KEY POINTS:
MPs yesterday argued in Parliament about whether ordinary New Zealanders cared about the passage of the Electoral Finance Bill or not.
National argues that the Government has underestimated opposition to it but Labour and support parties say the public is relaxed about it and that protest was whipped up by John Boscawen blanketing Auckland with phone calls made from a foreign call centre.
The bill last night passed its committee stages and will receive its third and final reading when urgency on other bills, that begins this morning, is finished.
National list MP Jackie Blue, wearing her late father's World War II medals, talked of the war veterans who had marched against the bill.
"Our soldiers did not die for this," Dr Blue said.
Her father had been the first to sign up in the South Island town in which he grew up - Timaru - and he fought in the Middle East.
"He didn't hesitate to fight for his country or human rights. He would be insulted or appalled at this bill if he was alive today."
She said the Prime Minister and the small parties that supported the bill - New Zealand First, the Greens, United Future and Progressives - had underestimated the depth of opposition. "You have got it so wrong. You have read the people so wrong. You have been blind but you cannot see. It has gone beyond the Wellington beltway."
The 5000 people who marched against the bill in Auckland had not been coerced in any way and most had never marched before.
National Aoraki MP Jo Goodhew said the Government might be desperate but it was not dateless. But the minor parties on the date with them were not discerning in their choice of date, she said.
"This Government is clinging to power and seems oblivious to the scraping of their fingernails on the blackboard of power. New Zealanders are cringing as they hear that sound."
New Zealand First MP Doug Woolerton dismissed the notion of deep concern.
"Average New Zealanders are not concerned about this bill. They do not want their elections bought. They do not want their elections corrupted by people who have a really, really strange view of the world."
He said the 5000 who marched in Auckland had been the result of an email blitz by National and an advertising campaign and telephone blitz of 82,000 people commissioned by John Boscawen. It had not been the result of anger over the bill because outside of the National Party "the public of New Zealand is actually reasonably relaxed about this bill".
National members might be rarked up about the bill, Mr Woolerton said.
"I'll tell you what; we won't give a damn because National Party people don't vote for us. This is all organised to a degree that the New Zealand union movement can only envy."
Speaking of the influence of the Exclusive Brethren in elections, Labour Dunedin South MP David Benson-Pope commended to the House a book by a Victoria University religious studies lecturer, Marion Maddox, titled God Under Howard.
He said her exposé of former Australian Prime Minister John Howard and his marginalisation of the traditional churches and encouragement of fringe churches was "an extraordinary read".
Green MP Keith Locke talked about the money being spent in the United States presidential primaries, particularly by the Democrats, and believed that the contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama would be determined by who spent the most.
National's Whanganui MP, Chester Borrows, suggested the title of the bill should be the "We lost and we just can't accept it bill", after the many Labour MPs who lost their seats at the last election - he took his seat off Labour's Jill Pettis.
"They want to believe it was stolen by the Exclusive Brethren."
The Brethren ran a $1.2 million campaign to support National at the last election.
He then talked about election donations and said Labour was "quite happy to accept extorted money".
He said a friend of his who was in the Dairy Workers Union had been at a meeting when it was moved that the union give Labour $10,000.
His friend then suggested they give National $10,000 as well, at which point two big delegates went and sat either side of him and put their hands on his knees to prevent him from standing up.
Herald entitled to forthright opinion, says Cullen
National leader John Key's attempts to goad the Government into an attack on the Herald's campaign against the bill failed yesterday.
Deputy Prime Minister Michael Cullen was answering questions on behalf of Prime Minister Helen Clark in Parliament and appeared determined to calm debate rather than stir things up as he did last week during his "scumbag" attack on Mr Key.
Dr Cullen said the media were entitled to take a forthright stance. "That is called being in a democracy."
When Mr Key said the Herald had been running a "fair and balanced campaign" against the Electoral Finance Bill, Dr Cullen said: "That obvious and robust defence of the New Zealand Herald suggests that the member might well be described as the Herald's page-boy from now on."
Mr Key: "Has it dawned on the Prime Minister that it is not necessarily the New Zealand Herald that is wrong, that it is not necessarily the millions of New Zealanders who are opposed to this bill who are wrong, and that every organisation around this country that thinks this legislation is wrong is not necessarily wrong itself; has it ever dawned on the Government that for once in its life, it is wrong? So why does it not scrap the the bill, as we suggested six months ago?"
Dr Cullen: "I suspect the Government has been wrong more than once in some eight years of government. It would be rather surprising if we had not been. I am equally confident, however, that this is not one of those occasions. But the member should not be afraid of robust debate; some day he may want to be able to engage in robust debate with the media."
