Dalziel Lianne: Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill — Second Readings 
Dalziel Lianne: Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill — Second Readings 
[Volume:669;Page:15835] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 The Labour Party will be supporting the second readings of the Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill and the Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill. We believe that we have reached a workable compromise with the Government over electoral finance laws and the relevant Parliamentary Service funding rules. 
I will make just a quick comment about the Parliamentary Service rules. I am pleased that we have managed to achieve alignment between the two bills so that there can be no question of taxpayer funds being used for any form of electioneering. I think we have clarified very carefully the rules on what sitting members of Parliament can advertise in terms of the location of their out-of-Parliament offices electorate offices and those sorts of things. I think we have achieved a good result. 
In terms of the electoral finance laws there is a side issue that I will mention just to get it out of the way. I know that there will be campaign managers from one end of the country to the other who will be so pleased that they will no longer have to account for wood used to put up hoardings because finally we have been able to resolve that issue. I know that that is a triumph for democracy. It is a triumph for the volunteers who do so much to help us. Having to justify to them why a piece of wood or some hoarding material still has a photograph of Mary Batchelor on it for example in my electorate has been somewhat disturbing. That problem is going and I know that everyone will be pleased to see it go. 
There is an issue in this package that does not form part of Labour Party policy and I am referring to the disclosure thresholds but we will support them as part of a package in order to achieve the degree of consensus that the Minister has committed to finding. I would like to congratulate him and to put it on the record of House that he has attempted to do that. There has to be compromise on both sides in order to achieve that—disclosure thresholds on the one hand and spending limits on third parties on the other. We will be monitoring the disclosure rules very carefully just to see how they work in practice. However I will say that one of the things that will make it easier for us to do so is the requirement to disclose the number of donations in each band as will occur under this legislation. That will enable us to assess whether there is a shift to donations to act as an avoidance mechanism of the disclosure rules. 
Critical to Labour’s support for the electoral finance legislation was the ability to have spending limits imposed on third parties to avoid what I have always described as the Americanisation of our political system. There was real debate on this issue although a lot of the commentary in the submissions came into the territory of the Electoral Referendum Bill. I think the reason for that was that under the Electoral Referendum Bill there will be access to television advertising and there is no access to television advertising for third parties in election campaigns. 
When we get into the question of television advertising of course the unfettered ability to spend any amount of money on television advertising is of significant concern. I think that is what drove a lot of the submissions to focus more on the Electoral Referendum Bill on that subject rather than on this legislation. However there was commentary from submitters on the question and the majority of people fell on the side of there needing to be some constraint on third-party spending. The amount we agreed at the select committee was $300000 which represents the bottom end of the range for a medium-level nationwide ad campaign in the retail sector. 
I thought it would be worthwhile talking about why we have our position on spending limits. I will go back to the 1986 Royal Commission on the Electoral System. I thought the commission’s summing up of spending limits was very useful. The commission stated: “It is neither fair nor conducive to an informed electorate if wide discrepancies in access to resources mean some parties or groups are denied the chance to communicate their views effectively. Nor is it fair if some in the community use their relative wealth to exercise disproportionate influence … it is important that the electorate is fully informed both about significant sources of political finance and about the uses to which it is put.” 
I think that sums it up very well. Whether or not there is actual influence—and as submitters said the influence could be either way—some people might be switched off by the degree of negative advertising that is promoted by a third party. But I think the royal commission was saying that it was equally concerned about—not the fact of but the perception of—undue influence or disproportionate influence being attracted to those who had more money to spend than other members of the community. 
The legislation as introduced provided that any group or person who was not a candidate or party could publish an election advertisement as long as it contained a promoter’s statement which included a name and address and as long as the total advertising expenses did not exceed more than $12000. If those expenses totalled more than $12000 they would have to register. That was all the legislation provided for. 
I want to now talk about why we wanted this change and I want us to go back to 2005. In 2005 for the first time major campaigns were waged by parties and their supporters to do one of three things: to avoid the regulated period to remain outside the existing advertising rules or to hide their true identity. All three aspects were features of the 2005 election campaign. 
Labour has been more than happy to support reform but we were concerned that changes would simply legalise the harm that we were trying to remedy with our attempt to change the electoral finance laws back in 2008. I do not believe that the right to freedom of speech equates to the right to pay for advertising. That is not freedom of speech; that is freedom of paid advertising. It is paid speech not free speech. I think it is a fair distinction to make between the two. It should not govern who has a say on real matters of constitutional importance. Of course people should be able to speak out freely but I do not see that that matches what is being proposed here. 
It would be worthwhile for everyone with an interest in transparent democracy to read or reread a book called  
The Hollow Men: A study in the politics of deception 
 and reflect on who sits in the House now and was identified as playing a role in a coordinated advertising campaign scripted by an organisation called Crosby/Textor. The advice given was to stop attacking the then Prime Minister the Rt Hon Helen Clark on her weaknesses—few that those may have been—but to attack her on her strengths. A billboard campaign that used a distorted photo of the former Prime Minister positioning her against the smiling face of one Don Brash was designed to do just that—and it almost worked. “Iwi/Kiwi” was one of the more infamous messages from those billboards. So when someone tells me that a lack of spending limits is about free speech forgive me for my cynicism. 
Then we had the disgraceful actions of the Exclusive Brethren which not only sought to discredit the Government of the day and the Green Party in targeted brochures that failed to disclose the true identity of its promoters but also was deliberate in its attempt to do so. The Exclusive Brethren had been to the Electoral Commission with its pro - Don Brash brochures which had his pictures on them and on finding that the brochures would have to be authorised by the National Party and that they would count against National’s campaign spending limits it designed those utterly misleading attack brochures against the Government of the day and the Green Party picking the issues of defence health and drug law reform. The Exclusive Brethren has done that not only in New Zealand but also in Australia and other parts of the world. 
Dr Russel Norman 
: Steven Joyce I believe. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: Well we can name Steven Joyce; I will accept the interjection because that was exactly who I was referring to earlier in terms of the design of the billboards that were the set-up for what was to happen later. I think that we should never forget why this legislation is necessary and why we are happy to support it now that there are spending limits on those third parties.