Law Society on Electoral Finance Bill

The President of the NZ Law Society, John Marshall QC, was on Morning Report this morning. Here’s some extracts from what he said:

MARSHALL: We’d say ideally, we should start again from first principles and the purposes which are good. Realistically that’s not going to happen, it seems. But as an alternative, we strongly suggest to the Government and to the Parliament that they send it back to the select committee so that, the people who made the submissions last time can have another say on what is a very heavily amended bit of legislation.

PRESENTER: Because we have to remember that the amendments came in after it had been to this select committee so in fact in real terms, the public groups like their own, have not had a chance to have a real go or a real say, in, as far as what is before the House now, is concerned.

MARSHALL: Exactly and frankly we need time to do that, it’s a very complex bit of legislation, it’s, difficult to make off the cuff comments on it and it really does require detailed consideration by the submitters and by the select committee. We’ve got to get this right.

Every day more problems are being exposed, and when you have the Electoral Commission itself saying We can not interpret this law, you know you have problems. And if the Government had published their draft bill when they were scheduled to – in early 2007, then there would have been plenty of time to get it right.  But they kept the secret negotiations with their allies going for months, minimising the chance to have decent public consultation.  So the Government are the only people to blame for leaving the bill so late.