Nats: No need to change law

National leader Simon Bridges says the revelations around NZ First’s funding this week do not necessarily mean electoral laws need to be changed.

His predecessor as National Party leader Jim Bolger said earlier in the week that it was time to start publicly funding parties, in the wake of Stuff revealing that NZ First appears to be using its foundation as a kind of political slushfund – sucking donor money in and spending it on party activities far away from the watchful eyes of the Electoral Commission.

Bridges said that while his party was open to some changes in electoral laws it would absolutely reject state funding of political parties.

‘‘National believes in freedom of expression and the ability for people to back causes and for that matter parties that they support,’’ Bridges said.

This could hamper appetite for reform within the Government as electoral law is generally passed on a bipartisan basis.

Green MP and justice spokeswoman Golriz Ghahraman rejected Bridges’ argument, saying money was not equivalent to speech.

‘‘What he’s really saying is freedom of speech for those who can afford it. Through money your opinions are more influential in New Zealand – that isn’t democracy and it isn’t freedom of speech,’’ Ghahraman said.

Ghahraman said the NZ First case proved something that been shown time and time again – that electoral law reform was needed.

‘‘We deserve better than to not really know what’s going on. And we say that political parties - it shouldn’t be up to them to decide what is and isn’t okay.’’

Bridges said he was not certain whether laws needed to be changed to respond to the NZ First case, as he believed that if the facts alleged in the media stacked up the law had clearly been broken.

‘‘While National is open to changes I don’t necessarily think what we’ve seen this week shows that the laws aren’t working.

‘‘The question is were breached or not.’’

‘‘If the facts that Stuff has put out this week in my view there is a long term systematic thwarting of the law.’’

‘‘New Zealand rightly has a incredibly strong record for lack of corruption and its transparency.

‘‘We’ve got to be vigilant on this.’’

Bridges could see some merit in beefing up the powers of the Electoral Commission however, as it technically has no investigatory powers.

‘‘A serious questions that flows from this is whether the bodies tasked with this job are tooled up enough to do it.

‘‘I think the Electoral Commission does a good job but there is a question about whether it’s a toothless tiger or not.’’

‘‘The police – I think they themselves would acknowledge they are better equipped to deal with burglaries and violent crime than matters of alleged complex electoral fraud.’’

Bridges and fellow MP Nick Smith were threatened with a lawsuit on Thursday by NZ First Foundation trustee Brian Henry, who said the damages could reach $30m.

It’s understood that while National MPs are not keen on the time and effort that a lawsuit would involve, they think the judicial process of discovery would likely hurt NZ First more. they