Willis NicolaNICOLA WILLIS (National): Well I have to admit to sensing a rich vein of irony in the House tonight because we just had a speech from the Green Party member in which she talked about dark forces she talked about the terrible influence of big money in politics and of interference in elections and yet here I've been looking at the returns for overseas donations since 2011 and what do those returns tell us? Well what they tell us is that the Green Party has had more overseas donations since 2011—more donations—than any other party in the Parliament. In fact I've gone through the numbers and the numbers are astounding because here we have in 2018—how many overseas donations did the National Party file in its return? That's right—zero. How many from the Greens? Fifty-seven. Then what happened in 2017? Sixty overseas donations to the Green Party. But you know 2015 was a ripper of a year for the Green Party on the overseas donations front: 300 overseas donations that year. So if the member Golriz Ghahraman wants to be concerned about overseas donations and the influence they can have she should perhaps start by looking at her own party. Once she's done that the next thing she should consider is the party that is in coalition with the party that her party supports because here we have a member that is very happy to talk about free speech for sale and to talk about her concern about the fact that money could be influencing politics and yet where was she in the past two weeks when we had it on the front pages of New Zealand's newspapers when in every cafe around the country people were talking about New Zealand First and the donations it is hiding through the New Zealand First Foundation? What did the Green Party have to say about that? Hon Member: Nothing. NICOLA WILLIS: That is right—the sound of silence. So what you need to understand is that your principles matter when it suits you but you leave them to one side when it doesn't and that's the way that the Green Party wants to conduct politics. Then we look at this bill because here we are we're at the second reading. Now normally at the second reading normally at this stage in the debate we would reflect—wouldn't we—on the select committee process. We would reflect on the submissions we'd heard and on the members of the public who'd come and shared their views about whether this bill had the right wording and whether it was going to be implementable about any gaps it might have and questions it leaves unanswered. We would have had a select committee process where electoral law experts—that Golriz Ghahraman would otherwise probably be quite happy to quote in this House—would have made their submissions and would have put in their considered thoughts. But tonight we don't have the opportunity to reflect on whether this bill really does what it says it wants to do because the Green Party voting alongside Labour and the New Zealand First Party have denied New Zealanders the opportunity to have their say. That's the Green Party's idea of democracy tonight. Their idea is Actually we know best. We'll just say yes to this bill. We all know all this bill does is reduce the limit for the number of donations. It doesn't actually get to any of the bigger issues but we'll support it going through under urgency. We will deny the rights of New Zealanders to have their say because it suits us on this occasion." Normally tonight we would also have had the opportunity to think about whether or not this bill was doing what it set out to do. I am left with many many unanswered questions. My unanswered questions start with what I think is actually the fundamental issue which is: does there remain the ability for foreign States to circumvent New Zealand's electoral donations laws in a way that allows them to influence elections? I don't think that question is answered by this bill at all because I am still very wary of the fact that a foreign State could potentially provide money to a New Zealand - based company or resident who could then lawfully donate to a political party or candidate. Now this is my question. It may be answerable but we have not had the opportunity to examine that question because the Government is set on rushing this through. That's why I'm cynical because I think that actually we deserve an answer to that question. I think it is fundamental. If we are in this House joined in a desire to protect our democracy from undue foreign influence then we owe it to both ourselves and our democratic principles and to New Zealanders to properly answer that question. Why is Minister Little afraid to answer that question? It stinks to high heaven that he will rush this bill through to get a dirty headline saying that he's banning something when actually there is absolutely no proof in this legislation before us that the ban is enforceable in any way. So that's one question I have. The next question I have is exactly how Mr Little wants to define this idea that people will be banned from making donations "on behalf of" others. I'd really like to know how the Green Party secretary is going to look into that one. The Green Party secretary in this legislation is charged with being the arbiter of whether or not someone has received the money they are donating to a party from a foreign actor. So what will the Green Party do? Will they question people and ask whether in fact the money was from Greenpeace the foreign entity or whether it was from Greenpeace the domestic entity? I'm not sure how they'll go about it. I want to know what "on behalf of" means. I'd quite like to hear some legal experts give me their views on that. I'd like an opportunity for some of our scholars in New Zealand some of the people who are experienced in examining these things from a neutral perspective from a non-partisan perspective—I would like them to have the opportunity to look hard at this bill and answer that question of whether or not "on behalf of" will be enforceable in our courts. Mark my words I guarantee for you over the next six months over the next 12 months or so long as this legislation remains in this form there will continue to be questions asked in New Zealand about the outsized influence foreign actors could be having in our democracy. For so long as those questions are being asked then the Government has failed in its intent in the purpose of this bill. You see the problem is—and I think Labour should've worked this out by now—window dressing works for a day or two. You can promise 100000 KiwiBuild houses but when you don't deliver and there's only 400 then the proof is in the pudding. In this bill we have a grand promise—we have a promise that foreign donations have been banned. Well the members opposite hang their heads because they know that it does nothing of the sort and if they did think it did something of the sort they would've been quite happy to put it through a select committee process. Actually we could've had a shortened process and that would've been absolutely fine. I'm sure that we would've preferred a longer one but some sort of a process some sort of scrutiny—no they have shied away from that. Then I'm left with this question of why does this regime apply to the general election but not to local government elections? What's the reason for that? Why do foreign donations matter when it comes to elections for the Parliament but not elections for city councils? Again no opportunity to have that question addressed. Then we finally come to this question of anonymous donations because under this bill anonymous donations are still permitted. So how are we to expect that it will be checked whether an anonymous donation comes from a foreign actor or not? This bill is unable to give us an answer to that and there has been no select committee process to answer that. In this bill we have a classic case of it being more important to be seen to be doing something—more important for Golriz Ghahraman to get up in the House and talk about dirty money and talk about influence and talk about the joys of free speech—than it is to actually put those principles into the hard practical work of detailed legislation. Sitting here we have members who have said that yes we share the Government's concern about the potential influence of foreign actors in our democracy and that we are prepared to have a conversation and work in a bipartisan manner to protect that principle—to protect the principle that we will be free from foreign interference. We had an opportunity for the Minister to work with us to come up with a workable practical regime. The Minister got impatient he got angry we didn't have that conversation and New Zealand is the worse for it. I did not expect to be in the House tonight speaking on the second reading of an urgent electoral amendment bill. What I would expect is that when it comes to electoral amendments we would always have the opportunity to consider them in full to scrutinise them and to ensure that they do what they say they will do. I do not have that confidence in this bill but I am confident that it is a step that is in the right direction and that it lowers the threshold for donations from foreign actors and I absolutely support that. But what a lost opportunity we have tonight—a lost opportunity to do this properly. I lament the atrocious process I lament the lack of scrutiny and members opposite should hang their heads in shame."