People interested in this might like to check out what Metiria Turei the Green MP on the select committee has had to say about it on Monday:
Link: www.greens.org.nz/searchdocs/other11407.html

Metiria represented the Green position to negotiate seven of the amendments which have made the Bill fairer.

Like Steven we (the Greens - I'm a member) want to see the cap for anonymous donations brought down further - we reckon $1,000 is about right.

We've also argued all along that NZ should have used a citizen's assembly process like Canada did.

In a citizens' assembly an independent body (probably the Electoral Commission) would randomly select a male and female voter from each electorate and bring them together to consider the rules around electoral finance. The citizens' assembly would make recommendations that would become a bill that was introduced into parliament.

Democracy belongs to the people and we should be the ones who set the rules.

The Greens will be moving amendments to the bill to establish a citizens assembly to review the electoral finance rules. It would be nice to think that other parties like National would support the idea.

Oh yeah, blame the Jews. It's all our fault. We schemed it, you know. And while you're at it, ignore the fact that the quintessentially Aryan Persians had a very similar bunch of ideas, which were equally prevalent at the time.

The scheming predates the Jews, Christians and Muslims. All three religions stem from the same root - the Aryan tribes in the far north of what's now Europe who worshipped a harsh, male, volcano-top God, celebrated the power of the sword and domination and controlled wealth through male-line inheritance.

Over several thousand years they invaded, settled and spread through what's now the rest of Europe, the north of Africa and the Middle East, taking control from the nature worshipping (usually expressed as a mother earth goddess) people who celebrated power as responsibility, (symbolised by the grail/font/cup), and where knowledge was symbolised by the serpent/snake and often passed, with wealth, through the female line. (Please forgive epic generalisations!).

Anyway, the documentation and emergence of Islam, Christianity and Judaism all came from this same root and together they systemically completed the transformation of society from generally pantheistic and often matrilineal/matriarchal to where we are now...

There is heaps of fascinating stuff on this which readers/contributors to this thread might enjoy - including the systematic destruction of the earth-goddess temples and the demonisation/appropriation of the symbology of that belief system (serpent, font etc) in two books by archaelogists I've read the last year or so;
When God Was A Woman by Merlin Stone
www.realgroovy.co.nz/books/isbn/015696158X#details

and The Chalice and the Blade by Riane Eisler
www.realgroovy.co.nz/books/isbn/0062502891

Not that I'm suggesting the answer is matriarchy ;-> and as far as I'm concerned the moment any spiritual belief is structured into an organised religion with rules and power structures it has the potential to exploit people.

However, there must have been some good stuff going on - there is hard evidence that one of the last strongholds of the 'earth religion', Minoan Crete, enjoyed peace for 1000 years.