English Bill: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
English Bill: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
[Volume:642;Page:11854] 
3.  
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Leader—National) 
 to the  
Minister of Justice 
: What reasons did he give in his Cabinet paper entitled  
Review of the Electoral Finance Regime 
 for recommending that the regulated period operate from 1 January to polling day? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Leader of the House) 
 on behalf of the 
 Minister of Justice 
: That a longer regulated period would enable a greater proportion of what is actually campaign expenditure to be accounted for. 
Hon Bill English 
: Can the Minister confirm that in the Cabinet paper there was one sentence covering the matter he has just raised and can he tell us how Cabinet came to such a significant and Draconian decision on the basis of one sentence of reasons? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: I cannot confirm that there was only one sentence in the Cabinet paper on that matter. I can count nine. 
Hon Bill English 
: Can the Minister confirm that an exception to the 1 January regulated period has been made for organisations communicating with their own members which will effectively legalise pamphlets like the Council of Trade Unions  
Election 05 
 pamphlet openly endorsing the Labour Party— 
Hon Annette King 
: And they declared it. 
Hon Bill English 
: —and that they will be allowed to spend as much as they like on such pamphlets? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: As my colleague reminds me the Council of Trade Unions actually declared that pamphlet unlike some others we could mention. Secondly that exception could equally apply to organisations such as Business New Zealand which to my knowledge has never campaigned on behalf of the Labour Party. 
Hon Bill English 
: Can the Minister confirm that the effect of the Electoral Finance Bill will be that unions will be able to leave this kind of pamphlet in every staffroom every supermarket every fastfood outlet—in fact everywhere that they have some members—and will be able to spend unlimited amounts of money on it? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: To follow up my previous answer I can confirm that organisations can distribute to their membership and that covers organisations that notoriously tend to support the National Party. For example I am sure that the same rules would apply for the organisation that laughably calls itself the Kyoto Forestry Association. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Has the Minister received reports to the effect that only one party in this Parliament is concerned about the 1 January date due to the fact it is awash with money and will have been forced by the end of the year—prior to 1 January—to have spent it on billboards talking about one law for all and “Kiwi not iwi” which is the kind of material it ran for the last election? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: I can confirm that fact and I can further confirm that yesterday Mr English tried to give the impression that the “Iwi/Kiwi” billboards were not actually electioneering. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Please be seated. [ 
Interruption 
] Now if we have finished the interchanges outside of the Standing Orders we will return to the Standing Orders. 
Hon Bill English 
: Can the Minister explain why when the Government has set the regulated period at up to 11 months in election year it has kept the cap for candidate spending at $20000 which now has to cover 11 months rather than 3 months and is this a shoddy attempt to protect useless Labour MPs who are expecting to get rolled from their seats? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: No what it is more likely to do is to stop National Party candidates with extraordinarily deep pockets who have been running around the business sector getting very large donations and spending vast sums of money from getting their useless backsides back into this place. 
Hon Bill English 
: Is the Minister now telling us that although an incumbent member of Parliament will be able to spend his or her full public funding for parliamentary purposes and the leader’s office of any party will be able to spend large amounts of public money on information and on selling its party a candidate who wants to stand against an incumbent MP will be able to spend only $20000 in the whole of the election year when the previous rules were $20000 in 3 months? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: What the member skates over—as he did yesterday—is the fact that parliamentary spending is capped. It is not an open-ended budget at all whereas what a number of National Party candidates want to spend is a totally open-ended budget. Secondly he also skates over the fact that there are rules around that and that it cannot be electioneering within a strict definition. That is most important. Of course what is most difficult for the National Party is that it has to be promoting policy. When a party does not have any policies spending money on blank billboards is a waste of money. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Is the law designed to stop as an example what happened in Aoraki at the last election when Jo Goodhew raised $51000 by way of donations only to come to Parliament and after that disappear from public sight? 
Madam SPEAKER 
: I am not sure what the ministerial responsibility for that is. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: The last part I think at least shows us that every cloud has a silver lining. 
Hon Bill English 
: Why is it that the Government supports a much tighter restriction on political candidates than there used to be at the same time as it has opened up for unlimited spending on publications like this one from the union movement? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: The limit on political spending increases the time within which the money is able to be spent—there always were those limits. The matter that the member refers to has always been uncapped but of course he can always raise the issues via the select committee process should he actually deign to turn up to participate in it.