Katene Rahui: Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Katene Rahui: Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:662;Page:10726] 
RAHUI KATENE (Maori Party—Te Tai Tonga) 
: 
 In May 2009 the Institute of Policy Studies in Wellington held a half-day workshop on electoral finance reform. One of the participants at that forum put forward the interesting challenge that there was very little evidence to demonstrate that big money had any impact on the overall outcome of an election. That participant suggested that it might be more appropriate for the emphasis to shift to politicians who should be bound by a code of conduct. However other participants were equally adamant that although there may be a lack of evidence to prove that money wins elections certainly a lack of money loses them. 
The Maori Party has never entered the competition over whether the most expensive campaign is likely to be the most successful. Our wealth has always been in the power of the people. Nevertheless we have been well aware of the strong views held about the impact of finances on an election campaign. A fundamental premise of our approach to electoral finance reform has been our commitment to transparency and accountability. We have supported the call of the public for greater transparency. We hope this will encourage political parties to desist from the practice of using trusts or lawyers’ accounts to obscure the identity of donors. In a post-recession conversation we believe that transparency is just as relevant to electoral finance as it is to any other aspect of our economy. At a time when banks have been able to accrue outrageous profits when shady loan sharks and the debt police are holding families to ransom and when the potential of far too many families is trapped in the stranglehold of poverty it is only right that we have clear rules in place to determine whose interests are served by covering up the use of wealth in a political party context. 
In this context then I have to say that the Maori Party has been impressed by the commitment of the Minister of Justice to encouraging wholesale support for the reforms to ensure greater certainty and transparency in the conduct of the electoral process. Anyone browsing the Ministry of Justice website can now come across all of the work that has occurred in developing options around electoral finance. They can come to the independent conclusion that a broad consensus has been achieved. The Minister has set a new benchmark in establishing transparency and accountability as hallmarks of the new electoral system—and it is a benchmark that we are pleased to support. We can now download within seconds the issues papers and proposals on electoral finance reform. We can browse the submissions. We can fast track to the slides of a presentation that Professor Andrew Geddis has delivered on the regulation of electoral finance. 
Importantly the reforms appear to be oriented in such a way as to actually encourage people to vote. One of the key turn-rounds in the policy has been with regard to advance voting. We think advance voting should be supported as a means of supporting greater uptake of the democratic right of all New Zealanders to vote. In the past anyone who elected to vote in advance was asked to make a written declaration explaining why such a step was necessary. Following the unanimous decision of the Justice and Electoral Committee in its inquiry into the 2008 general election the Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill removes the requirement for advance voters to make a written declaration before election day. From an administrative point of view this is helpful in removing another layer of costs from the schedule. More important it removes a barrier to participation. 
We saw the appeal of advance voting really take hold of the American voting public during the 2008 campaign. Some experts predicted that one-third of the voting public had banked their vote early up from 20 percent in 2004. Advance voting was in fact a popular strategy employed by Barack Obama who held enormous “Early Vote for Change” rallies flooded the networks with “Vote Early” email messages and placed advance voting ads in more than a dozen popular video games. Whether the same phenomenon would occur here of course is anyone’s guess. But we certainly support the right for a person who is qualified to vote in a particular electorate to be a special voter if he or she applies in person to vote within that electorate before polling day. Importantly we endorse the right of such persons to not complete a written declaration establishing eligibility. 
The other big wave of reforms introduced in this bill is around electoral finance. We are delighted that a party donation made by a body corporate must now be accompanied by a written statement that is signed and dated by an officer of the body corporate setting out the names of all of the associated entities of the body corporate as at the date of the statement. If there is a failure to comply with this provision the secretary of the political party must within 20 working days give back to the donor the entire amount of the donation or its entire value. In another new development third-party promoters who spend or intend to spend more than $12000 on election advertising during the regulated campaign period must register with the Electoral Commission. The register will be publicly available to ensure openness and transparency concerning the identities of third-party promoters. 
We believe that both of those aspects—the signed statement of the body corporate and the public register of third-party promoters—are very useful means of ensuring everything spent on behalf of or towards political parties is above board and open. It is common knowledge that corporate donors expect a political return on their political investment so we are pleased that any political negotiations that may result from corporate donations will be well and truly evident through the donations regime. 
We support the proposed increase in the amount of money that parties and candidates can spend on election campaigning. We agree that it should be adjusted at the rate of inflation for each general election. However in the interests of greater transparency for the general public it would be useful to know why twice as much funding needs to be available for a by-election campaign as for a general election campaign. We also support the moves to introduce more certainty to what counts as electoral advertising by modernising the definition. 
We would like to see the issue of unethical advertising addressed in further development of the bill. I do not need to remind everyone in this House of the appalling way in which some parties and advertisers have used Maori as negative fodder during election campaigning. We must never again return to the era where politicians gamble on national identity and threaten the unity that has been so desperately sought by pitching campaigns to create unnatural divisions between iwi and Kiwi. 
We are disappointed that the bill does not provide for reform of the broadcasting regime that has existed since 1990. Although we can understand that there were widely held views on this issue we cannot forget the issues that have arisen in the past over varying interpretation of rules over the broadcasting spend. We throw into that same thought the general concerns about illegal use of parliamentary funding. We understand that the relationship between the Electoral Act 1993 and Parliamentary Service legislation will now be addressed in separate legislation and we support that. However we hope to see some time frames around this issue as we would not want to see this vital area of reform slip away under the radar. 
All things considered we support this bill at its first reading and certainly look forward to the ongoing debate.