Prime Willow-JeanWILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour—Northland): Thank you Madam Speaker. I do just want to take the brief opportunity to acknowledge the Hon Dr Nick Smith who is in the House this afternoon—the member whose bill it is—and who I have spent many hours in the select committee discussing along with my other colleagues who are in the House tonight and debating and listening and hearing a lot of theory. We heard about a lot of ancient politicians. It was a fascinating discussion in select committee. I wasn't part of the select committee or any of the speakers in the previous Parliament on this bill so it was all new for me and I did appreciate the opportunity to be part of the select committee. As the honourable member knows we will not be supporting this bill. That was very clear during the process but I do want to just outline that and give some of the reasons. But I first wanted to just respond to one of the comments made by the member Simeon Brown about Labour's 2020 campaign and our manifesto and that we didn't specifically campaign on not supporting this bill. Well I do want to point out that this isn't actually one of the Government's priorities. This bill isn't one of the Government's priorities. We campaigned on a manifesto that outlined what our priorities were. Those were the measures that we will take to keep New Zealand safe accelerate our economic recovery and take on the foundational challenges in our economy and society—in particular housing affordability climate change which we've just received the report on today and child wellbeing. The proposed repeal of the 2018 Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Act was not among them in our manifesto so that is true. Hon Member: It was already law.WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: That's right—already law. I do want to also make the point that we have spent a considerable amount of time Parliament's time on the first piece of legislation as well as this one—over 21 hours on the previous legislation and then of course this one. I wanted to reflect on a value or a principle that I have been raised with and have been very familiar with over at least the last 10 years of my career and that was when I was working with Ngāti Hine. One of the values and principles that Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Hine has is: He rahi kē atu te kaupapa i a koe." which is to say that the kaupapa is always bigger than the individual than you the one person. We are not against having robust discussion and debate and dialogue and a competition of ideas. In fact we do that on our marae all of the time. We reach our decisions. Waiho mā te whare e kōrero—it's the whare that ultimately decides. If I am not happy with that outcome I can't just throw a hissy fit and walk out and potentially destroy the entire kaupapa. Tikanga Māori reminds me of why this legislation that we currently have in place and why the bill that is proposing to repeal it—why we don't support it is that essentially it could give an individual more mana and more power than the collective decision that has been made and I just don't think that that is right. I don't think that's what we want as a democracy in New Zealand. We don't want to empower an individual more than the millions who voted for the proportionality of Parliament and so I use that principle and that value that I have been raised with: he rahi kē atu te kaupapa i a koe—the kaupapa is always bigger than the individual.I was reading the previous debates and unfortunately I think Dr Duncan Webb has just left the room but I wanted to acknowledge him because he too acknowledged the same thing. He said "Now we in New Zealand are here to decide our own constitutional and electoral future and the fact of the matter is … how we express our voting system to all of New Zealand. It's pretty simple: the party who gets the most votes gets the most seats and to not have this Act to not have this piece of legislation would do away with that principle. To suggest that a member can of their own volition upset the proportionality of Parliament is to put in the hands of the individual the destiny of our nation and that's wrong."So as I referred to the value—he rahi kē atu te kaupapa i a koe [the purpose is always bigger than the individual]—what we have here is that perhaps an individual could have more power over the kaupapa than that of the collective. I think it's a dangerous concept in Te Ao Māori and it's also a dangerous concept for Parliament. I do want to acknowledge the select committee process the 19 submissions and the seven individuals and organisations that we heard from. Yes there were more submissions in support of the bill than those opposed to it. But I do want to just touch on one point which was stressed by many submitters and there was a lot of discussion about it. It is the perceived impact that the current legislation the one that this bill seeks to repeal has on the rights of freedom of speech and association. Some submitters according to the report argued that the current electoral provisions could limit MPs' rights to freedom of speech and association and are unjustified. However I do note that the Attorney-General who examined the consistency of this bill against the Bill of Rights Act said he did not agree with the submitters. He argued that the limits on MPs' rights or perceived limits on MPs' rights imposed by the bill are justified. This is because of the importance of the bill's objectives and because the capacity to remove and replace the distorting MP is the minimum necessary to achieve these objectives. So we were debating this across the House and I was thinking: should one individual's right to freedom of speech compromise the millions of voters who determined the proportionality of Parliament? I just can't see how that specific right should be able to override something as important as the proportionality of our Parliament as determined at the last election.The other thing too that I just wanted to reflect on and I remember this was an area that there was a lot of angst and concern about was the power of party leaders to simply dismiss members who they didn't necessarily agree with or had concerns with their behaviours positions and so on. But I referred to the third reading of the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill to the speech of the Hon Andrew Little in particular to point out that he believes—and I believe he's right—that there are sufficient safeguards in the legislation to ensure that party leaders don't single-handedly have that much power over this process. He describes what some of those safeguards are including that there has to be notice in writing that the leader of the party in giving a notice to the Speaker about this apparent change in proportionality has to have a reasonable belief that the proportionality of Parliament would be distorted. Now under the current arrangement that we've got of course we enjoy on this side of the House a significant majority. But there have been parliaments in the past where the numbers are much tighter to which this would or could actually apply. A leader of the party is required to write to the Speaker to say they believe proportionality would be changed by that. Then there is a 21-day period and the Minister referred to it perhaps as a cooling-down period a chance to negotiate or to talk or call it a chance to rally the numbers for that particular member or indeed for the leader who has to give the notice. And then there is the requirement for two-thirds of the caucus to support the action to remove. The Minister in his contribution in the third reading of the legislation that this bill seeks to repeal believes that there are sufficient safeguards in there so that a leader does not have so much power in this process. I just want to conclude by going back again to that fundamental principle that I believe in: he rahi kē atu te kaupapa i a koe—that the kaupapa is always bigger than the individual that the individual shouldn't have the power to be able to overturn a kaupapa like the proportionality of Parliament. So therefore I do not commend this bill to the House."