Simon Power

Wellington, Feb 16 NZPA - Removing limits on how much lobby groups can spend supporting their political allies during election campaigns is set to be a political battleground again.

Justice Minister Simon Power today released proposals to replace Labour's since repealed Electoral Finance Act. National campaigned against the Act, labelling it anti-democratic.

Amongst other things, Labour's law limited groups outside political parties to spending $120,000.

Under National's proposal there would be no limit, but those spending more than $12,000 would have to be named on a publicly available register.

The last government introduced the limit and stricter rules about disclosure after the Exclusive Brethren tried to run a covert campaign against Labour and the Greens.

Labour's justice spokeswoman Lianne Dalziel today welcomed most of the proposals, but expressed concern about the lack of limits on lobby groups.

"Labour's Electoral Finance Act was a direct response to the subterfuge and political chicanery that characterised parallel campaigning in the 2005 election," Ms Dalziel said.

"National's proposals would identify parallel campaigners, but do not limit how much they can spend, or require them to say how much they have spent, or how closely they can work with political parties to essentially tilt the financial playing field in their favour.

"This still risks creating the sort of free-for-all that occurs in the United States where campaign spending is out of control."

The Greens expressed similar concerns, but ACT leader Rodney Hide disagreed.

"We think that's (no limit) smart. We were always against restricting the freedoms of other New Zealanders and have said we will support this bill to the select committee and have a good look at it."

Mr Power said the decisions had the broad agreement of political parties.

"The package comes after extended consultation with all parliamentary parties and the public. As a result, Cabinet has decided to progress reforms only where there is broad public and political support. If we are to have a system which is fair, workable, enduring, and in place before the 2011 election, broad consensus is essential," Mr Power said.

The reform package includes proposals to:

* Require disclosure of the total amount of donations that parties receive in bands.

* Increase the amount of money that parties and candidates can spend on election campaigning at the rate of inflation for each general election.

* Require people who spend more than $12,000 on parallel campaigning to register with the Electoral Commission. The register will be publicly available.

* Maintain the regulated campaign period to be three months before polling day.

Mr Power said there would be no change to the broadcasting regime that has existed since 1990.

"Similarly, as was the case before the 2008 election, we will not impose expenditure limits on parallel campaigners. New Zealanders were strongly divided on these issues," Mr Power said.

"We will introduce legislation in the coming months implementing these decisions. We expect the new rules to be in place before the 2011 general election."

The amounts political parties can spend in the three months before an election is also to be increased by the rate of inflation from the next election.

Parties can spend $1 million plus $20,000 for each electorate they contest.

There had been proposals to allow the pool of state-allocated funds available to parties to broadcast advertisements to be spent newspapers or digital media, but Mr Power said there was no political consensus in this area.

There will also be modernised definition by the Electoral Commission of what counts as election advertising.

The donations regime has been left largely unchanged with anonymous donations limited to $1000 and immediate disclosure of any donation over $20,000.