SpeechSIMON O'CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): The left wing once again are trying to screw the electoral scrum. If you want to take only one lesson away from me tonight it's that the left wing are so quaking in their boots that they are ramming once again through Parliament a piece of law to try and assure that they can win the election next year. And the thing is the lefties on the other side—looking all a bit confused that's normal too. They've got form in this space because old Helen Clark—sorry that was not meant to be an age-related thing it was just a phrase—tried this with electoral finance eight years ago. In fact it was the first protest I was ever involved with. The Labour Party and its Green mates have form when it comes to screwing the electoral scrum. So what—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! The member is skating close to impugning or suggesting improper motive. Equally a couple of members across this side of the House have done the same thing. I won't take any more of it.SIMON O'CONNOR: So the left wing don't want New Zealanders to exercise one of their most fundamental rights which is the right to privacy. The thing about the right to privacy is one should be able to donate to the political parties of their choice without harassment. I'm going to put out the suggestion which hopefully is not an imputation but there's form again on the left wing to harass cancel deplatform and discourage those they disagree with. By lowering these thresholds to an arbitrary number I might suggest an arbitrary number they are more than happy to try and dissuade New Zealanders from donating to any parties of their choice other than of course the Labour or the Green Party. They're very very happy with that. They have very good friends in the union movement which obviously can provide financial but often non-financial incentives. I personally think again without impugning my left-wing colleagues they would be very happy for us to be moving towards complete State funding—complete State funding—once again removing an ability of democratic society to actually contribute to the extent they wish to the political parties of their choice.Now let me be really really clear. I do not want to see a system that we see in the likes of the United States or other countries where you can donate enormous amounts of money with basically no oversight. I'm actually relatively comfortable with current New Zealand law. Personally I think dropping the thresholds from $15000 to $5000 is not going to achieve any greater transparency or trust. As I said earlier I think it's arbitrary. I've heard other speeches from the other side Oh well it's not too bad." But why not make it $1? Why not flush out every single New Zealander who dares—who dares—to give money to a political party other than the Labour or the Green Party? Why not a dollar? In fact could I make the suggestion because we're now looking at $5000—I might be making a bit of a mockery of the $1 thing but of course with current inflation $5000 ain't going to be worth that much in a few months' time. It just doesn't make sense.The other element and actually two elements I might touch on is around this whole trust and transparency side of things. If you look at our current electoral laws particularly around donations it's actually working. It's actually working. The parties know the system the individuals donating know the system. In fact you would argue—I would certainly—the courts are working. They are rightly hauling up catching those people involved. That's a positive thing. In fact if I wanted to make a suggestion to Government and future Governments it's actually begin to look at foreign funds which get funnelled into this country in different ways not the Kiwis trying to donate a little bit of money to the political party of their choice.But trust and transparency would start one might suggest if actually—I actually don't know the answer to this question but I know when this whole process started and by the way as context even to the second reading the Government went out to consult around electoral law changes. They went out to consult and then they slipped this bill in before the consultation. They're trying to tweak the bill before the consultation properly finished. I'm not sure how that fits "trust and transparency". The answer to my wider question too is I believe the Labour Party and maybe the Greens maybe other parties refused to release their submissions to the Ministry of Justice. Now they may have done so now—I suspect not because of the silence and the head bows—but just because so many members have talked about trust and transparency let's put it really clearly on the record: the Labour Party refused to release its submission to the Ministry of Justice on this bill which they wax lyrical about being trust and transparent. And then if we want to keep belabouring that point which may be a terrible pun to belabour the point we just had a constitutional outrage in this House a constitutional outrage which cuts to the heart of the trust and transparency of this Government.But of course this is more about money and also voting age as the Speaker has rightly pointed out. Fundamentally the right to privacy means in my view and I think the National Party view that New Zealanders have that right to be able to donate a certain degree of money without fear of any harassment or anything else—anything else. We can certainly debate where that line is and I think fundamentally fundamentally that's where I see this debate tonight. I have not heard anyone in this House and certainly not myself arguing for open slather. But to drop it so low so low is very much as I suggested a means to bring about an end which is not healthy to the democracy of New Zealand.Fundamentally too I suspect we will see further changes in the future if a left-wing Government maintains its power in this country God forbid. However despite having been so heavy and negative there is one bouquet to give to the Government and that is the aspect of this law which addresses overseas voting. Citizens now can be away for six years—please come home we desperately need you; we have a crisis everywhere and we need you back in this country. People on permanent residence up to four years—same message to you as permanent residents: we desperately need you in our hospitals prisons you name it; come back home. Wages are terrible inflation terrible but we're still nice people—and National is going to win the 2023 election.But that is a positive that we're doing the overseas voting. That is a positive. It's something actually that this side of the House has called for for quite a lot of time. In fact I think a number of parties across the House have called for it—including I think the Green Party as well. So it's good to see that this is finally here. But for those at home do not be caught out by those on the left and those in Government talking to you about this bill and how wonderful it is because of overseas voting. It's an attempt somewhat to pull the wool over one's eyes because fundamentally this is an attempt to undermine the ability of New Zealanders to easily and freely donate to a certain degree to a certain degree the moneys they wish.Finally and fundamentally I don't think this is going to really make at one level a lick of difference to trust and transparency which again seems to be the supposed fundamental driver to this. I don't see how New Zealanders are going to feel things are more trusted and transparent around this. I think they're just going to find their ability to participate in the democratic systems that we have even harder. I do want to finish by stressing that—even harder. Because things which have happened in this country over the last arguably five years but certainly 2.5 years have done enormous damage to our democracy. I'm not going to go through them as that would not be appropriate on the second reading. But our democracy has been damaged in many many ways by this Government and this bill is just one more dangerous little nail. Thank you."