Hughes Darren: Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Hughes Darren: Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:662;Page:10729] 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to speak to the Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill. It is not often that a senior whip goes slightly off message but I have to take up the opportunity of joining my opposite number Chris Tremain who may well have done the same thing. All I could think of as he complained about a high-profile street-corner office was that Stuart Nash must really be getting under his skin in Napier if he wants to change the entire system of the way electoral offices are run from Parliament on the basis that his own individual candidate opponent has a high-profile office. We could almost hear Government members who have such high-profile corner offices—and who were listening to this debate from their offices—lunging at their radios and saying that someone should shut Mr Tremain up before he rewrites all the rules based on a constituency race in Napier. 
Chester Borrows 
: Are you reading minds now? 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: Well no; that was the last legislation we debated the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill I say to Mr Borrows. This particular bill does not. As that previous speaker freely admitted this legislation does not affect any of those issues whatsoever and the question of ownership of out-of-Parliament offices is best dealt with through other vehicles and not through this bill. 
Labour is supporting this bill’s referral to the Electoral Legislation Committee as the Hon Lianne Dalziel our spokesperson for electoral law made very clear when she spoke. The bill has a number of elements that we support but there are certainly some aspects that we want to continue working with the Government on. 
I pick up David Parker’s point—I strongly agreed with him—that where parties can come to a compromise position on these sorts of rules we are better off for it. Labour has tried to signal throughout this debate areas where we have moved away from our prior position in terms of the legislation that came immediately before this bill—the Electoral Finance Act. We have moved from that position. We have even moved from some of the positions we held in our submissions in order to meet some of the proposals from the Government. But we really looked throughout the whole process for the Government to move from some of its positions as well. The pixie dust of MMP where we all get up during debates on these kinds of legislation and give compulsory praise to Simon Power—which I will do shortly because it is in my notes; I want to be back on message as I mentioned before—cannot simply be because we all agree with National’s position. That is not compromise. The look of shock and horror on National members’ faces makes me realise that that is what they think it is. So I may have struck on a little point there. But I think the main point of course is that we want there to be a consensus. 
Mr Tremain made a very good point. He talked about the winds of political fortune changing. Indeed they have. In the period that we have had MMP Labour has polled as high as 41 percent and been the major party in this Parliament and we are now down at 34 percent and in the Opposition. 
John Hayes 
: And still dropping. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: Well Mr Hayes thinks that with his prescient political predictions. I welcome them because I know the predictions he made about himself and what has happened so I hope he keeps on making predictions about the Opposition. He and I have a little bet on some of those matters and I look forward to collecting one Sunday in November 2011—or even August as some people say. National on the flip side of that has been at a high of 45 percent at the last poll. It leads the Government now but of course in 2002 it only got 20 percent of the vote. I know that was long before Mr Quinn was involved with the National Party. 
Paul Quinn 
: I wasn’t born! 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: In 2002? The member most certainly looks as though he was born by 2002. He looks as though he had enjoyed a very good 50th birthday celebration by the time 2002 rolled around. Political parties on both sides have been up and down. They have enjoyed electoral success and electoral defeat over that period. In 2002 when Mr English was its leader National relied very heavily on its Parliamentary Service funding for its campaign. That is a matter of public record. I am sure that National now enjoys much greater financial donations as its political fortunes have improved. 
Chester Borrows 
: We couldn’t say. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: I say to Mr Borrows that it could not have got any worse. I think the National Party’s largest corporate donation in 2002 came from the Clutha RSA. I am sure that things have improved slightly since then and perhaps some of the city branches are now involved. The main point of this observation is simply that the laws have to work for parties whatever political situation they find themselves in. I believe that that is where the compromise must be reached. One of the reasons the Electoral Finance Act was not successful is that it had strong strong opposition from National. I think that National made a deliberate political decision to make that law unworkable by not cooperating with it and through ensuring— 
Hon Anne Tolley 
: So it’s our fault? 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: No no I am not ascribing blame; I am simply saying that any law can be picked apart. I am sure the Attorney-General would agree with that. Any law can be made as difficult as possible to implement. For a law to work effectively we need to have people accepting it. That is the point I am making. 
I recognise that National did not accept the previous legislation. Of course that was because some events had happened before that legislation was passed that I think a lot of National members would privately say they were not comfortable with. In the House they cannot say that. There were things that took place involving a third party. The activities of the Exclusive Brethren church have been mentioned before. They probably went beyond the pale of what most people who participate in politics would like to see. I think the fact that we do not know and that we saw them—[ 
Interruption 
] Mr Borrows interjects. Given how active the church was in the Whanganui electorate I would not be interjecting on that particular point if I was him. There are a lot of provincial and rural members who were great friends of that particular organisation and who have been much quieter since it came into play. Certainly we would not want to see a repeat of the 2005 events. The 2008 events with the major Opposition party not wanting to go along with the law because they disagreed with it so vehemently—and that is no attack; I just refer to the way National felt about it—means that for 2011 we have to have a law that Labour National and all the parties feel is fair for them. I think we are getting there but I want to emphasise Mr Parker’s point that there must be some agreement. 
I will touch on three other issues. I will finish talking about the third-party issue by saying that we agree with registration because we think that it is logical. There is transparency in people having to put their hands up and say that they are not a political party but they want to influence people and how they cast their party vote puts some sunlight on them. People will be mindful of the activities they are undertaking. That makes a lot of sense. 
We do not have agreement on the fact that the amount they can spend is uncapped. I think that that creates a bit of an illogical difference where in a campaign political parties’ behaviour that clearly seeks party votes in a certain direction is regulated and capped but behaviour by organisations that set themselves up to overtly influence people’s party votes is uncapped. The Royal Commission on the Electoral System said in 1986 that there would be problems with a two-pronged system like that. I think there are and I think that the committee should look at that. It should not be too hard to reach a compromise on because under the old Electoral Finance Act the cap was $120000 which is quite a lot of money. We have said that as part of a compromise we will look for a higher figure if that is what will get consensus. When we think about it that is a lot of money for an organisation that is not part of a political party to spend in order to get involved in an election campaign to support a particular party. When we think through the logistics of it we will be able to come to some level of agreement. 
Paul Quinn 
: It’s less than your salary. 
Hon DARREN HUGHES 
: Well I am sure that Mr Quinn has not put his entire salary into his election campaign. That would be a particularly bad investment in his case. It is almost like the finance companies writ large. Even funding his own deposit seems to be a bit of a waste of time for Mr Quinn. However this country is a democracy and people are free to do what they want with their money. I am sure that Mr Quinn will once again subject himself to democracy. 
The regulated period which Lianne Dalziel spent a lot of time discussing is something we have to get right. What we asked to discuss at the Parliamentary Service Commission was that if an election was called within 3 months members who had legitimately spent money from Vote Parliamentary Service on their parliamentary business work would not be caught in the defined period for the election and have that spending counted against their $20000 cap. An example of that is if Mr Anderton had as his slogan for his parliamentary business work “Working for Wigram” and that was approved by the Parliamentary Service—as is allowed for his advertisements in the newspaper—and we go into an election period and he happens to use that same phrase on his election billboards it would be possible to say that the Parliamentary Service - funded phrase was being used for an election purpose and all that money would be counted. At the Parliamentary Service Commission we wanted there to be a bright-line test so if things were approved for parliamentary business they would not be caught within a 3-month period. I think that we need to get that absolutely clear at the select committee because in reading the Minister’s release it now looks as though the Parliamentary Service Commission determines what the regulated period should be. I do not think that is what the Parliamentary Service Commission thought they would do at all. I look forward to participating in the select committee.