Smith NickHon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): This is terrible lawmaking. This is a bill that was published only yesterday and it is now proceeding to its third reading stage. We're an unusual country in that we do not have our electoral law protected by a constitution. There has been a longstanding convention in this Parliament that electoral law changes are made on a cross-party basis—a convention that was observed by all three of our Ministers of Justice. What we have here is this Minister of Justice ramming legislation through for no good reason. He says it's on the basis of wanting to improve our democracy. It does the opposite. One of the essentials of our democracy is this institution of Parliament and when we want to change the law we have a set-down process by which a bill has a first reading it goes to a select committee we have experts that are able to submit and advise the public gets an opportunity to be able to have a say and a bill goes through its later stages of scrutiny. Do not pretend that this Parliament has given any real scrutiny to this bill. Not a single member of the Labour New Zealand First or Green parties took a single call during the committee stages of this bill. It was a farce. Then let's look at the substantive issue in the regulatory impact statement. This bill is presented as an answer to the issue of foreign donations and so it is materially important as to how many donations have been coming in. Well here are the facts. Over the last seven years the average amount of foreign donations coming into New Zealand was $5000 per year. It's an average of 60 donations averaging about $66 each and what this bill says is that there's going to be a ban on those of over $50. So let's be clear: we're talking about an issue that's about $5000 per year. My question to members opposite is why are we rushing a bill through Parliament over the issue of foreign donations of $5000 a year but ignoring the elephant in the Parliament—the $840000 elephant?The outcome of the 2017 election was unusual. For the first time in the history of New Zealand the party that got the most votes and the most seats did not become the Government. That was determined by New Zealand First. So the outcome of who is the Government who every day gets to makes decisions for this wonderful country of 5 million people was determined by New Zealand First. And what we know of New Zealand First is they have a secret foundation in which they received $500000 of donations and furthermore they had $340000 of anonymous donations—10 times more than any other political party. We know that the president of the New Zealand First Party resigned last month because of moral reasons over that party's financial issues—and somehow we're to ignore all of that in this debate about improving our electoral law. As Duncan Garner said so accurately he smells a rat—and he is absolutely correct.I pointed out in the committee stage that there are three major weaknesses in this bill. The first is: the one instance of proven corruption in our New Zealand Parliament involved Labour MP Phillip Field. Labour MP Phillip Field went to jail for taking bribes for getting people New Zealand residency. There isn't a member of Parliament in this House that does not face pressure every single week—Hon Meka Whaitiri: What's that got to do with the bill?Hon Dr NICK SMITH: —about granting residency and citizenship for our country. The member interjects and asks: why is that relevant? I'll tell you why: because in the definition of who is a non - New Zealander and can donate for political parties a person who is in New Zealand on a work permit or someone who has applied for refugee status in New Zealand is able to make a political donation under the detail of this bill that that member did not even bother to engage in.And so I do say that if we are worried about ensuring New Zealand keeps its reputation—which the National Government bequeathed in 2017; the least corrupt most transparent country in the world was New Zealand's international ranking in 2017—then we do need to recognise the risk and the desperation that some people have to be a resident of this beautiful country. And why would this bill say those people can't vote but they can donate to political parties? That is a big gap.In the committee stage I moved an amendment. The amendment said we should not put up with the farce of New Zealand First having a foundation that collected over a half a million dollars of secret donations—that they should be included in the ban. What is the point of having a ban on foreign donations if all a political party needs to do is to set up a foundation get the cheques in and then provide it as a loan or to directly do advertising. It is a gaping hole in this bill that you could drive a truck through. Yet members opposite—and the Green Party the sanctimonious Green Party—voted against an amendment that would incorporate foundations and incorporated societies so that there would be some robustness to the proposals around banning foreign donations. The truth is this bill is all about politics and not about substance. It is so characteristic of the Government this year—long on rhetoric very short on delivery.I was interested to hear the Minister dismiss the views of Professor Andrew Geddis from Otago University. So often that Minister says Oh all the experts are wrong." Andrew Geddis pointed out that this bill is indeed a very weak response an inadequate response if we are serious about protecting New Zealand from foreign influences.The most disgraceful part of the debate on this bill was the contribution by the Deputy Prime Minister. This is a guy who when questioned by journalists about those hundreds of thousands of dollars of secret donations—when he was questioned about these sorts of issues—referred to the journalist as a psycho. Do members of the Green Party and the Labour Party support that? That is disgraceful and I am appalled that members opposite condone that sort of behaviour from the Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand. The reason the National Party feels strongly about these issues is actually that one of the most precious parts of New Zealand is the strength of our democracy. We have the fourth oldest continuous Parliament in the world. We have a deep tradition of respecting the right for the public to decide in New Zealand on their Governments free speech and the processes of this Parliament and what this Government has shown time and time again is that for political convenience and opportunism it is prepared to ride roughshod over those democratic traditions. That's why we're whacking through this electoral amendment bill in less than 24 hours. That's why the Government's taking away the decision on referendum from this Parliament and giving it to the Cabinet. That's why the Government with Green Party support voted for a bill that would allow party leaders and not the public to dismiss members of Parliament something that Rod Donald and Jeanette Fitzsimons and the founders of the Green Party would be rolling in their graves over.Hon Julie Anne Genter: She's not dead.Golriz Ghahraman: She's not. Ha ha!Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I know that the Greens are laughing. That's their attitude. I remember when the Greens used to rally against bills being passed under urgency. They've become so unprincipled that they are an embarrassment to the founders of that party. There is nothing as precious as our democracy. There is no area of law that is as important as electoral law. This is no way in which to go about changing those fundamentals of the way in which members of Parliament are elected."