Boscawen John: Electoral Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Boscawen John: Electoral Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:652;Page:1318] 
JOHN BOSCAWEN (ACT) 
: 
 I will repeat just part of what I said on Thursday night. Just under 15 months ago on Saturday 1 December 2007 I organised a protest march against the Electoral Finance Bill in Queen Street Auckland. I am told that the police estimated that around 5000 people protested on that day and if that is correct then it was the largest political protest in New Zealand for some years. It was one of just six protest marches against the bill that were organised in Auckland Wellington Christchurch and Tauranga. 
When I organised the protest march I had no inclination whatsoever that less than a year later I would be elected to this Parliament as a member and that I would be standing now to speak against the Electoral Finance Act and voting for its repeal. 
I acknowledge the 5000 people who protested that day and the many thousands of others who protested in one form or another whether it was by protesting in other centres writing letters to members of Parliament or sending emails or in whatever way. 
For each of the protest marches I organised—with the exception of the one at Parliament in Wellington—I was particularly careful to make them apolitical. Although a number of sitting MPs and would-be MPs attended those protests I was very careful not to allow any existing members of Parliament to speak. I wanted the protests to be apolitical. Free speech is an apolitical issue. 
I was approached by a member from the office of the then Leader of the Opposition now the Hon John Key and asked whether if Mr Key was to attend the protest I would allow him to speak. Although I appreciated Mr Key’s support I indicated to his office that I was not prepared to allow him to speak if he attended the march but that I would read a statement from him. I intend to start this first reading debate by repeating the statement Mr Key gave me on that day and that I read to the 5000 people assembled in Queen Street. 
Mr Key said: “Within 2 weeks Helen Clark’s Labour Government will force the Electoral Finance Bill on to the people of New Zealand. They plan to steamroll this bill into law by a slim majority of Parliament before Christmas. National simply does not have the votes to stop it. Labour has turned its back on the convention that significant changes to our election laws should have bipartisan political support and public backing. The electoral bill has neither. It stifles free speech for 1 year in 3 and it is cynically designed to protect incumbency. Labour is not listening; National is. Today I give you this assurance: if I have the privilege to be the next Prime Minister I will overturn this law. I will set about building a proper political consensus for fair changes to our election laws. I will listen to what people like you and many thousands of others are saying. You are fighting for a principle. You are fighting for the most important principle: you are fighting for democracy. I salute you. John Key.” 
I congratulate the Hon John Key and I congratulate members of the National Party because this is yet another commitment that John Key made prior to the election that he is fulfilling. The ACT Party will be voting for the Electoral Amendment Bill. 
Just a couple of weeks after that protest march on 1 December I stood up in the gallery as members of the public are now and I looked down on the third reading debate of the Electoral Finance Bill. Many speeches that day impressed me. I recall particularly the speeches of the then Leader of the Opposition now the Prime Minister; the deputy leader of the National Party now the Deputy Prime Minister the Hon Bill English; and Rodney Hide. But one speech impressed me more than others—it is etched in my memory—which was from Hone Harawira. He started his speech by saying: “Yes folks money talks but nothing talks quite like the truth.” The truth has finally spoken. 
When the Hon Phil Goff was elected leader of the Labour Party last November the first thing he did—in fact on the day he was elected—was to move to distance himself from the previous administration distance himself from the Electoral Finance Act and acknowledge the mistake that both he and his party made. I congratulate him and I congratulate the Labour Party because the Electoral Finance Act was all about incumbency. It was about protecting people who are already in power. It is not surprising that Labour is now supporting the repeal of the Electoral Finance Act. It is not surprising at all because it was designed to keep Labour in power. It was designed to keep an existing Government in power and it is a credit to National that it is not going to use the same rules to allow it to be more easily elected in 3 years’ time. 
In a democracy free speech is one of our most basic rights and privileges. The right to speak out and to criticise a Government or for that matter to speak in favour of a Government is one of our most basic fundamental human rights. Generations of New Zealanders have gone to war to protect our rights and those freedoms. I ask members to take a look around this Chamber at the various battles and wars that are depicted around us—for example Passchendaele and Gallipoli. You see free speech is not an issue for party politics; it is an issue of concern for all New Zealanders. 
Notwithstanding widespread public opposition the Labour Government with the support of the Greens passed the Electoral Finance Act and placed restrictions on ordinary New Zealanders to speak out and criticise the Government. Those restrictions went far beyond what the Human Rights Commission considered reasonable. The Labour Government did that for the worst possible reason. Fearing that the Labour Government might lose the last election it placed restrictions on the rights of people to criticise it in a thankfully failed attempt to be re-elected. Even worse at the same time as it was placing restrictions on the rights of ordinary New Zealanders to speak out against it it altered the law to allow itself to spend even more of taxpayers’ money on promoting its own policies. I refer in particular to Labour’s so-called pledge card. The Labour Government passed a law to make legal in 2008 that which was illegal in 2005 and it repeatedly ignored the submissions of the Human Rights Commission. 
The problems with the Electoral Finance Act go right back to the very beginning. Incredibly the former Labour Government sought to regulate every form of political speech. Anyone who wanted to make any sort of political comment whatsoever was required as a minimum before saying anything to sign a declaration before a justice of the peace or alternatively to register as a third party before the Electoral Commission. Members listening to this speech and members of the public will find that very hard to believe but it is actually true. 
Notwithstanding the sacrifices that have been made by New Zealanders in two World Wars the Government proposed that people had to sign a declaration before a justice of the peace. It is like Marie Antoinette saying “Let them eat cake.” How arrogant is that! 
The Government said to New Zealanders: “If you’re not happy with that you have to object.” And thank goodness over 500 New Zealanders and New Zealand organisations did just that. I was one of them and thankfully so was the Human Rights Commission which gave a damning indictment on the original electoral finance legislation and the Labour Government. The commission concluded by saying: “The bill in its current form represents a dramatic assault on two fundamental human rights New Zealanders cherish: freedom of expression and the right of informed citizens to participate in the election process.” It concluded by saying that the bill was inherently flawed and should be withdrawn. Anticipating—correctly as it happened—that the commission would be ignored it went on to say that if the Government was not going to listen to it and not going to withdraw the bill and start again as the commission recommended then the Government had to make four essential changes. The commission repeated that advice on 18 October when its officials appeared before the select committee in person. 
My time is coming to an end but I am expecting to speak on the second and third readings of this bill. In those speeches I intend to outline how the previous Government continued and repeatedly continued to ignore the recommendations and advice of the Human Rights Commission and totally misrepresented the position of that commission to the public of New Zealand. But in the end that did the Labour Government no good. The people of New Zealand saw through what it was trying to do and voted it out of power. Thank you very much.