Turei Metiria: Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill — Second Readings 
Turei Metiria: Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill — Second Readings 
[Volume:669;Page:15840] 
METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I am pleased to speak on the Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill and to say that the Green Party will be supporting this legislation and its companion bill the Parliamentary Service Amendment Bill. Later in the afternoon we will also confirm our support for the Electoral Referendum Bill. All three of those bills were dealt with by the Electoral Legislation Committee at the same time. 
The Greens have been campaigning for a very long time—and have held it as our policy for a very long time—on the need for New Zealand politics to be honest and clean. A number of different issues arise in terms of honest and clean politics but one of the means by which those politics happen is through electoral finance. It is quite weird actually—just on a personal note—but having debated both electoral finance legislation and foreshore legislation this year it makes me wonder if years spent in Parliament are just like one long day. Having gone through the original process of looking at the Electoral Finance Act in 2007 and then having reviewed both that Act and the changes to it this time I think that this bill does make some advances which is great. The bill has kept some of the significant changes that the Greens fought for in the earlier version particularly in relation to donations and to penalties for illegal and corrupt practices and we are very pleased about that. 
In addition this bill has also introduced spending caps which was a very important issue for us and one on which our support for this bill depended. People have talked today already about the Exclusive Brethren and the issues that arose in 2005 and there is no doubt that those issues were a clear example of the fact that we needed a transparent process so that the public knew who was doing what in the campaign what was being spent and who were the players the public could identify so that the veracity of their claims could be judged effectively. In that case the veracity was seriously lacking. 
The public also need to know the people who are making themselves political players in order to hold them to account. Of course political parties and candidates are clearly in the game and are making themselves political players. They are constrained in the way that they can use money to present their position—and rightly so. But it is also critical that others who want to be players in the political game have their engagement subjected to similar rules. There is nothing inherently anti-democratic about that approach. So one of the processes firstly honestly identifies who a player is—which is a provision of the registration process in the previous and now in this current legislation—and secondly makes that player like other political players subject to financial constraints in order to make sure that money is not the dominant influence in the public’s mind as to who they would prefer to see in their House of Representatives. 
On spending caps the argument that somehow people will misuse the genuine and right values of free speech and the right of citizens to be engaged in the political process used particularly by the ACT Party and others like it as a means to defend wealth and the abuse of wealth and its influence in the political process is quite frankly revolting. It is kind of yucky to hear those arguments being made. None the less given that free speech is so important it is important that if those arguments are to be made they are heard—and we certainly heard them. The majority of the submitters the public and certainly members of this House agree that it is quite right that there is to be a set of rules for engagement in this process particularly a set of rules for money. New Zealand does not have billion-dollar advertising in this industry because it does not work but the idea that spending money on advertising will not influence the election campaign is patently ridiculous despite that being one of the arguments used by political parties in this House. We are very very pleased to see that National has agreed to the cap. I must say that the cap in this legislation is smaller than the one the Green Party proposed in our submission to this bill so we are very pleased to see that. 
The select committee made a number of other recommendations. One of those we disagree with very strongly and that was about the donation disclosure thresholds. Most of the disclosure regime that the Greens put in place last time has been kept but the disclosure threshold has been changed by National. It has increased the threshold at which a party has to disclose who has given it a political donation from $1000 to $1500 for a candidate donation and from $10000 to $15000 for a donation to the party. We are extremely concerned about this increase in the disclosure threshold for donations. It means that it will be effectively easier for political parties to hide from the public where they get their money from. We have talked about the importance of a financial cap or constraint on players but it is also critical for the public to know who is funding political campaigns for political parties—parties that will exercise extraordinary economic power once they are represented in this House. 
This is part of the process of the right of citizens to be informed and engaged in the democratic process. One of those processes clearly is that the public should know who political parties are getting their money from so the public can assess again whether the interests of parties really do lie with the public or with those who are funding them. It is perfectly reasonable for the public to know that but National for some reason has decided that the public should be shut out from knowing it. National wants to keep the public ignorant about who is funding it and by enacting legislation arguably wants to keep the public ignorant about others. National wants to increase the threshold so that the public are denied their right to know further who is funding their political parties. 
In the Greens’ view the current level of $10000 is too high; it was already too high. Our position is that the threshold should be at $1000 and that political parties should disclose on a regular basis to the public those who are giving them donations of $1000 or more. There is nothing wrong with the public knowing more about what is happening with their political parties and about the power that political parties exercise once they are elected into Parliament. 
This set of values—a clean system an honest system a transparent system and a principled system—are the values that the Green Party takes to discussions on politics on the way our electoral system is functioning and indeed on MPs’ expenses. Today we have seen that the Law Commission has come out in agreement that those are the principles that should be applied to MPs’ expenses and it agrees with the Green Party that there should be an independent body that sets MPs’ expenses. We now see that both John Key and Phil Goff have followed the Green Party and agreed that such a body should be independently setting MPs’ expenses because of the importance for the public of having confidence in a system where transparency and clarity on the use of public money in terms of MPs’ expenses and in the sense of election funding is made more apparent to them. So we are very pleased that finally the two old parties have followed the Greens and that we have led that change once again with MPs’ expenses. We are very pleased to see that there has been some change in this legislation but as long as the disclosure threshold remains too high we will continually oppose the political forces that want to shut the public out from that information because it is not right to do that. The public have a right to know who is funding their political parties but this legislation—very unfortunately and for no good reason—will shut the public out from that view. 
We look forward to the Committee stage and we invite support from all other political parties for our Supplementary Order Paper. It will fix this problem and restore a sense of the values of transparency and clarity to this legislation and it will reduce the disclosure threshold to $1000 for political parties and candidates as is only right in a modern 21st century democracy such as ours. Thank you.