By By Xavier La Canna
New Zealand's parliament is debating a contentious bill aimed at stopping groups like the secretive Exclusive Brethren sect from unduly influencing elections.
The Electoral Finance Bill was conceived in the wake of the 2005 election, when members of the Christian sect spent $NZ1.2 million ($A1 million) on an anti-Labour Party advertising campaign.
New Zealand's then-Opposition leader Don Brash later admitted he'd known about the Brethren's activities.
Parliamentarians on Tuesday began the second reading of the bill, which is expected to be passed into law next week.
If passed, the bill will replace the existing Electoral Act, which allows groups or companies to spend unlimited amounts of money to anonymously advertise their views during election campaigns.
But under the new rules, individuals and groups will be limited to anonymous advertising expenditure up to $NZ12,000 ($A10,500).
Any person or group wanting to exceed that must surrender their anonymity and register, and even then are restricted to a maximum advertising spend of $NZ120,000 ($A105,000) to air their views.
The bill also limits how much money can be channelled to political parties as anonymous donations.
The new restrictions will run from January 1 during election years, if polling day falls after March 31.
The bill has sparked widespread debate among civil libertarians and in media circles, amid claims it will impede free speech.
"Democracy under attack" said a front page headline in the New Zealand Herald newspaper on Tuesday.
"There will be no winners if the Electoral Finance Bill is passed into law this week," the paper said in an editorial.
A demonstration on the weekend saw 5,000 march in Auckland against its introduction.
New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark has portrayed the bill as a way to create a level playing field for political debate in the run-up to elections.
"Do you want money politics to distort New Zealand's elections and democracy or do you want the sort of rules that around the world western democracies put in place?" she said on Monday.
Justice minister Annette King said the new laws would safeguard democracy.
But bill critic and former fundraiser for New Zealand's ACT party, John Boscawen, claimed it was an attack on free speech.
The bill would make it difficult for critics to be heard in the run-up to elections, he said.
"The hypocrisy of this is that while they allow the government departments and the existing politicians to spend a whole lot more taxpayers' money, they are restricting private individuals from spending their own money," he said.
New Zealand's influential Sensible Sentencing Trust and Family First NZ lobby groups put out a joint press release slamming the Electoral Finance Bill.
They said they had intended to send a brochure to every household in the country ahead of the next election, but would be prevented from doing so if the bill became law because it would cost more than $NZ120,000.