Smith Murray: Electoral Matters Bill — In Committee 
Smith Murray: Electoral Matters Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:622;Page:17270] 
MURRAY SMITH (United Future) 
: 
 I want to talk about the opening and closing addresses which are in Part 2. In doing so I begin by commending Television One and Radio New Zealand for voluntarily giving time to the opening and closing addresses. It is time that they give up and are not reimbursed for and I want to thank them for their willingness over the years to do that. 
The opening and closing addresses do play an important role. The election should really be a level playing field. At the time that the House rises and heads towards an election every party is at zero seats and approaches the election from the point of view of having to win representation from that point. But so much of our system is geared against that level playing field. In particular the funding that is provided for television and radio broadcasts is paid out on a proportionate basis—the larger the party the more money it gets and the more time it gets. To some extent that clearly goes against the idea that all parties approach an election on the same basis. There is some justification for it in terms of the allocation of finances from the public purse; arguably the distribution of public funding of election broadcasting on the basis of the public support for parties that has been shown in the past can be justified. But when smaller parties are unable to top up their funding by private funding to supplement that to bring them to a level playing field in my view it provides some distortion. 
I think the opening and closing addresses in contrast help to level the playing field. Although there is more time allocated at least all the significant parties get an opportunity to provide their opening and closing addresses at a time when the members of the public who are interested in the election and in political events may make up their minds. We know the power that there is in television broadcasting in particular. The ability to judge all parties over one or two nights on their opening addresses and over what has proved to be about a 30-minute period on their closing addresses does I think have quite an influence on helping people to make up their minds as to which party they will support. 
I think that in so far as we get the generous time of Television One and Radio New Zealand it was important when we were considering this bill to provide as much flexibility to them as we could and in particular to allow them advertising time in between the opening and closing addresses. The sacrifice they have made in the past in that they were prevented from obtaining advertising revenue during a time when they would normally expect it has been an extra penalty that they have paid. The Justice and Electoral Committee recognised that it was a penalty that ought not to be imposed on them and that it was not necessary for it to be imposed on them. 
I think it is appropriate that the restriction on election advertising stays because of the potential for parties to distort the opening and closing addresses period by using greater resources. Therefore I think it is wise to restrict that. However the select committee has left the discretion on the broadcaster in terms of judging to a large extent whether advertising in the grey area constitutes election advertising. But I think we can have confidence in the broadcasters that they will take a conservative approach to that. If they get advertising from a third party that looks as if it is a little close to promoting a particular party or suggesting that people not vote for a party I am sure they will take a conservative view and not allow that to happen. 
I think the changes we have made not only fix an ambiguity in the Act as far as advertising is concerned but provide a very good balance whereby the broadcaster is able to get paid for time but there is the limitation to ensure that there is not any distortion through advertising between the opening and closing addresses. Certainly I think one of the things that the Government needs to look at is this whole idea of the ability to top up funding. I also think that the process we should be adopting is that once public funding is allocated parties that get less than the largest party are able to use their own resources in order to top up funding because of the level playing field nature of our elections.