Bill's net may have been cast too wide - Clark

The net may have been cast too wide in legislation designed to stop third party advertising, Prime Minister Helen Clark says.

However, that can be sorted out during select committee scrutiny of the bill, she says.

The Government's Electoral Finance Bill has come in for criticism over several points.

The bill restricts party spending by making January 1 the official "starting date" for any election campaign. Until this bill, only spending in the three months before an election was counted as part of the limit.

The National Party says that means that under the new January 1 rule anything National spends from that date will be considered campaign spending.

But it says there is nothing stopping the Government promoting its policies during election year, because that isn't considered to be campaigning.

Others have criticised the cap of $60,000 on the amount any organisation can spend during a campaign. Groups, such as forestry owners, say that will only pay for a full page ad in a few newspapers – not enough to highlight their messages.

The Greens and the Coalition for Open Government have attacked the Government for failing to deal with anonymous donations.

The bill doesn't touch the $10,000 threshold for anonymous donations and parties can still use secret trusts to hide the identity of donors.

That issue, and others like state funding for political parties, will be handled by an independent panel which won't report until after the next election.

Miss Clark today told Newstalk ZB that the idea behind the bill was to restrict third party advertising, such as the Exclusive Brethren's anti-government, anti-Green campaign at the last election.

"It's off to a select committee and that's the place to sort things out. It may well be a question of the extent of it, the scale of it.

"But if we go back to what has prompted a closer look at this law, it's people like the Brethren covertly spending $1m in a clearly party political way but just managing to keep it a whisker outside the law as it's been and that's what we need to focus on."

Miss Clark said there would "obviously" have to be some changes made to the bill.

It might be that in endeavouring to fix the cap on spending "the net's been cast too wide and that's why you need good scrutiny at the select committee".

Miss Clark said she would be happy to see a clamp-down on anonymous donations but there had to be a quid pro quo "because the Labour Party isn't led by me with a $50m bank account".

"The Labour Party is led by me with support from many, many people on low and modest incomes. Now, we are not in a position to just write vast, personal cheques whereas a party which is traditionally represented higher income people is."

That was why there needed to be a balance between open disclosure of donations and some form of public funding if there was to be a level playing field, she said.

- NZPA