Foster-Bell PaulPAUL FOSTER-BELL (National): E Te Mana Whakawā Tuarua tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou katoa e ngā mema o Te Whare Pāremata o Aotearoa. In making a contribution in this first reading debate on the Local Electoral (Equitable Process for Establishing Māori Wards and Māori Constituencies) Amendment Bill I want to congratulate the Green MP Marama Davidson in having her bill drawn. It is a stroke of luck for any member to have a bill taken out of the ballot. I have been fortunate enough to have two in my relatively brief time in this House. But as a relatively new member Marama Davidson certainly had good luck in having it drawn. Unfortunately her luck is about to run out as I do not intend to support this bill any further. I do that for several reasons.Hon Simon Bridges: It's all about you!PAUL FOSTER-BELL: Ha ha! I do that for several reasons. Firstly I think that any electoral change should come about as a result of significant consultation with the communities impacted. It is actually a fairly fundamental tenet of our constitution that the rules for picking be it members of Parliament or councillors should not be quite so easily decided by us ourselves. That is a little bit like putting the poachers in charge of the reservation.It is far better to have a process whereby members of the public can set the system the electoral rules and the details of the constituencies and wards which they use to select their elected representatives the people who then go on to spend their valuable taxpayer or ratepayer moneys. It is far better that we let the wisdom of the New Zealand public prevail because let us face it we are proud to be a democracy in this country and one of the longest-standing uninterrupted democracies in the Western World. We have to remember that we had an independent settler Parliament founded in this country before the US Civil War before several republics of the French Republic were established and fell. This is a longstanding democracy and I think democratic principles should be adhered to and where we go against those democratical principles we do so at our risk and at our—Hon Simon Bridges: Democratical?PAUL FOSTER-BELL: Democratical—I am not sure that it is a word. It is one of those neologisms that occasionally get created in this Parliament.So I think that a process whereby there is a public referendum which can be triggered with only 5 percent of the electors of any city district or region—only 5 percent of the electors can trigger a referendum process whereby the other electors get the opportunity to decide and actually the poll is binding. Once that referendum has been triggered and the electors decide it is binding on the council to then establish a Māori ward or a Māori constituency for a regional council if that is the will of the public.This has happened. This has happened once so far in the Waikato region. There have also been recent cases of interest where the public wisdom has been to not establish a Māori ward or a Māori constituency but to allow the Māori voters to express their will on the roll of a general constituency or ward. So whilst I think the intention of Marama Davidson is laudable—it is a wonderful thing to engage more Māori in voting and we know that there is a lower turnout for instance in the Māori electorates as a percentage than there are in the general constituencies in this country. So I think things that we can do that may better engage Māori particularly young Māori in the electoral process are positive.One of the things we could do perhaps is make politics more interesting and more relevant to that generation. I am not entirely convinced that this bill would in fact do that. Creating a separate ward option not where it is the will of the public but where it is a decision taken by a council strikes me as perhaps opening up the opportunity for gerrymandering electoral boundaries. For that reason I think this bill should not proceed beyond the first reading stage. For these reasons that I have outlined I personally will not be voting to see this bill continue. Kia ora.