1st reading at 3 pm

Thanks to the Coalition for Open Government for alerting me to the fact that the Electoral Finance Bill has its first reading at 3 pm today.

Up until I saw the bill, I never considered it would be so flawed that one should not support it at first reading. And while there are some positive aspects to it, the bill is so badly done that I think the best thing would be for Parliament to reject it and tell the Government to go away and come back with something more acceptable.

You see this bill is so flawed that the Select Committee (which has only three out of eight parties on it) will have to make massive changes to it, to make it workable. And these changes could then be passed by Parliament in just a couple of weeks before Christmas. The opportunity for public input into the revised bill will be extremely limited.

I can’t believe what a wasted opportunity this has been. Every single aspect of how Labour have gone about this has been flawed. They should have released a green or white paper on options for reform, and allowed public input into this. They should have then published a specific proposal, and consulted the public and other parties on it. Then they should have drafted legislation on the basis of the public and parliamentary consensus.

But instead it has been the ultimate in grubby self serving politics. They unilaterally kill off any clampdown on anonymous and trust donations, because Labour is so reliant on them. And they come up with the most bizarre, bureaucratic and draconian third party advertising restrictions you could think of.

Sadly the bill will pass its first reading. Labour, Greens and NZ First will vote for it and that is 61 votes as a minimum.

The select committee process will be shortened also, restricting the public’s ability to have their say on it. The normal report back date to Parliament would be in six months, but I suspect they are going to impose a report back date of just four months so they can ram it through before Christmas.