Goldsmith Paul; Salesa JennyHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Well thank you to the Minister in the chair Kiritapu Allan for the answers to those questions and a couple of things come out of that. First is the reference to a survey. Yes a survey was done I think by Victoria University on this issue which does seem to point to a sense of public concern around electoral finance. I suppose the obvious question is: well how is she clear that the concern isn't around examples of parties allegedly breaking the rules and examples where large donations have been split up against what the current will rules are. That might be the primary concern and cause of public concern rather than the particular threshold which is not being altered by this legislation in any way. To split up donations was against the law previously and will be against the law afterwards.So I'm not quite clear what the Minister is saying is in the sense that there is a broad concern around electoral finance and therefore we need to make these changes. Drawing that logic would be interesting. It may well be that a general lack of confidence may be related to a general lack of confidence in Government generally and the gap between promises and delivery. That may be a broader challenge for all politicians that ultimately the task of all politicians is to win the confidence of the electorate and to fight for it. So it's not clear to me from what the Minister says and just because there are concerns out in the community around electoral finance—my guess is primarily because there have been cases involving allegations of people breaking the rules—doesn't mean that this change is necessarily justified or required.The other key question for the Minister is: does she not think a measure of bipartisan support for electoral law changes is desirable? This is clearly changing the electoral finance rules in a manner which we on this side of the Chamber claim or are concerned is skewing the system in favour of some parties over other parties given the history of funding and the way funding operates. We've heard quite a lot about the need for bipartisan support around constitutional changes and entrenchment and for changing the voting age but when it comes to this area which is an equally important part of how the rules are drawn up for how we conduct elections how we finance them this Government is just using its bare majority to change the system arguably in its favour. I'd like to hear a justification from the Minister for doing that and how she thinks that that is appropriate if she does.There are a number of other sort of issues raised around how she thinks it will operate because I think all New Zealanders are absolutely concerned to ensure that our system has integrity and that there is transparency. There's no question around that; it's just that the argument that we're having here is what is the appropriate threshold. The Minister referred to other countries and again I'd like her to tease out the difference between Australian states for example where they don't have an MMP system they don't have a party vote system which is the reason for the two different thresholds in this country. A lower threshold is appropriate in an electoral context where there's relatively smaller funds being raised and a donation would have a relative significance whereas the New Zealand context of the party vote is one electorate for the whole country and therefore a donation even of $10000 is very small within the big scheme of things in terms of a party's overall fund-raising. But those sorts of donations are significant and ultimately it comes back to the need for parties to be funded somehow and if this legislation makes it more difficult for parties to fund themselves the logical conclusion is taxpayer funding.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Before I call the next member can I just make this general observation to all members as you're thinking of your debate notes. This is Speakers' ruling 52/4: A member may not (1) impute improper motives to the Government; (2) suggest that the Government has received orders to put a bill through; (3) impute dishonesty to the Government; [and] (4) suggest domination by outside bodies." There were several sentences there where it sailed close to some of those."