Dear Ministry of Justice,

The Minister of Justice has today announced the introduction of a Bill 'to ban foreign donations' to political parties and candidates. The announcement is here: https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/gove...

This is an Official Information Act (OIA) request for two pieces of information:

1) The date on which the Minister of Justice asked the Ministry of Justice to start work on what has become the Electoral Amendment Bill (No. 2) http://www.legislation.govt.nz/bill/gove...

2) The date on which the Parliamentary Counsel Office was first asked to start work on drafting what has become the Electoral Amendment Bill (No. 2) http://www.legislation.govt.nz/bill/gove...

Under section 12(3) of the OIA, I ask that my request be treated as urgent. My reason for doing this is to better understand why the Government is seeking to have the Bill passed under urgency. There is a strong public interest in the public receiving information which will contribute to their understanding of why the normal Parliamentary process of scrutiny of legislation is being accelerated.

Pursuant to section 16 of the OIA, my preferred method of receiving this information is as electronic attachments to an email sent to the address from which the Ministry received this request.

Under section 19(a)(ii) of the OIA, if the Ministry decides to withhold any of the information I have requested, I further request that it provides me with the grounds in support of any reasons for withholding that it has asserted. I also ask that it list each of the public interest factors favouring disclosure that it has considered when making its decision.

I look forward to hearing from the Ministry as soon as reasonably practicable.

Kind regards,

Andrew Ecclestone