Donald Rod: Inquiry into the 2002 General Election — Consideration of Report of Justice and Electoral Committee 
Donald Rod: Inquiry into the 2002 General Election — Consideration of Report of Justice and Electoral Committee 
[Volume:617;Page:13119] 
ROD DONALD (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 It is an unusually warm evening and I seek leave for members who so wish to be able to remove their jackets for the remainder of the evening. 
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is. 
ROD DONALD 
: I thank fellow members! I am delighted that we are having this debate this evening. The  
Inquiry into the 2002 General Election  
is an important report that normally would not have seen the light of day in the House because members’ bills would have taken up the available time. I believe that this is an unintended insult to select committee members who toil over reports such as this and I think we should remedy this deficiency by setting aside time to debate select committee orders. That is exactly why the Green Party supported the Clerk of the House David McGee in his proposal to the Standing Orders Committee last year to establish a dedicated time each week to debate select committee reports. 
I am very sorry that the Standing Orders Committee did not adopt that recommendation because this report is not the only one worthy of debate. If members look at the Order Paper this evening they will see that we could also have debated the Finance and Expenditure Committee’s report on the Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s Monetary Policy Statement the Health Committee’s inquiry into hospital-acquired infection and even the Social Services Committee’s briefing on the work of Parentline. All of that is important work undertaken by select committees that deserves not only to end up on the Order Paper but to have the chance to be debated before the full Parliament. 
I am looking forward to the National Party’s contribution to tonight’s debate. I believe that its campaign at the last election was quite extraordinary. Despite National being the party that created MMP by legislating for it in 1993—and I congratulate the party on honouring its 1990 election commitment—it failed MMP 101. I am always interested to hear what National members have to say on how we should run elections. I had something in common with Mr Tisch at the general election inquiry but I am afraid the majority on the committee defeated the Greens on some of the changes we were trying to achieve. 
 So I am both pleased and disappointed in the outcome of this inquiry. My pleasure remains on hold however until the recommendations in the report especially the limited ones on reforming the broadcasting rules become law. That is because I was on the review of the 1996 election and we made exactly the same recommendations. A bill was introduced into Parliament; it went right through the select committee process and was reported back to Parliament and if my memory is correct it was carried over at the 1999 election but then was quietly discharged by the Labour Government. So I urge this Labour Government to get on with progressing the amendments to the Broadcasting Act this year in order to save the Electoral Commission the unnecessary work next year that the current rules require it to carry out. 
Like Mr Barnett I support the recommendation of the committee to increase broadcasting funding for the 2005 election to $3.2 million. That fund has not increased since 1990 so an increase is long overdue. But more money is a poor substitute for introducing proper State funding for political parties. So to that end I have to support the first recommendation of the committee which is to undertake a fundamental review of the law relating to parliamentary elections and that that review be completed and any changes be in place for the 2008 election. That at least I hope will be a step in the right direction but I urge Tim Barnett the chair of the select committee to ensure that it gets started on that work. 
Again a review is still a poor substitute for some action. The action we needed was a range of initiatives which happen to be outlined in the Green Party minority view in this report. The first concern we have is that the committee chose not to address the glaring need to improve the donation disclosure regime. The current rules on anonymous donations are quite frankly inadequate and lack any look-through provisions for front organisations such as the National Party’s Free Enterprise Trust. That makes a mockery of the existing regime and clearly points to the need for greater transparency to give the public confidence that political parties are not beholden to their funders. That means we need a limit on anonymous donations—say $250—and above that every donation has to be declared. 
The second failing of the committee was its refusal to grapple with the State funding issue that I mentioned before. The 1986 royal commission recommended such a step in concert with the introduction of proportional representation and our nearest neighbour Australia has had a robust system in place for many years. It would not have been difficult for the select committee to propose a framework that could operate either alongside or as a replacement for the present regime. What is certain is the need for change to ensure that the public is well informed about the policies and candidates of the parties. What is also certain is that what we have now is a disaster. One has only to look at the allocations at the last election to see that. National received $1.45 per vote United Future received 55c per vote and the rest of us were somewhere in the middle. The allocation system was arbitrary rather than fair. 
The third disappointment that the Green Party has is that the select committee did not properly address—or even report on—the arguments for and against the removal of political party representatives on the Electoral Commission and the Representation Commission. I look forward to my colleague Richard Prebble supporting me on that point because it is patently unfair in an MMP Parliament with seven parties for only two of them to be represented on those bodies. It should be noted that in the Electoral Commission’s own submission to the 1996 election inquiry the commission itself recommended that all political party representatives be removed. In the Representation Commission’s 1995 report it stated that it is difficult for the commission to maintain a reputation of independence in relation to an alleged leak of provisional boundaries by a political party representative on the commission. 
At least I hope those matters will be addressed when the review of the electoral organisation structure takes place and at least that review I hope will look at combining the Chief Electoral Office and the Electoral Commission into one body that is statutorily independent from the Government of the day. 
Another matter the select committee did not address—and it therefore failed to complete its task—was the issue of entrenchment because some sections of the Electoral Act currently enjoy protection while other fundamental sections remain subject to amendment by a simple majority. In particular I refer to section 45 which defines the Maori seats. Whether one believes that they should exist or not they should enjoy the same protection that the general seats have under sections 35 and 36. Equally section 168 which defines the method of voting is entrenched but the much more crucial section 191 which defines how many seats there are and how the party votes are applied and determines what the party vote threshold is is not entrenched. Those matters deserve to be addressed as does the ongoing problem with tolerance. 
I believe that the tolerance needs to be increased to plus or minus 10 percent. There is absolutely no reason to maintain the current level of tolerance when it is the party vote that determines the number of seats each party wins not the electorate votes. There are some very good arguments for increasing the tolerance in paragraphs 66 and 67 of the report. 
Finally I would like to finish as we come to the celebration of the 150th year of this Parliament with my concern that we desperately need to adopt a programme of civics education in our schools in this country. I believe our democracy is in danger because our young people in particular think this place is irrelevant to them. According to the New Zealand Election Study survey at the last election 38 percent of under-29-year-olds did not bother to vote and that contributed to the turn-out dropping from 85 percent in 1999 to 77 percent in 2002. I believe it is the responsibility of all of us in this House to reverse that trend and to improve the turn-out. I doubt that we will improve our behaviour as a way of encouraging more young people to vote but at least we can adopt and implement a civics education programme in schools to try to point out the positive features of our representative democracy.