Norman Russel William: Electoral Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Norman Russel William: Electoral Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:652;Page:1265] 
Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 The influence of money on politics is one of the greatest threats to freedom and to democracy. Political parties necessarily need money to run election campaigns but we know that that money can be a source of undue influence on our democratic process. There are numerous examples. In addition wealthy non-political-party actors can intervene in the election process by buying advertising and distorting the process in favour of their agenda. For that reason Western democracies all around the world have introduced many rules to try to limit the influence of money on politics. 
As the 1986 New Zealand Royal Commission on the Electoral System said it is not fair “if some in the community use their relative wealth to exercise disproportionate influence in determining who is to govern and what policies are to be pursued.” In New Zealand over the years we have introduced a series of laws in order to attempt to reduce the impact of money on our democracy. For example parties are to some extent required to publicly identify the source of their donations over a certain threshold. They are not supposed to declare donations as anonymous when they are not. Parties cannot spend their own money on TV and radio advertising but have to spend the money allocated by the Electoral Commission. This is an attempt to restrict the influence of money on politics. There is a cap on how much parties can spend. One of the best aspects of our current system is that there is a cap on how much political parties can spend in election campaigns. I agree with the Hon Jim Anderton that that cap needs to be adjusted. It is certainly something that we advocated during the negotiations with Labour over the Electoral Finance Act and I am sorry that we did not get that in there. None the less the cap itself is a really good idea and one of the most important parts of our system. 
However the origins of the Electoral Finance Act were that a number of problems emerged in our system in the 2005 election. A number of loopholes that needed to be addressed became apparent and they were around two particular issues. There were a lot of issues but there were two in particular one of which was the avoidance of the rules requiring disclosure of the true identity of donors. We found that National by using the Waitemata Trust which it had set up and Labour which had a lot of anonymous donations were hiding the true identity of the sources. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Which trust? 
Dr RUSSEL NORMAN 
: A huge amount of money was going through the Waitemata Trust. We did not know the true source of that money but it turned out when one reads Nicky Hager’s book  
The Hollow Men: A study in the politics of deception 
 that the National Party did. That was a getting around of one of the key rules. 
One of the other problems we discovered was the role of third parties—the role of non-political parties. The problem is that when we have a cap on what political parties can spend which makes a lot of sense one can get around that rule by having a non-party actor who basically says: “Vote for this party” and spends a lot of money but that money is not incorporated within the cap of that party. Of course that is exactly what the Exclusive Brethren did. The thing about the Exclusive Brethren is not that they are an unusual religious sect. That is completely irrelevant to the argument and I think too much focus goes on that. We are not critical of the Exclusive Brethren because of some of their religious practices though one may well be. The issue is this: they effectively ran a “Vote National” campaign in the 2005 election and spent $1 million in doing so and avoided the spending caps. That was the key issue that the whole third-party regime was trying to address. 
It is really difficult to set in place a bunch of rules that contain third-party spending—every country in the world has struggled with it. The Canadians have a regime that is much stricter than the Electoral Finance Act but with a much shorter time period. The UK has a similar regime to ours in terms of restricting third-party spending in an attempt to protect democracy from the influence of money. I want to quote from the royal commission again because it conducted one of the most extensive investigations into this issue in 1986. “It is illogical to limit spending by parties if other interests are not also controlled. Supporters or opponents of a party or candidate should not be able to promote their views without restriction merely by forming campaign organisations ‘unaffiliated’ to any party ... Nor should powerful or wealthy interest groups be able to spend without restriction during an election campaign while [the parties] are restricted.” This is a difficult regime or set of rules to put in place as we saw with the Electoral Finance Act. None the less if we do not try to put in place a regime around non-political party intervention in elections with spending caps then the spending caps on the political parties become irrelevant. 
The Electoral Finance Act for all its problems—and they were numerous and we all experienced them—was an attempt to deal with these fundamental principles: the principle around reducing the influence of money on politics and the perception of the influence of money on politics. That is why the Green Party supported it. We do not resile from voting for the Electoral Finance Act. The principles were sound even if there were real problems with the bill. At the time when we were negotiating with Labour we were not happy with the fact that it was not a multiparty approach and I commend the Minister for his negotiations with other parties so far and for the comments he has made about taking a multiparty approach to electoral finance reform. I commend the Minister for that. 
However there is another aspect to consultation that is missing here which the Greens put in around the Electoral Finance Act and that is the citizens’ assembly idea. The thing is that everyone in this House has a vested interest in these rules. We are all political parties. We have a vested interest in trying to get the rules that suit us best but they are not necessarily the rules that suit the voters of New Zealand. The voters of New Zealand have a different perspective and it is their democracy not our democracy—they own it. The citizens’ jury that the Greens negotiated which sadly the incoming Government has abolished was an attempt to include ordinary people in the decision making around their electoral system. Just as we give a jury the ability to send someone away for life why is it that we do not trust ordinary citizens to make recommendations about campaign finance reform? If a jury is able to get its head around whether someone is guilty or not guilty of a particular crime and to make a decision that will affect the rest of someone’s life—such as sending that person to jail—surely the citizens of our country are perfectly capable of making decisions about what their electoral system should look like not our electoral system their electoral system. Yet they are being excluded. 
I say to the Minister that although it is true that there will be public input—and I accept his reassurances that he will put out an issues paper to the public and the public will have an opportunity to make submissions on that—it is not the same thing as a deliberative process whereby a group of randomly selected people have the chance to be informed and provide informed feedback as a group back to the people who will ultimately make the decision who are the people in this room. A citizens’ assembly is a much more deliberative process. It is about interacting—informed debate—and I encourage the Government to revisit the getting rid of that. 
Of course it would be extremely politic of the Greens not to be out of step with every other party in this Parliament and to vote for the repeal of the Electoral Finance Act. However I have to say that we oppose this bill to repeal the Electoral Finance Act. We oppose this bill because we supported the principles of the original Electoral Finance Act even though we understand the problems with the Electoral Finance Act. We supported why it came in. The purpose of the Electoral Finance Act was to limit the influence of money on democracy. We stand by that purpose. We could not come into this House was it a year and a bit ago and defend it day after day after day then turn up today and suddenly run away from it. That is not the kind of party the Green Party is. We recognise the problems with the Electoral Finance Act but we support the fundamental principles and that is why we are not going to vote for the repeal of it. There is no reason to repeal it now. There is no urgent election about to happen. We could actually have a proper process improve the Act and then we could have an advanced and better system of electoral finance control rather than going back to the old Electoral Act 1993 and we could move forward. 
Once again I acknowledge the efforts of the Minister to involve other parties. I hope we can have a deliberative process and I once again encourage the Minister to involve the citizens of our country. It is their democracy.