Turei Metiria: Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Turei Metiria: Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:669;Page:16401] 
METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I will take a quite brief perhaps call on the Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill. These issues have been canvassed a great deal in the past with the Electoral Finance Act a few years ago and now with this bill. I thank all of those who worked on this legislation and all of the officials who did a very good job dealing with three lots of bills at the same time. We had the MMP referendum bill this electoral finance reform bill and the Parliamentary Service bill at the same time—so there was a range of officials doing various parts of the work and the advice in the Electoral Legislation Committee was excellent and very helpful. The process itself was very interesting. We had some interesting clauses such as the wood clause in this legislation which means that the wood used for putting up billboards is no longer considered to be an election expense. There was lots of passionate discussion about where the wood for particular hoardings comes from. Sometimes these processes get just a little odd on occasion—that being one example. 
I make particular note of the Supplementary Order Paper that the Green Party has put forward on Part 1 to reduce the donation disclosure limits currently in the bill. The donation disclosure limit is the threshold at which parties and candidates are required to disclose to the public who has given them donations. In previous times it was $1500 for a candidate if I remember rightly—I might have that wrong—but in any event this legislation has increased that threshold. It is now easier for candidates and for political parties to hide the source of the money donated to them for their election campaign. The only argument put forward as to why it was necessary to make it easier for political parties to potentially engage in more corrupt practices—frankly that is what that is—is all of the other financial limits in the rest of the bill like the limit that a candidate could spend for example went up. The logic that everything else went up so why not put this one up as well is ridiculous. It is absolutely irrational. 
The purpose of having a low disclosure threshold for donations is so that the public know who is giving money to candidates and political parties so they can assess whether there is some form of payback likely or possible in the party or candidates’ policy should they be elected to Parliament. It has nothing to do with whether candidates should be able to spend more. We can have that argument over here. It has nothing to do with the fact that the public are entitled to the highest levels of transparency and to a system that is always striving to be the least corrupt that it can be and to have the highest levels of integrity that it can have. What this legislation is doing amongst a number of very good things such as the spending cap for third parties which the Greens support is enabling candidates and political parties to engage in a greater level of potential corrupt practice and that cannot be acceptable. It is not acceptable to the public and it should not be acceptable to this House; we should not be passing legislation that allows this to happen. This is a very very serious concern that was dismissed in large part by the members of the select committee across the board as far as I understand particularly those from ACT and National. Obviously they do not mind that we have a less transparent system and they do not mind that we have a system that has a great deal less integrity particularly when it comes to transparency for the public about where political parties are getting the money from. 
We have also seen recently the same issue being raised at local government level. My colleague Russel Norman has legislation that would require the same levels of disclosure at local body election level as is required for MPs and for parties so that the public know who donates money to local government local body election campaigns and candidates. It is quite right that that happens. I say again that we cannot allow or continue to allow political players to seek and to receive donations from interests that may in fact be paying this money in order to get policy kickbacks later on. That is the threat. That is why we have a significant regime that protects the integrity of the system. We need that in local government as well as at central government level and as I said the Green Party has a member’s bill that will do that. We hope that in time it comes up in the ballot and we can have that debate. 
It makes it very difficult to look at making those changes at a local government level when even at this level in terms of the general election some of the parties in this Chamber appeared to have allowed this change to happen. So the Green Party has put forward a Supplementary Order Paper to reduce the disclosure thresholds from $1500 to $1000 for a candidate and from $15000 to $1000 for a party. We sincerely hope that other political parties support this amendment and make a stand in favour of transparency of honest healthy politics and of a situation where the public can continue to have faith in the integrity of our system. As members of Parliament and as political parties we continually seek to improve the integrity of the system. Unfortunately this legislation fails to do that. It erodes the integrity of the system and erodes the faith and trust that the public have in us to set the rules for how we operate and what benefits us in a way that preferably benefits them more. That is not what we are doing with the change in this legislation. 
I sincerely ask and hope that MPs and parties across the House support the Green Party’s Supplementary Order Paper to lower the disclosure thresholds for transparency of donors to political parties and to candidates. Thank you.