Parker David: Electoral Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Parker David: Electoral Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:652;Page:1330] 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to largely summarise what I said in the first reading debate of the Electoral Amendment Bill. Of course that reading was on the most recent sitting day of this Parliament last Thursday and I do not think I need to repeat my speech in detail. Suffice it to say that the Labour Party does acknowledge that there are imperfections in the law that we passed in the last term and accordingly we backed the first reading of this bill. 
I think the difficulty in terms of reaching a consensus is likely to coalesce around a couple of pretty important issues. The first is something the Minister of Justice has just referred to in his complaint that counting an expense as an electioneering expense from 1 January in the year of an election is too tough. Conversely as the Hon Pete Hodgson said in his contribution to the first reading debate a few minutes ago a 3-month period is too short as we know from the experience of the 2005 election when a billboard campaign was run at some considerable expense. That was clearly an electioneering activity but occurred outside of the then rules. The old 3-month rule was not right either so there is some discussion to be had around that issue. 
The other issue that is for me the most difficult to resolve is around third-party expenditure. Although it may not please everyone I think a compromise is probably possible on the issue of the period of control. But if there is no effort to have some limits or controls around third-party expenditure there is really no point in having any controls. I invite members to ask whether the previous legislation which we are reverting to had the intent of having some control of total expenditure by political parties in order that elections were fought fairly and not won just by the highest bidder spending the greatest amount of money. If we think that that was the ethic that underlay the old Act and that back in those days people did not try to get round those limits by using devices like the creation of third parties that were notionally different from the political party but were really just another vehicle for the political party to get round the spending limits then we see that obviously the issue needs to be tidied up. For me that behaviour would offend the intent of the original law. It is something that does need to be tidied up. It is a bit like tax legislation which needs to be tidied up periodically because there is always a clever tax accountant who is looking for another way round the rules that are intended to achieve fairness. 
The other point is that quite apart from the fact that political parties can get round the rules unless there is some control on third-party expenditure I do find it somewhat surprising to hear some of the people who promote freedom of speech without any constraint say they think it should be permissible to have a limit on the amount a political party can spend on advertising and other election activities but there should be no similar constraint on people who are not in political parties. Taking the example of the Exclusive Brethren as I have previously said I will defend the right of the Exclusive Brethren to attack the Labour Party and our policies and to spend money either promoting the political cause they believe in or attacking political causes they do not believe in. That is the Exclusive Brethren’s right but I do not think they should be completely unrestricted in the quantity and value of the amount that they spend just as political parties ought not to be. There are some difficult lines to draw there. Some of these issues are easier to talk about in the abstract rather than to legislate for in a way that actually has practical effect. We have to keep an eye on whether these things are practical and will work as well. 
With those comments I say I look forward to cooperating throughout this process as we develop more settled electoral law to go forward.