Copeland Gordon: Appropriation (Parliamentary Expenditure Validation) Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee Third Reading 
Copeland Gordon: Appropriation (Parliamentary Expenditure Validation) Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:634;Page:5927] 
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) 
: 
 The Auditor-General as is well known decided that some expenditure by United Future in the 2005 election was electioneering expenditure and he therefore concluded that that expenditure was unlawful. He did not say it was criminal and he did not say it was illegal. The word that he used was “unlawful”. Anyone in this House as has happened in this debate who claims that this expenditure was criminal and that it represented thievery is simply guilty of politically motivated slander. That is the simple truth. Anyone who says the expenditure was illegal is plainly wrong. The correct term is that it was “unlawful”. 
Madam Speaker’s report to the House stated that “reimbursement is not legally necessary”. She went on to say however that reimbursement “must be considered seriously if public confidence in the Parliament is to be maintained.” United Future took those words—and I would suggest that challenge—from Madam Speaker very seriously indeed because this is a very serious matter. We gave serious consideration therefore—as we were asked to do—to the whole question of whether we should repay the money deemed by the Auditor-General to have been unlawfully spent. Accordingly we made a public declaration that we will repay the amount deemed to have been unlawfully spent. 
I need to say that reimbursement comes at great personal financial cost to our small team of three MPs. I did the numbers and probably on a per capita basis the greatest cost will lie with the New Zealand First MPs and we are No. 2. Why? Because we had eight people in Parliament when the money was spent and now we are only three. Nevertheless we are determined on that course of action because it is the right thing to do. I must say that for me personally it is not an enjoyable experience. But at least I have a clear conscience in relation to any wrongdoing on my part or on the part of my party. 
United Future acted in good faith throughout the 2005 election and we carefully considered every expenditure we undertook as to whether it fell within what we understood clearly to be the rules. Those rules have been substantially unaltered since 1989—hence this validating legislation goes back to that date. We asked Parliamentary Service—pretty much on a case by case basis ahead of committing the expenditure—whether it deemed that the expenditure fell within the rules. The Auditor-General himself conceded to United Future’s leader the Hon Peter Dunne that at least our party—I am not speaking for others—acted in good faith throughout. That is very important to me; it is very important to United Future. To break the law inadvertently is one thing; to break the law deliberately is quite a different matter. There is a huge moral difference between those two situations. 
We are also as is well known voting to validate the unlawful expenditure. We are doing that because firstly Treasury advised that we need to do it in terms of the Public Finance Act 1989 and secondly because it is part of our confidence and supply agreement with the Labour-led Government. It is a supply matter it is a budgetary matter and it is part of the budgetary cycle. Let me tell the House that United Future keeps its word. We are keeping our word with the Labour Government. If it turns out that in 2008 we are working with another party such as National we will keep our word then as well. 
So we now come to the third reading of the legislation that will pass today to validate this unlawful expenditure. We now have the challenge before us as a Parliament to come together—well before the sunset date of 31 December 2007—and sort out the rules that are going to apply for the future particularly for the 2008 elections in terms of what is and what is not lawful electioneering expenditure. That is the challenge now placed before this House. 
I agree with Madam Speaker Tariana Turia and other people who correctly point out that public confidence in this institution has been badly shaken. We have to work across parties on a fully consensual basis if we are to see that public confidence restored. I do not think any party in this House is free of blame in terms of the erosion of public confidence. Yes the facts as I have outlined them are what they are but it does not do the process any good either if for political gain people exaggerate the situation cry “criminality” when none is involved and cry “thievery” when none is involved particularly in situations when they know perfectly well in the heart of their own conscience that they did exactly the same thing in previous elections. That is not debatable; that is simply factual. 
It is time we moved away from that situation because we are talking here about public confidence in this institution. This Parliament has had a proud tradition for 152 years. We are judged—in all the polls—to be the second-least corrupt nation on the Earth next to Iceland. We have never in 152 years had a serious corruption scandal in this Parliament to my knowledge. We have never had fisticuffs. We have never had a coup. I would say that we can lay claim to be the world’s oldest democracy because we gave the vote to the tangata whenua in 1867 and to women in 1893. We were therefore the first nation in the world to have universal franchise. We have a lot to be proud of. 
In summary United Future has acted honestly and openly throughout this process. We have faced the need to repay the money that was unlawfully spent even though we acted in good faith. Here we stand. We can do no more.