Goudie Sandra: General Debate 
Goudie Sandra: General Debate 
[Volume:641;Page:11591] 
SANDRA GOUDIE (National—Coromandel) 
: 
 What a tired desperate bereft-of- ideas-and-vision Government this current one is. It is so desperate that it is demanding National’s policy. Labour will use that to its own advantage. It will take advantage of our policy because it has none of its own. It has no ideas no vision and nowhere to go. It has nothing to offer the New Zealand public. The Electoral Finance Bill says much about the desperate state of mind of this tired incompetent Government. It is more interested in personal attacks on its opponents and bringing forward Draconian legislation to stop freedom of expression than focusing on the business of good government—a job that it has never been particularly good at. 
 Labour members are desperate so they are reduced to destructive attacks on those who would say anything to oppose their agenda. Not only do they not like to hear from those who oppose their point of view but also the proposed legislation seeks effectively to criminalise the ability of those in New Zealand who might have views contrary to the narrow agenda of Labour and its cronies. 
The strength of New Zealand’s democratic culture is found in the participation of our civil society. The political element of civil society organisations facilitates better awareness and a more informed citizenry who make better voting choices participate in politics and hold Government more accountable as a result—and we need those dissenting voices. They are organisations as diverse as the Sensible Sentencing Trust— 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: They are out there. 
SANDRA GOUDIE 
: —oh yes they are waiting and they are out there; they are keeping an eye on this and waiting to see which way the Government jumps—Greenpeace the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society and Plunket every one of those groups and all of the people who took an interest in the trans-Tasman Therapeutic Products and Medicines Bill. It is the interplay between those opposing views that is a vital part of a functioning democracy but this Government wants to shut that down. It wants to silence New Zealanders so it can try to keep those seats where it is not even doing anything. So the freedoms that New Zealanders take strongly for granted are under attack with that entirely flawed piece of legislation and it is one bill that cannot be salvaged. It represents an absolute lack of respect on the part of this increasingly authoritarian Government for the essential freedoms of democracy and the freedom of being able to criticise the Government without fear. 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: Who wrote this nonsense? 
SANDRA GOUDIE 
: Ruth Dyson knows it and everybody else in the Government knows it. They cannot get away from it. New Zealanders of all political persuasions are right to oppose this bill. In the words of Harry Truman—and maybe Sue Moroney might like to listen up seeing she is so fond of history—“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition it has only one way to go and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.” 
The reality is that the Electoral Finance Bill is a flawed bill and one that Zimbabwe’s Mugabe might be proud of. It represents an attack on the freedom of speech that is unprecedented in this country. Journalist Graeme Hunt has suggested that this crooked Labour-led Government is responsible amongst other things for “the two most self-serving bills in history to enter the house—one to validate the government’s deliberate overspending at the last election and the other to give it an unfair spending advantage in future polls.” That is exactly what the Government is doing and that is exactly what the Electoral Finance Bill is all about and Government members are trying to get away with it. They think they can pull a fast one on the public of New Zealand. Well we have news for them. 
The Coalition for Open Government which was set up to advocate for a form of our electoral finance law and which has as its patron the former chief executive of the Electoral Commission has said that it is “very disappointed with the new Electoral Finance Bill” and has “noted that the government is happy to impose a very tight regime on third parties involved in election activities but doesn’t want to apply that regime to political parties.” In other words Labour wants to be able to say whatever it wants but effectively wants everybody else to shut up. The hypocrisy of the bill is that this Government while restricting the rights of others to criticise Government policy will spend millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money to promote Labour policies. Funnily enough the bill actually exempts trade unions from communicating with their members and gives them a free run. 
The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.