KEY POINTS:
Parts of laws governing elections are "ridiculous" and should be overhauled, the Electoral Commission told MPs today.
Commission president Tony Ellis QC said he was not satisfied how the police investigation into complaints against political parties election spending had turned out.
After the election, police received complaints from
the Electoral Commission and the Chief Electoral Officer that Labour, National and four other parties had breached election spending limits or used illegal advertising.
The most highly-publicised complaint was against Labour for not initially including the $446,000 cost of producing its pledge card in its spending return.
When this was eventually included it then took Labour over its spending limit.
Police decided not to prosecute any of the parties or party officials, saying it was not in the public interest.
Mr Ellis said the six-month limitation on prosecutions meant the police only had a short time to investigate.
"There is nothing we can do to speed it up," Mr Ellis said.
Police criteria on prosecutions did not give political matters a high priority, Mr Ellis said.
"We feel the process is unsatisfactory. You either need to extend the limitation period or have another way of dealing with it. It doesn't really work in practice," Mr Ellis said.
Solutions could include adding extra criteria, such as specifying police should prosecute if it would uphold public faith in the electoral process.
Commission chief executive Helena Catt said in three of the overspending cases, police were unable to identify who was responsible.
It was possible that more time was needed or changes about who could be held responsible for parties' activities.
In the case of the National Party's overspending on television advertising, due to not taking into account GST when it bought its time, it was "ridiculous" that it was impossible for them to remedy the breach.
In National's case police could not attribute responsibility for the GST mistake.
Mr Ellis suggested MPs should consider changing the law to allow remedy for breaches and look at making parties pay double if they wanted to "put a sting" into the law.
Failure of parties, especially smaller ones, to file statutory returns was another problem.
Dr Catt said it also took a lot of the commission's time reminding parties they had duties to fulfil.
The ability to impose fines might assist, but it was matter of how they would be enforced.
Justice Ministry officials who are reviewing electoral law were aware it was a "big concern" of the commission.
Some of the laws were 50 years old.
The commission said it was still hopeful that an overhaul of electoral law would pass through Parliament by the end of the year.
It was possible some changes could be made this year and then more after the 2008 election if MPs wanted to keep to the convention of not passing electoral law in election year.
The commission told MPs that voting turnout, especially among younger people was declining in New Zealand, but not as much as the rest of the western world.
The only country to buck the trend was Denmark and this was believed to be due to the deep sense of civic duty in Danish society.
In New Zealand the worst turnout was among young rural men on low incomes.
Many potential younger voters had strong views on many political issues, but did not make the connection between that the political process.
Instead they saw politics as MPs shouting at each other and this put them off, Dr Catt said.
- NZPA
