Electoral Finance Bill passed into law

The Electoral Finance Bill has passed into law after a day of furious debate.

The bill did not restrict free speech but only restricted the right to purchase speech through advertising, Associate Justice Minister Annette King said today.

Opposition parties today mounted a last ditch effort to damn the bill that rewrites election financing laws but the Government had the numbers to push it through.

The Government had 63 votes with Labour, New Zealand First, the Greens and the Progressive Party voting for it.

United Future, after earlier supporting the bill, switched sides to vote against it.

The opposition parties mustered 57 votes with National, the Maori Party, ACT, independent MP Taito Phillip Field and United Future's two MPs voting against it.

The bill puts a $120,000 cap on the amount of money that third parties can spend on campaign activities and extends the regulated spending period from the current three months before an election to the whole year in which an election is held.

The bill was drafted in response to the Exclusive Brethren's initially covert $1 million campaign against Labour and the Greens during the 2005 election.

Ms King opened the debate today conceding the bill had been "a contentious one".

"Its passage marked by acrimonious debate and a campaign of misinformation," Ms King said to yowls from the Opposition benches.

The New Zealand Herald had been running a campaign against the bill, she said.

But a letter to the editor of the Dominion Post yesterday had summed up the bill saying democracy was "not $1, one vote".

"Freedom of speech and the freedom to buy speech are not the same things," an article in the Otago Daily Times had said.

"This bill is about creating a fair, transparent electoral system that puts all parties on a level playing field with clearly defined rules and safeguards to protect the electoral system from abuse. We don't want to see the Americanisation of our electoral system," Ms King said.

"This bill does not restrict free speech. It simply restricts the right to purchase speech through advertising," she said.

"This is being done to safeguard our democracy by keeping to a minimum the undue influence of money in politics."

National leader John Key kicked off his party's final thoughts on the bill by quoting not someone from the right wing, but from the far left - political activist Noam Chomsky.

He had said: "If you are in favour of free speech then you are in favour of freedom of speech precisely for the views you despise otherwise you are not in favour of free speech."

Mr Key, who has said National would repeal the legislation, accused the Government of breathtaking arrogance in passing the bill.

"One of the key planks of our democracy is the freedom to participate."

"But it comes at a price. You have to be prepared to hear opinions we don't like, from people we can't stand, on topics we might not want to debate."

What the Government was doing was passing a "legalised gagging order" on the people it did not like.

United Future leader Peter Dunne said that while his party believed the bill was needed to tidy up the excesses of the last election, it was no longer supporting it because the public disagreed with it.

United Future had backed its introduction but Mr Dunne said it was not voting for its third reading today because the "court of public opinion" felt it was a self-serving attack on the freedom of the electoral process.

It made no material difference the bill's passing today as the Government had support from NZ First and the Greens to get the bill passed into law.

Green MP Metiria Turei said she was proud her party had put restrictions on anonymous donations.

- NZPA