Ryall Tony: Appropriation (Continuation of Interim Meaning of Funding for Parliamentary Purposes) Bill — Third Reading 
Ryall Tony: Appropriation (Continuation of Interim Meaning of Funding for Parliamentary Purposes) Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:643;Page:13234] 
Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay of Plenty) 
: 
 The only elucidation that came from that speech was the fact that we just heard 10 minutes of talk about the National Party and not one total minute about the content of this bill. This bill is all about the Labour Party being up its old tricks. New Zealanders know that the member who has just resumed his seat would not be in this Parliament if the Labour Party had not stolen $800000 of taxpayers’ money and spent it on the pledge card. Those members stole $800000 of taxpayers’ money. They had to pay it back. They had been told by the Chief Electoral Officer that if they spent the taxpayers’ money on the pledge card they would have to include that money in their election expenses. The Labour Party members said they would include it in election expenses. In the end—and it is a summary of this bill—they did not include it in their expenses and that is what this bill is all about. 
This bill is all about allowing the Labour Party to repeat the pledge card rort of 2005. Hand in hand with the Electoral Finance Bill this bill provides for the Labour Party to spend taxpayers’ money right up until election day with complete abandon and no regard whatsoever for the rules that have previously existed in Parliament. What the National Opposition has said is that we should have the rules that applied before the 2005 general election. Those rules were clear and understood. Those rules made it clear that if a party spent taxpayers’ money on electioneering that was illegal and would have to be declared in its election expense but the Labour Party ignored those rules completely. It was found to have stolen $800000 of taxpayers’ money. It subsequently stole the 2005 election. 
That has allowed Labour to get the red printing presses working overtime. We asked a number of questions in the House about this never-ending slew of material coming out of the Labour Party. We asked whether that would carry on in an election period. Here is what was amazing and this is what this bill does. If these brochures I am holding up were put out by a Labour Party MP in the week of the election they would not count as an election expense as a result of this bill. But wait for this—if a Labour Party candidate who is not a member of Parliament puts out these pamphlets they are counted as an election expense. They are counted as an election expense if a Labour Party candidate who is not a member of Parliament puts them out. Dr Cullen would not answer this question so let us hear an answer from the next speaker from the Labour Party. What is the principle that allows the Labour Party to say that because this brochure is put out by a member of Parliament it is not counted as an election expense but if this brochure together with a picture of a woman who purports to be the Prime Minister of New Zealand is put out by a Labour Party candidate then it is caught as an election expense? There is no way that that can be justified. It is Labour up to its old tricks again rorting the system in favour of its own party. 
This bill is not about what is being spent today. This bill is about what the Labour Party plans to spend in an election year and about changing the electoral law to favour Labour. Everyone in New Zealand knows that the Electoral Finance Bill and this bill are all about advantaging Labour. Labour members will do anything say anything and spend anything to win the next election. What we know is that their union mates spent well over $1.5 million at the last election by estimates in support of the Labour Party. We know they will do everything possible to secure a victory at the next election. 
Gerry Brownlee has been absolutely clear on this bill. We do not believe that this bill should be passed to allow this practice during an election period. We do not know why members of this House want to give existing parties and members of Parliament an electoral privilege that they are not prepared to give to anybody else. There is silence. Why would the Government want to give an electoral privilege only to members of Parliament and existing parties and not to other people who are standing in an election? Let us understand what that means. Labour is exempting only members of Parliament from the coverage of the Electoral Finance Bill. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: You chaired the select committee. 
Hon TONY RYALL 
: That is a good point. I did chair the Electoral Law Committee—after 1993—that finalised the MMP legislation. It was done in a multiparty way and both National and Labour voted for the legislation. I know that before I was the chairman and a member of that committee the committee worked very closely with the Hon David Caygill the senior Labour member on that committee to come up with a bill that both parties could support. Members of that committee realised that if something is done to a person or party today that person or party can come back and do the same thing the next time. That is the reason why with the Standing Orders and other procedures in this House we always rely on a multiparty or all-party agreement to achieve this. Governments have almost always realised that there will come a time when they are in Opposition and they would not want the victors of each election deciding what the rules will be. That is the reason why the two main parties and others in this House have generally more or less agreed on the nomenclature of our electoral systems. They have agreed because they know that it would be bad for democracy to have a system where the victors change the rules after every election. 
It does not worry Helen Clark Michael Cullen and Annette King—all those ageing people on the Labour front bench—because they are going at the next election. They will not be standing in 2011 but I would be worried if I was one of the younger people in the second and third rows. Labour’s intent on forcing this bill says to the Parliament and the people of New Zealand that Labour is happy with a system where the victors can write the rules to suit themselves. That is a boot that can fit on two feet. 
That is the reason why parties in this Parliament have always come to a more or less multiparty agreement on important electoral law.That was certainly the case on the Electoral Law Committee when we did the MMP legislation during the mid-1990s. We wanted a law that would endure that was durable and that enjoyed the confidence of the main parties if not all the parties in Parliament at that time. We are going to end up with this bill and the Electoral Finance Bill with legislation that will not endure. This bill will not endure. The Electoral Finance Bill will not endure because we know that there are significant parties in this Parliament that do not agree with what the Government has done. The Government could have sought a multiparty bipartisan agreement as was the case when I was chairing the Electoral Law Committee. That is what we did. We worked closely with Labour members to make sure we had legislation that would endure and legislation that would not change every time a new party took the Treasury benches. That is not good for democracy. That is why New Zealanders have a sense that this bill and the Electoral Finance Bill are just not right. They are just not fair. They are anti-democratic. They are all about entrenching the privileges that Labour has as Government. 
We all know about the clause that Labour did not want the public to see in the select committee. We will hear more about that on Thursday. The public knows that law like this should be done with the agreement of the whole of Parliament in order for the legislation to endure. We do not want New Zealand to be a banana republic a Zimbabwe of the South Pacific where the victors change the laws to favour themselves. But that is what this Labour Party is doing. It is inviting future Governments to change the law to suit themselves. I for one do not agree with that. I think we should have a law that endures and is fair for all New Zealanders. It does not matter to guys on the other side of the Chamber who will not be here in a year’s time. It should matter to the lower benches of the Labour Party because they may be in a future Parliament and they will not want a future Government to jackboot over their rights as an Opposition as this Government is jackbooting over the rights of all New Zealanders with this attack on the democratic values that most New Zealanders hold dear. The few exceptions are on the benches opposite.