English Bill: Electoral Finance Bill Broadcasting Amendment Bill (No 3) Electoral Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
English Bill: Electoral Finance Bill Broadcasting Amendment Bill (No 3) Electoral Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
[Volume:644;Page:14036] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 Where is the leadership of the Labour Government when it is under more pressure than it has been for 8 years? Where is Helen Clark who should be backing the legislation that her Cabinet signed off? Where is the brave rising star Phil Goff? Where is the ever-angry and principled Dr Cullen? It is typical of Helen Clark that the organ grinder has sent the monkey today to articulate the visceral disgust that Labour has of anyone who criticises it. I have never heard such vitriol about the media in this House—even from the former member for Tauranga. This vitriol came from a member whose party has accepted anonymous donations and who was president of the Labour Party that funded its 1987 campaign through all of the people he condemns today. 
I advise the member Jim Anderton of one inconvenient fact. Today he talked about the fact that the Electoral Finance Bill stops anonymous donors buying elections. He sat in a Cabinet that approved the original draft of the bill that had no restrictions in it on anonymous donations—despite the fact that the National Party had said publicly for months that it supported restrictions on anonymous donations. That is a measure of how insincere Labour’s arguments are. It presented legislation with no restrictions on anonymous donations and now it is using the restrictions forced on it by the Greens as being the sole reason for the legislation. That is why the Labour leadership will not front up to defend this legislation. 
The member also talked about big money and buying votes. Well who would be experts on that but Labour? He said $1 million was big money. Today the Government gave us a Budget update. It has $3.5 billion that it will use to buy the next election. So it does not matter which way we look at it: this legislation is all about entrenching the right of Government and the political establishment to use big public money to buy elections and no one will be able to stop it. The Government can give hundreds of millions of dollars in tertiary funding and it can use Government political advertising to promote this—as the Government will do next year. An MP has a big public budget and can say that he or she has the hundreds of millions of dollars for polytechs and universities. But if one wants to oppose it— 
Shane Ardern 
: You can’t! 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Well one can but if one spends more than $12000 one has to register as a third party and appoint a financial agent. One has to present returns of donations and returns of expenses and one can be personally subject to a search warrant. If someone is suspected of spending more than $12000—when the Government is spending $1 billion—the police can search that person’s house under this legislation. If someone broke the law that person could be fined $100000 or be locked up for 2 years. 
So what will happen is that people who want to oppose this Government will ask their lawyers and their lawyers will explain just the process I have explained. Well-meaning well-intentioned people—like the people of my home province of Southland—will be worried. In this small democracy this great democracy the good citizens of Southland will be worried about whether they can legally hold a political opinion in an election year without facing the threat of imprisonment. The former member for Tauranga—the great radical anti-establishment figure—is all in favour of that. 
The other ridiculous thing about this legislation is that if I stand up in Southland or if my colleague Eric Roy stands up and we say “Vote Labour out. They are trying to shut down the Southern Institute of Technology.” that will be legal. If Tim Shadbolt gets up and says it it could be illegal and he could be arrested. That is how ridiculous this legislation is. It says that a private citizen or a community organisation faces tight rules and less money but a politician or a Government has no rules and a lot more money. That is the ultimate arrogance. 
You see this is not about big money from the citizenship or from the community; this is about entrenching and defending the right of politicians to spend someone else’s money on influencing elections. If we listened to Jim Anderton we would think that it had never occurred to a politician to use public money to influence an election that politicians are purely motivated by the good of the country and that everyone else is a rip-off merchant trying to do something secretly to influence people in corrupt ways. That is what New Zealand First and Labour believe. They believe that the people running the campaign from Southland about the Southern Institute of Technology are venal self-interested and probably trying to corrupt the system. They believe that the Minister who is flying up and down spending millions of dollars of public money is purely motivated and that he or she should have more say. For every election that I have stood in and the dozens that went before it MPs and people—normal public people—were subject to the same law. For 3 months before the election it was one law for the politicians and the same law for everyone else but Labour has decided to exempt MPs. 
What a mess Annette King has made of this legislation. The public have trampled all over the Electoral Finance Bill but the Electoral Finance Bill has trampled all over her reputation. To show the paranoia of the Labour Government Annette King tried to define the use of public money in a way that would prevent the Opposition from telling the public what it would do after the election. And these are the people who say we have no policy! Labour was going to make having a policy almost illegal. 
Here is another little pearler. [ 
Interruption 
] The member who is yelling down the back there Jill Pettis got $9500 of anonymous donations in the last election. This legislation tells us much more about the character of the Labour Government than it does about anything else. It shows that it cannot take criticism. It shows that it wants to extend its culture of bullying and manipulation in the civil service to the rest of the public. But it tells us something else that is very important. The Labour Party and Helen Clark cannot conceive of a public good that is separate from the good of the Labour Party. They cannot conceive of it. Their belief is that people who criticise them are against the Labour Government and that is why they criticise them. 
I want to tell Labour from my experience in politics that often one’s critics are right. Often they are advocating a public good that one cannot see oneself. I am sure that right now Labour members are saying that the people who run the Southern Institute of Technology spend all their time planning to get Labour. Well actually they do not. It has a community interest in what happens to its own institutions as communities right through the country do. That is the ultimate arrogance. Labour cannot see a public good that is separate from what is good for Labour. Well this legislation is bad for Labour—that is obvious—but it is terrible for New Zealand. It is an anti-democratic drift-net. It will not do what Labour says it will do. We will repeal the legislation because it is a case of the Government using its constitutional majority for partisan advantage and it has to go. 
Debate interrupted.