Locke Keith: Electoral Finance Bill — In Committee 
Locke Keith: Electoral Finance Bill — In Committee 
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KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 I thought I would take a short call on behalf of the Green Party to talk a little bit about the free speech issue from another direction. I think the Electoral Finance Bill will improve the free speech of people like my colleague Chris Finlayson and others who I know have an independent mind. I would not like them to have to suffer the restrictions on their free speech that come with big bucks being poured into political campaigns. 
I sympathise with the right to free speech of the National Party and the ACT party etc. because I do not want us to go down the track the United States has clearly gone down. If one reads the lead-up to the nominating conventions of the Democratic and Republican parties one sees that the discussion in relation to the contest between Hillary Clinton and BarackObama is all about who has the most money—who has the most millions of dollars. That is the key thing in the campaign. People know that the result of the Democratic nomination will be decided largely by who has the big bucks who can put the adverts on television and who can swamp the places where the primary elections are held. That is what it is all about. 
There are articles all over the American press on this issue. Take for example Hillary Clinton who even though she has personal views that are quite liberal—a bit like Chris Finlayson in our Parliament—has been pushed towards what is called the centre or we could call it the right because that is where the interests of big money are. That is a pattern across America. We need only look at the senators and Congress people. The senator from Washington state is often called the “Senator for Boeing” because Boeing is the big company in that state. Boeing gives money and it determines who gets the senatorial position in Washington state. So although the “Senator for Boeing” might have different views from Boeing he or she has to suppress those views. That is the way American democracy works. 
Even with the little bit of gifting we get in this Parliament today we have to be careful—and it is happening as we move towards Christmas; I think all MPs have received a half-dozen pack of beer from Lion Breweries recently. We in the Green Party have to work out some way of shifting that on without being bought off by it. But psychologically all those gifts have an impact. We do not want to offend people who are friendly towards us and who might give us things when it is only on a minor scale. But if this bill is not passed and the funding of political parties goes really out of control then we will move more and more down the track of the American situation. 
I would not like people like Chris Finlayson to be under that pressure of big money too much. I have found I have quite a lot of common ground with Chris Finlayson on issues of democratic rights and things like that. I am trying to save him by opposing National’s amendments and the direction the National Party is taking on this bill. 
The Electoral Finance Bill is not a perfect bill. Everyone knows that and that is why the Green Party is putting forward the idea of a Citizens’ Assembly assisted by experts to have a look at this whole question and to a large extent to take out of the hands of politicians the control of how election financing is determined. We do have self-interests and I think it would be good if the public could play a greater role in determining the restrictions on election funding—how they take place and how they take place in the best way to enable free speech. That is my view. We have a model in the United States of what happens without that. Thank you.