Ghahraman GolrizGOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to rise in support of this bill a bill that brings out one of the key provisions of my strengthening democracy member's bill. It's something that sits close to the heart of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand which is securing New Zealand's democracy making it equal making it transparent and making it available equally to all voters not just those with deep pockets. We live right now at a moment in global history where democracy is under attack in various ways from big money interference including from foreign interference. We live at a global moment and issues like the climate crisis issues like tobacco regulation and the sugar tax and things like gun law reform have been slowed to the point of rendering Houses of Representatives like this ineffective and superfluous because democracy has been undermined. It has been bought and sold on the open market and we don't want that here and we realise that New Zealand's democracy has thus far been vulnerable. We've been relying too long on our culture of openness and of fairness but we know that there are dark forces out there who don't abide by those same democratic principles. We know that we're vulnerable. This is exactly why the Justice Committee began its inquiry into foreign interference. We know that that select committee valiantly sat through months and months and heard submissions from experts from our own security agencies from members of the public and from human rights organisations from across this nation that highlighted all of the risks and outlined all of the changes that we need and do you know what? They were slowed down nearly to a stop. Who—who—would want to slow down the Justice Committee in looking into electoral reform to make New Zealand stronger New Zealand's democracy fairer and New Zealand's democracy protected against foreign interference? Why would a political party or members of this House of Representatives want to slow that process down? We know the advice is that if we don't pass law this year because of the complexity of the implementation of this law it won't be applicable to the next election. Who would want to stop the risk of foreign interference from affecting the next election—who would want that for New Zealand? That's what they've done and we won't let it happen. We've seen other examples where the National Party has slowed down the political process the democratic process and then turned around and said Well you can't do this because the process hasn't happened." Well the process has happened and the Green Party supports this bill because we know consultation did happen. We know they tried to stop it. Who would want to do that? Who would have something to gain from stopping the law passing that would protect New Zealand's democracy from foreign interference? Well not us and we've done it before when we've seen that the tactic has been utilised to slow down the legal progress. We supported urgency for paid parental leave in the beginning of this Parliament because we knew that that bill in substance had already been to select committee. We knew that they wanted to slow it down to stop New Zealanders from accessing their rights and their welfare and we wouldn't let them do it and we won't let them do it now. This falls squarely within Green Party kaupapa because we do stand for democracy and we know that the political process is about substantive consultation not just tick-boxing. We know that substantive consultation has happened—we're satisfied. We also know that we don't have much time to lose. We've seen democracy undermined. We've seen that happen in Australia. We've seen it happen in Britain. We've seen it happen in the United States. We don't want to see it happen here. So this bill makes it unlawful for foreign donations that are over $50 to be made to any political party or political candidate. The limit is there. My bill proposed a complete ban but the advice was that it's actually quite difficult in circumstances where fund-raising is happening at a town hall meeting or over raffle ticket sales and people can't check somebody's immigration status. So there does need to be a small buffer in order to allow for that administration to happen. But for all intents and purposes foreign political donations are banned by this bill. Something else is happening that's exciting to me and it should be exciting to everyone in this House and you know it does have support from across the House so I suspect we all agree that we do need to be protected from misinformation and from a lack of transparency in terms of who is in fact sponsoring political advertising. We've seen that go wrong. We've seen it go wrong online in social media platforms. We've seen it go wrong in all manner of political advertising. New Zealanders need to know who is taking a stake in the messaging around politics and this bill makes it necessary for advertisers to tell us who they are—to tell us their names. We need to know: are you a tobacco company are you a gun lobbyist or are you an oil company who is advertising against the politics of change for the environment for our healthcare system or for keeping New Zealanders safe from military-style guns? So we are making that happen in this bill. Who would want to slow that down after we've heard hundreds of submissions over months and months? The other thing that the Opposition takes issue with—which I was quite surprised to hear a lawyer bring up—is the issue of shell companies. Well you know what? Anyone who sets up a shell company—and a shell company is a fake company that is set up to bypass the law—is committing fraud. First you have to ban the activity. Then you can charge them investigate them and actually apply the law. We have all manner of laws that people can bypass by committing fraud. For example we have a limit on the amount of electorate donations that someone can receive. If they wanted to chop that up for example to bypass the law we would refer them to the police and then maybe the Serious Fraud Office would investigate them. That would be breaking the law. We don't know if that's happened of course in relation to the National Party but we are able to investigate that allegation. Hon Clare Curran: We know that the SFO is investigating. GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN: We do get to investigate that allegation because the law exists and that's what we're doing today: we're creating a law that bans that kind of activity. So if somebody sets up a shell company—a fake company—or tries to bypass the foreign donation ban in any way we can now investigate them and charge them. Thank God we are regulating that activity. This is an important first step. It's only a first step. The Green Party has a suite of changes that we'd like to introduce and submitters supported that. Actually even the head of the SIS said "We need more transparency regulation in terms of our political donations regime so that we can in fact further investigate"—be better at applying the law like the ban on foreign donations. So we would like to lower the anonymity threshold. We know that a lot of donations go to all major political parties in our system anonymously. We want to be able to have our institutions apply the law in an easier way and we want New Zealanders to know who in fact is taking a stake in our democracy. We want to put limits on political donations. We think $35000 should be enough. We don't need hundreds of thousands of donations coming from corporates and you know Simon Bridges has said "You can't limit political donations because that's free speech." Free speech and democracy on sale—no. Our vote is our ability to make a choice to have our political voices heard. It shouldn't be open to that kind of interference. It shouldn't be for sale to the highest bidder. So we've got a lot more work to do but this is an important first step. It's sending a signal to the world and to New Zealand that this House cares about democracy and we have heard their voices through the months-long select committee process. So I commend this bill to the House. It's a good day for democracy."