A sensible regime for parliamentary spending
Broadly, there are three different ways you can have a parliamentary spending regime. I want to canvass these options, after making something clear.
Almost every activity done by MPs for parliamentary purposes has a dual political purpose. Every speech in Parliament, every speech to a conference, every press release, every survey, every policy paper, every publication, every constituent activity. All of it can be quite legitimate, but all of it may help the MP or Party get votes at election time.
So does this mean one has effectively no rules at all, such as Labour and allies are legislating? Well, no – look at the options.
- Have very tight rules all the time
- Have very liberal (anything goes) rules all the time
- Have relatively liberal rules most of the time, but much tighter rules during the period immediately before an election
(1) is an option. It would mean however an end to all newsletters from MPs, all surveys, all pamphlets. It would mean only the most basic documents such as a policy paper, or electorate office hour ads would be allowed. I don’t think it is the way to go. However this is not the only alternative to disagreeing with option (2).
(2) is what Parliament is about to pass, with National and Maori Party against. Apart from explicit solicitations for votes, money or members anything at all goes including blatant electioneering documents such an election pledge card produced during the election campaign, and after Parliament itself is dissolved. The problem with this is obvious – especially with such spending being exempt from the Electoral Finance Bill spending caps.
(3) is what was the unofficial or de facto rule for many years. A fairly liberal regime most of the time, but as the election got closer, a far more conservative regime where almost no publications would go out except the most basic (an ad for electorate office hours).
The Auditor-General himself said that the closer one gets to an election, the more likely it is a publication will be just electioneering. There is a reason he focused on just the last 90 days – it wasn’t by chance.
One can argue about whether this tighter regime should be for 90 days or maybe just for the time period between Parliament being dissolved and an election – but the core issue is there should be one. There is considerable exit poll data showing that the last 90 days is when many voters are most open to influence as they are starting to take notice. In other words there is a considerable difference between a publication being sent to say every household two years before an election and two days before an election.
The good thing about the current Electoral Act is that it has no exemption for taxpayer funded publications, and this also acted as a brake on spending in the last 90 days. In fact it also captured publications produced earlier in the year, but distributed during the last 90 days.
So if for example a year before the election National spent $100,000 of its parliamentary budget on 200,000 health policy pamphlets that would be okay. But if it kept 50,000 of them in a box and distributed them during the last 90 days then$25,000 of the $100,000 would have to be included in their spending cap.
Labour twin new laws will not demand such an apportionment as parliamentary spending is exempt. In fact the following scenario would now be legal.
Labour has $5.5 million per year to spend from its parliamentary budget. Now say they spend $4 million per year on pamphlets – but not distribute most of them. So after two years one could have $8 million of pamphlets sitting in boxes. Enough for one per voter in five key policy areas.
Then in year three Labour could spend $2 million on posting and delivering those $8 million of pamphlets to every voter. It could effectively spend $10 million in the week before the election, and not one cent of it will count towards their spending limit.
This is why one needs a 90 day period and no exemptions for parliamentary spending.