Wall LouisaLOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Kia ora Mr Chair. Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to this Committee stage debate of the Broadcasting (Election Programmes and Election Advertising) Amendment Bill. I particularly want to focus on Part 1 clause 4 inserting new Part 6 Electoral broadcasting" and to specifically focus on the definition of "election programme". Just for those who are listening today an election programme is defined as a programme that: "(a) encourages or persuades or appears to encourage or persuade voters to vote for a party or the election of a constituency candidate; or (b) encourages or persuades or appears to encourage or persuade voters not to vote for a party or the election of a constituency candidate;".I want to highlight that definition within the context of a recent Court of Appeal decision. That decision relates to a video entitled "Planet Key". The song was performed by Darren Watson and then the video was put together by Jeremy Jones. In 2014 that particular video was not allowed to be broadcast because the Electoral Commission made a determination that it breached the Electoral Act. Subsequently Watson and Jones went to the High Court and the High Court made a determination that in fact there was a breach of their freedom of artistic expression and in October 2016 that was then upheld by the Court of Appeal.The reason I bring it up is that we have to make sure when we are considering this piece of legislation that that particular court case is recognised by this House. What the court case actually said was that Watson and Jones were simply expressing their own political views as artists. They were not a political party and did not have a vested interest in the outcome. I think it is really important that we acknowledge that because not to acknowledge that actually undermines the integrity of this process and that definition. I want to particularly note it because I have seen in recent times that artists are starting to express themselves in the political domain more and more. I saw an article about Nick Smith and a particular artist who is making a piece about him. I just bring it up because in a modern democratic society we should not stifle the expression of our artists our columnists and our commentators in actually having a say within the context of what is happening in our country.I also want to take the opportunity to highlight new section 74 inserted by clause 4 which is about the public allocation of $3.605 million that will be used in the forthcoming general election to enable political parties to advertise as they see fit. Historically we have used party political broadcasts on TV and on radio but what this piece of legislation does is enable parties to determine how they use that money—whether they advertise on the internet or whether they advertise in other mediums not just specifically free-to-air TV or our public radio system. After this legislation goes through parties will have the right to determine how they spend the money that they are allocated.I want to highlight new section 80CA inserted by clause 4. It is really interesting because the allocation that parties will receive is not part of their party election expense—so parties do not have to write down in their party election expense the public allocation that they are getting from the Electoral Commission with one exception. Everyone should be aware of this. That exception is when some of that money is used by the party on individual candidates. Those individual candidates must include that in their returns—in their disclosure of candidate's donations and also in the return of candidate's election expenses. I think it is really important to highlight that. The party does not have to include it but if the party uses some of that allocation specifically to highlight for example new candidates—parties may want to say to the public "Look who we've got on our team."—that individual candidate must comply with the regulations and must put that in the return.I am going to do a favour to the Minister in the chair the Hon Mark Mitchell by helping to answer a question that my colleague Chris Hipkins asked. It is about the relationship between the Broadcasting (Election Programmes and Election Advertising) Amendment Bill and the Electoral Amendment Bill. What the Electoral Amendment Bill does in clause 98B is insert new section 206IA which is entitled "Return of party's allocation expenses". The parties must provide to the Electoral Commission a return of expenses—that is the amount of the party's allocation and all accounts sent by the party to the Electoral Commission—and it must include an auditor's report.It is quite clear why these are called cognate pieces of legislation because they are inextricably related to one another. As a member of the Justice and Electoral Committee I know—when you read through the commentary this legislation was unanimously passed. It seems that other parties now have issues with these particular pieces of legislation but the reason that we have expeditiously I will call it taken both of these bills through the House is that we want them to be available for the 2017 general election. We all know now that that is on 23 September.I want to make another contribution when we are looking at the Electoral Amendment Bill because these pieces of legislation have only catered to 12 of 28 recommendations. In fact 16 other recommendations that the Justice and Electoral Committee unanimously made to the House have not been catered for. There is one in particular that I want to highlight in my next contribution. Thank you."