasure but with a sense of duty to speak about—and indeed against—the Electoral Amendment Bill. Paul Goldsmith has made tolerably clear our position on the bill at previous readings and again today which is to say that we oppose it and we oppose it for a number of reasons that I will outline and maybe expand upon a bit.First of all if we can just take a step back and consider what it is that we are doing here we are talking about electoral law; we're talking about the rules of the game by which people in this House are elected have been elected and we all hope and expect in our respective cases will be elected. These are the rules of the game that we play. We have a conflict of interest—and it's inevitable of course that these things should be in the law of the land. They should be made by legislation; so it's inevitable that Parliament has to make the rules so that we can manage the conflict of interest. But the way that we do that is by saying Well we can even out the particular interests that any given party or member has by saying 'Well as long as we can agree as nearly as possible on the rules of the game at least there is an evening out of any particular prejudices"—and I don't mean that in the ugly sense but particular inclinations—"that any of us might have.' "So that's why oftentimes—actually it used to be invariably the case that—electoral law was regarded as a matter for bipartisan or non-partisan concern and agreement failing which changes shouldn't be made. And of course we're seeing the opposite of that in relation to this bill. We've seen too this bill being pushed through in time for the end of this calendar year and therefore to be ready for election year and to have particular rules in place from 1 January onwards. And of course that's by contrast with the electoral law review that the Government has commissioned in relation to lots of other aspects of electoral law and the interconnectedness of the issues that relate to electoral law—for example thinking about donations and ways that people can contribute to resourcing a political party. It's not in isolation I would suggest that we should review such matters when you think well you can also donate labour and other resources and to treat that entirely distinctly from the subject of giving money—which is of course the donations element as contained in this bill—seems to be incoherent at best. These things should be considered as a whole. The whole electoral review should be able to take place as a coherent whole at one time. But of course this is being pushed through in time for the Government to be able to have an election conducted on terms that it considers best.I will actually say though I do feel obliged to point out that one positive aspect of the considerations at the select committee—and on which the Minister has also engaged well—has been the fact that it is not intended to be and it won't be a retrospective law. So whereas initially there was a lack of clarity in my view—and certainly we sought that certainty to say whatever the rules made in this law they wouldn't apply to anything that was done before 31 December this year; so notwithstanding that a financial year for any given party might be a 12-month period going before 1 January of next year. But nevertheless we got that clarification and that came out at the select committee. That was agreed and that change was made. So actually I do think it's fair to acknowledge that positive interaction initially with the Minister through my office via the written parliamentary questions process but then also with the select committee. I know there were colleagues on the Justice Committee permanent members no less whom I was pleased to interact with on that point. And of course the officials provided good advice in that space too.Back to the bill itself and actually just acknowledging the submissions process—and I didn't hear all the submissions I'll be honest and I didn't read all of them but the ones that I did rightly acknowledged the balance that needs to be made between privacy on the one hand and transparency on the other. I didn't actually see the submission by the Privacy Commissioner. I was quite interested to learn in the contribution made by our colleague just prior to mine Vanushi Walters that the Privacy Commissioner didn't raise any privacy issues in relation to the compulsory disclosure of political donations. I would have thought that would be a thing that any Privacy Commissioner should take very seriously and should at least raise even if they were to say "Well these concerns can be mitigated." To not raise privacy issues if you're the Privacy Commissioner—that seems to me a classic case of having one job and needing to do that well. But maybe there's a sort of joint effort across the Public Service in relation to the Reserve Bank not doing its one job either—anyway I digress.So we've heard also throughout this process that the initial justification for bringing this legislation was the court cases that have now concluded and they related to three political parties that are both inside this House now and outside this House. The argument was made "Oh well the existence of this litigation the investigation into whether the law has been followed or not indicates that there is a problem." But actually of course it's entirely possible to argue that the reverse is true which is to say that the fact we've got court cases means that where the law isn't being followed these matters are able to be brought to light. And of course you can't say with certainty one way or t'other whether there are things that are out there that haven't been brought to light. That's in the nature of an uncertainty and the difficulty of proving a negative is obvious but suffice it to say I don't think there's enough justification for bringing forward this law on the basis simply that laws that were previously in place may or may not have been followed correctly. Of course this is why we have a system where we can judge these things. And when I say "we" of course it's not the people in this place who judge them and of course that's as it should be. We have the rule of law whereby we set the laws in a transparent way those are applied and to the extent that they're not followed we have a judiciary that can speak to those and so they have.I think it's actually also worth taking a step back and just thinking about the starting point for this discussion. The presumption should be ordinarily that if a private citizen has property—and actually I should say "person" because that way we're not just talking about a natural person or a citizen; it might also be some manner of corporation. And yes that could be an evil big business in the fevered left-wing imagination that forms part of the vast right-wing conspiracy! Or it might be a union or some other body corporate but in any case a legal person that has resources should be able to do roughly speaking whatever they like with those. Of course there are limits and I think it's reasonable to have some transparency limits some sort of disclosure regime but it would be a red herring to suggest that we should have such a system—and therefore that this bill needs to be introduced—because of course we already have one. We've got rules in place already. We've got a line in the sand that the parties previously most of the parties—perhaps all of the parties; I'm not quite sure but certainly a super majority of the House let's just say—and I don't want to go down an entrenchment rabbit hole; I genuinely don't. But it's roughly been the case—David Seymour: Oh c'mon!CHRIS PENK: —don't encourage me!—that parties have agreed on where the lines should be drawn the rules of the game. We all have to follow them. When we don't there's a consequence. And so with that presumption that we can do what we like—except that there should be some limits yes—but there are limits I think that's really the overall kind of backdrop that we need to consider with doing this before we leap ahead to sort of arguing about where the lines should be and so on.But if we do want to get detailed we can say "Well the costs and the money involved is relatively little." And with all due respect to our friends in the Green Party I know very well what the member who will make a contribution for the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand will say that it's big money and it's US-style corruption and influence and all that kind of thing. We have a completely different jurisdiction. We have completely different rules already. We don't have the same commitment to freedom of expression and freedom more generally as they do in accordance with the rules set in their case by the US Constitution enforceable as that is. So really it's not an apple-with-apples comparison. The money involved in New Zealand is trifling. I think I'm right in saying that the amount that an electoral candidate can spend in any given constituency is something like $26200. I can never remember whether it's with or without GST; I should look that up some time in the next 12 months! But in any case if you think about the number of households in an electorate and if you were to send a letter to each one of them or some sort of propaganda—I mean collateral—through the post at more than $1 or whatever the cost to send something by post now that's your whole campaign.I mean we're talking very modest amounts and really and truly this is not a matter of going down some sort of slippery slope to end up in Washington DC. Certainly it's not a reason or an excuse to alter the fundamentals of our democracy which is that transparency is important but so too is privacy so too is individual freedom property rights of all persons in this country. We've got electoral law that should be applied to all should be made by all and should be for the benefit of all and I don't mean political parties; I mean the people of New Zealand to whom we are accountable. And to echo the words of my friend Paul Goldsmith public funding of political parties should not go ahead."