SpeechHon KIRITAPU ALLAN (Minister of Justice): I thank the committee in advance. I think it's easier if I just respond to questions as they come in. That means I won't have too many bits of paper floating around. I know the member over there has a few questions as well. Look I'll start with the last one and then work my way through. I think that Minister Wood's question goes to the heart of these reforms in the first instance. It was around closing the gap that had been identified rightly by multiple observations. And as we've been able to see through the public disclosure of campaign funding where you could see that practice had meant that work-arounds had been pursued. That was indeed why we went to political parties with having the same like-for-like $1500 dollars for individual campaigns and $1500 dollars for party campaigns because we wanted to make sure that those types of practices couldn't be worked around in the way that the member has correctly identified. So to the overarching question: are we satisfied that there is at least a closing of the gap? Yes. The reason that we didn't expand or maintain the original proposal to have the like-for-like $1500 disclosure at both candidate and party level was because of the feedback that we received particularly from all party secretaries talking about the administrative and procedural implications which officials advised me on and we subsequently made decisions. So we have sought to close the gap by which exploitations of the system could be made. If I come to the question by the member the Hon Paul Goldsmith with respect to the splitting of donations it's like and like in some sense but the issue has been correctly identified by both sides of the Chamber. The bill doesn't directly deal with splitting of donations to avoid that closure. That was one of the original intents as I've just walked through. But yeah to that more fulsome point the lower threshold makes it harder to circumvent those disclosure requirements by the splitting of a donation and so the advice is that more people are likely to fall within the scope of that reduced threshold. The more political question there was whether there is an attempt to screw the scrum I think was the kīwaha. Was it screw the scrum"?Hon Paul Goldsmith: Skew.Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN: Skew. Screw the scrum—yeah that would be a bit odd wouldn't it? Skew. So whether—[Interruption] I'd better not get into that today—the bill would advantage one political party over another in short the response is no. All registered political parties would be required to follow the requirements set out in the bill if enacted in the same way all registered parties must comply with all of the existing requirements in the Act. The bill contains flexibility to respond to the differing impacts of the proposals on smaller and larger parties and for example the bill proposes that parties receiving less than $50000 in donations and that also have no loans within a calendar year would not be required to obtain auditors' reports for their returns. We've thought through those issues in some substantive detail. The member also raised questions about whether that general sense of trust and confidence in our political party donation regime has been caused by party practices and particularly issues that have been evident in the media and also the subject of litigation. I want to get probably to one of the amendments that we've decided to introduce as a Supplementary Order Paper whilst the committee was considering the bill that responded to the New Zealand First Foundation case in particular. What we could see there and what was highlighted in the High Court's ruling there was that the court raised a risk that parties may structure their financial affairs in a way that legally avoids Parliament's intentions for the disclosure of donations and further that risk undermining the public trust in the integrity of our political donations regime and it was something that went to the heart of why we're introducing these reforms in the first instance and it was something that we considered that needed to be addressed in advance of the next general election. In absence of doing so it would completely undermine our political party donation regime. I won't get into that in any length right now but to say—I think it was well traversed during the Justice Committee inquiry and I'm happy to take questions if there are more on it—we amended the existing definition of "party donation" in particular to make sure that the work-arounds that had been seen in the particular case and explored by the High Court in their determinations would no longer provide that work-around.Finally I think there was one question there just in terms of the way in which we seek to get support for these types of amendments. I think and I hope that it's seen that we actively do try to get bipartisan support where it's possible on these types of reforms. I know that the views were sought by the Ministry of Justice from all registered political parties both in and outside of Parliament. I've obviously had discussions with political parties. The former Minister of Justice wrote to all political parliamentary parties seeking their views on the proposals and the concerns raised have certainly been things that we have taken into consideration when reworking the amendments. The best example of that of course is the raising of the original proposal of the $1500 donation threshold for party donations and increasing that to $5000. I understand changes were made to the bill during the select committee process as a result of the submission from the National Party which we acknowledge and thank you for your efforts there. One of those changes that we made was that the bill was clarified to ensure it didn't impose any retrospective obligations on parties and that's something that we really have tried to do. But the overarching principle as to why this bill is in the ballot in the first instance is because there is evidence that says that New Zealanders did not trust the way in which political parties were receiving political donations. The public has the right to know who butters our bread and these reforms in the round are intended to address exactly those issues that have been raised with us."