The David Seymour ‘Bots' Debate: Do Online Submission Tools Help Or Hurt Democracy?
A discussion document on a Regulatory Standards Bill is not, on the face of it, the sort of thing that might have been expected to prompt 23,000 responses.
But in an age of digital democracy, the Ministry for Regulation was probably expecting it.
The bill, led by ACT Party leader David Seymour, is controversial. It sparked a response from activists, who used online tools to help people make their opposition known. Of the 23,000 submissions, 88 percent were opposed.
Seymour this week told RNZ's 30 with Guyon Espiner, that figure reflected "bots" generating "fake" submissions. He did not provide evidence for the claim and later explained he wasn't referring to literal bots but to "online campaigns" that generate "non-representative samples" that don't reflect public opinion.
Seymour has previous experience with this sort of thing. The Treaty Principles Bill got a record 300,000 submissions when it was considered by the Justice Committee earlier this year.
Is Seymour right to have raised concerns about how these tools are affecting public debate? Or are they a boon for democracy?
Submission tools used across the political spectrum
Submission tools are commonly used by advocacy groups to mobilise public input during the select committee process.
The online tools often offer a template for users to fill out or suggested wording that can be edited or submitted as is. Each submission is usually still sent by the individual.
Taxpayers' Union spokesperson Jordan Williams said submitting to Parliament used to be "pretty difficult".
"You'd have to write a letter and things like that. What the tools do allow is for people to very easily and quickly make their voice heard."
The tools being used now are part of sophisticated marketing campaigns, Williams said.
"You do get pressure groups that take particular interest, and it blows out the numbers, but that doesn't mean that officials should be ruling them out or refusing to engage or read submissions."
The Taxpayers' Union has created submission tools in the past, but Williams said he isn't in favour of tools that don't allow the submitter to alter the submission.
He has encouraged supporters to change the contents of the submission to ensure it is original.
"The ones that we are pretty suspicious of is when it doesn't allow the end user to actually change the submission, and in effect, it just operates like a petition, which I don't think quite has the same democratic value."
Clerk of the House of Representatives David Wilson said campaigns that see thousands of similar submissions on proposed legislation are not new, they've just taken a different form.
"It's happened for many, many years. It used to be photocopied forms. Now, often it's things online that you can fill out. And there's nothing wrong with doing that. It's a legitimate submission."
However, Wilson pointed out that identical responses would likely be grouped by the select committee and treated as one submission.
"The purpose of the select committee calling for public submissions is so that the members of the committee can better inform themselves about the issues. They're looking at the bill, thinking about whether it needs to be amended or whether it should pass. So if they receive the same view from hundreds of people, they will know that."
But that isn't to say those submissions are discredited, Wilson said.
"For example, the committee staff would say, you've received 10,000 submissions that all look exactly like this. So members will know how many there were and what they said. But I don't know if there's any point in all of the members individually reading the same thing that many times."
But Williams said there were risks in treating similar submissions created using 'tools' as one submission.
"Treating those ones as if they are all identical is not just wrong, it's actually undemocratic," he said.
"It's been really concerning that, under the current parliament, they are trying to carte blanche, reject people's submissions, because a lot of them are similar."
AI should be used to analyse submissions and identify the unique points.
"Because if people are going to take the time and make a submission to Parliament, at the very least, the officials should be reading them or having them summarised," Williams said.
'Every single case on its merits'
Labour MP Duncan Webb is a member of the Justice Committee and sat in on oral submissions for the Treaty Principles Bill. He said he attempted to read as many submissions as possible.
"When you get a stock submission, which is a body of text that is identical and it's just been clicked and dragged, then you don't have to read them all, because you just know that there are 500 people who think exactly the same thing," he said.
"But when you get 500 postcards, which each have three handwritten sentences on them, they may all have the same theme, they may all be from a particular organisation, but the individual thoughts that have been individually expressed. So you can't kind of categorise it as just one size fits all. You've got to take every single case on its merits."
Webb said he takes the select committee process very seriously.
"The thing that struck me was, sure, you read a lot [of submissions] which are repetitive, but then all of a sudden you come across one which actually changes the way you think about the problem in front of you.
"To kind of dismiss that as just one of a pile from this organisation is actually denying someone who's got an important point to make, their voice in the democratic process."
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