Key John: Electoral Finance Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Key John: Electoral Finance Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:644;Page:13451] 
JOHN KEY (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 I am going to do something that the Hon Rick Barker did not do and that is address Part 1 of the Electoral Finance Bill. But before I do that all I can say is that if Rick Barker is the standard of what it takes to be a Cabinet Minister in a Labour Government it is no wonder its members need to change the Electoral Finance Bill to stop people competing with them. Rick Barker told us that this is a Government that is going to steamroller over 100 years of democracy in this country on the back of a two-bit book written by Nicky Hager. This is the same Government that when Nicky Hager wrote  
Seeds of Mistrust 
 nothing changed; absolutely nothing changed. 
This is what we know about the Electoral Finance Bill. It is a shambles. The Minister does not understand it. Labour MPs do not understand it. The Electoral Commission cannot understand it. Nobody understands this legislation. It is such a mess that the Labour Minister responsible for it has had to drop 150 adjustments in the Supplementary Order Paper before we even talk about the debate—150 amendments have had to be tabled. 
Let us talk about Part 1 which addresses the purpose of the bill. Any New Zealander who picks up the legislation will understand in a heartbeat that the purpose of the bill is what Rick Barker said before—all of the partisan stuff we heard. The purpose of the bill is not to do what is written down. The purpose of the bill is as simple as this. It is to pass self-serving legislation that is designed to keep Labour in office. That is what the bill is about. It is not about democracy freedom and New Zealanders; it is about passing self-serving legislation to keep Labour in place. 
The second thing the bill is about is to funnel the largest amount of taxpayer money possible into the coffers of the Labour Party so its members can spend taxpayers’ funds trying to buy an election. This is from people who come down to the Chamber and have the audacity to lecture the National Party about elections when in election 2005 they spent $1.5 million in the last week when their secretary wrote to the Electoral Commission and said they would include the spending of the pledge card in their electoral cap even though they knew it was way over their cap. Not only did they steal the money from the taxpayers but they broke the law and now they are coming down here trying to lecture the National Party. 
What they are doing today is setting up a gigantic slush fund of taxpayers’ money so that they can use their accompanying legislation that they passed last week to make the equivalent of the pledge card a legal activity. What they will be doing in election 2008 is spending taxpayers’ money at the same time that they are telling taxpayers they cannot spend their own money. They wonder why they are so far down in the polls. Well they have given up on ordinary New Zealanders and ordinary New Zealanders know about it. 
The third purpose of the bill is to use the gigantic spending budget of Government departments somehow to try to curry favour with New Zealanders. They know that and that is why there is such politicisation of the public sector. Labour needs its stooges in the communications departments of those ministries so they can sign off on political advertising. 
Lynne Pillay 
: I raise a point of order Madam Chairperson. The speaker did say that he was going to talk about Part 1. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: I have given one warning and I will give another one. When points of order are being heard they will be heard in silence. Secondly when the Committee Chair is trying to deal with points of order they will be heard in silence too. It just makes for proper order. 
JOHN KEY 
: It is no wonder it is a shambles. We are talking about the purpose of the bill which is in Part 1 and the chairperson of the Justice and Electoral Committee does not even know what we are talking about. It is no wonder this legislation is a shambles. 
The third purpose of the bill is to screw the scrum in favour of the Labour Party because those members know that they lost 10 electorate seats in the last election. Rick Barker likes this legislation because it hurts him that Craig Foss cleaned his clock last time in 2005 and he knows that his mate Russell Fairbrother might have won the selection in Napier for a seat he lost for the first time in 50 years and he might know that Nash had the signatory of Michael Cullen on his selection but he is laughing because he is sitting over there getting another opportunity to get dealt to in election 2008. 
I will give members a very interesting twist on that. This is what some people do not know. In 2002 the person who put up Russell Fairbrother was none other than Michael Cullen’s wife Anne Collins. In 2002 Anne Collins Mrs Cullen wanted him in office and in 2008 the Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand Michael Cullen wants him out of office. That is what that is all about. 
Sue Moroney 
: I raise a point of order Madam Chairperson. The member said he was going to speak to Part 1. The content that he was just talking about had absolutely nothing to do with Part 1. I ask for relevance to this part of the bill. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: The member needs to come back to Part 1. The member is correct. I will give a third warning. 
JOHN KEY 
: The purpose of this bill is quite clear; it is to suppress ordinary New Zealanders’ freedom in democracy and in our elections. But that is the bit that cuts the Labour Party to the quick because its members know that we are right. They know that the campaign the  
New Zealand Herald 
 has been running is right. You see even in the bill they refer to third parties as if somehow they do not belong in elections in New Zealand. That is what this is about. The purpose of this bill is to attack democracy—a democracy that has survived for over 100 years in New Zealand. We know that after this legislation New Zealanders will no longer be free. They are used to operating in a democracy in New Zealand where they are free to express themselves on political issues they are free to criticise the Government they are free to criticise the Opposition they are free to promote policies they like and to protest against policies they do not like and they are free to be part of a country whose core foundation is backed up by an open and transparent democracy. 
Our healthy democracy does not just tolerate that sort of behaviour; it requires it. But under Labour that is all changing. The rights of ordinary New Zealanders no longer count. The rights of hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who want to participate no longer count. Well I have a message for the very out-of-touch Prime Minister of New Zealand: this bill cost her Minister his job. That is what happened; he is no longer here. And I will tell members this for nothing: this legislation will cost the Prime Minister of New Zealand her job in 2008. You see she has gone—she has gone. She lacks so much confidence now about winning this election on a fair and even basis that she does not care about toughing out day after day the front pages of the  
New Zealand Herald  
and every editorial around the country. The Labour caucus lacks so much confidence that Labour will win without screwing the scrum that it is closing its eyes and doing it. 
If any—any—part of the Labour Party thinks that this is going away in 2008 I tell them that it is not. New Zealanders are sick of being told what to do they are sick of having Labour control every part of their lives and they are sick of being told whether they can participate in an election. I say to Labour members that they should pick up the  
New Zealand Herald 
 read the editorial and for once in their lives recognise that they are not bigger than the people of New Zealand. Those members have a chance to vote this legislation down; they have a chance to preserve their reputations albeit they are badly tarnished and badly in tatters. But I will make the prediction that they will not do that because they lack the confidence to win an election when it is run under the old basis and when electoral law was debated evenly across Parliament. 
I make this promise to New Zealanders: when Labour is gone at the end of 2008 the first thing National will do is repeal this legislation. It is gone—it is gone. And we will not indulge ourselves in the kind of behaviour we have seen from the Labour Party where we write self-serving legislation. We will consult we will actually act in the best interests of New Zealand and we will not use Nicky Hager and his second-rate book as some sort of compass for the way in which New Zealand’s democracy should be run. That is a disgrace and we all know it.