Parker David: Electoral Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Parker David: Electoral Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:652;Page:1260] 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
: 
 I think it is clear that the National Party having campaigned pretty intensively on this issue and having told the electorate that it would repeal the Electoral Finance Act and go back to the status quo has a mandate to do just that. I agree that it is desirable and the Labour Party agrees that it is desirable that if we can achieve a consensus as to appropriate electoral law then we ought to try to do so. For those reasons primarily the Labour Party will be supporting this legislation at its first reading. In doing so we concede there are imperfections with the existing law and that it produced an overly complicated regime that can be improved. So we will be supporting this bill at its first reading. I note though that that does not mean to say that we resile from the principles that were intended to lie behind the Act that we are today repealing. In my opinion the first and most important concern in electoral law is that we ought to be maintaining public confidence in our electoral system. That after all is the primary objective I think of electoral law. That requires us to maintain the population’s confidence by having an honest and transparent system. The prior law the law before the one now being repealed had totally inadequate provisions relating to the transparency of donations. Indeed improvements could still be made to the donation regime but I think that it is pleasing that the National Government has conceded that the revised Act passed by the last Parliament did improve transparency provisions and that the status quo transparency provisions in the Act as introduced a couple of years ago will be continued during this period of review. 
Transparency is fundamentally important. Without transparency we cannot have an assurance that policy is not being paid for by major donors. That imputation is easily made but very hard to prove; it is very hard to disprove when the imputation is made wrongly. We need to protect the integrity of our system and the trust of our voters in our system by ensuring we have transparency of donations. In order to have transparency of donations though some difficult issues are thrown up that will need to be considered by the review being embarked upon by the Government. These relate to third-party involvement. It is a fiction to pretend there can be transparency of donations applying only to named political parties while having no control beyond political parties and pretending there is real transparency. Without reaching further than political parties transparency is a fiction; those who want to find a way around the intent of the law can easily find one. And that really is at the nub of where this policy gets quite difficult. How do we control against inappropriate behaviour while we are also appropriately protecting the rights of people to engage in political activism in support of causes they believe in or against Governments they do not believe in? 
I for one believe in the right of the Exclusive Brethren to criticise the Labour Party so long as they do so transparently so long as they are accountable for the money they spend and so long as they too are subject to some reasonable limits on their expenditure. I think it is inappropriate for the Exclusive Brethren or any other group to be able to spend unlimited amounts of money in pursuit of their political causes just as it is inappropriate for the Labour Party or the National Party to be unlimited in the amounts of money we spend in pursuit of our political beliefs. To do otherwise than have some controls leads to the position that I think most people in this Parliament believe is undesirable which is the approach taken in the United States where up to billions of dollars were spent in the last presidential campaign—which is excessive. If we allow that sort of approach to be uncontrolled in today’s world we cannot avoid the conclusion that rather than there being fair and equitable participation in campaigning we could have wealthy interest groups having disproportionate influence on an election outcome. 
These are the issues that will need to be worked through. We accept the Government’s statements that it has a genuine commitment to an inclusive all-party process; we will contribute constructively to that process. We will work towards finding a durable outcome that can have cross-party support— 
Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman 
: You were wrong first-time round then? 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: Yes I have already admitted that I say for Mr Coleman’s benefit; I am happy to do mea culpa mea culpa mea culpa again. There were imperfections but I maintain a commitment to the principle that we must maintain the faith of our electorate and a fair democratic process. That requires both transparency around donations and some limit on the ability of people to buy elections by spending disproportionately or unseemly large amounts in pursuit of their viewpoints. I reinforce the fact that we will contribute constructively to this process. I am not sure that we will be able to reach unanimity in respect of all things. I note that the Minister seemed to suggest that anything more than a 3-month control on expenditure going— 
Hon Simon Power 
: No no—I didn’t say that. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: No? I picked that up wrongly. I think that the question of how long the election period ought to be is a genuine issue for debate. Should it be 3 months or a year? We in reality know that election campaigns are conducted over more than a 3-month period. I look forward to the debate.