Dunne Peter: General Debate 
Dunne Peter: General Debate 
[Volume:620;Page:16100] 
Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. I begin by expressing my congratulations to those who were elected in the local body elections on Saturday my commiserations to those who were not elected and my consolation to those who do not know either way at this stage. We have seen an appalling situation by any stretch of the imagination and particularly so when we discover that essentially the system for running local elections in New Zealand has been unchanged since the days of provincial government which ended in 1876. That in itself is an indictment and is a reason why there needs to be an urgent inquiry into the events surrounding that election. The subsequent issues that have emerged regarding the counting of votes the contract that was let and the fact that every local authority is responsible for the conduct of its own election is in my view totally unsatisfactory. 
 The point Mr Brownlee raised by way of a point of order a moment or two ago about large cities now being ungoverned and district health boards being unable to carry out their responsibilities is perhaps a little far-fetched but the reality remains that many New Zealanders today—most of whom did not vote in the local body elections anyway—have had a further blow to their confidence in our system of local government by virtue of the fact that we cannot even get the results counted and out on time. Part of the problem lies in the way in which we administer the local body elections. 
I take the House back a few years to the establishment of the Electoral Commission in the early 1990s as part of the lead-up to our MMP system of Government. One of the objectives prescribed for the Electoral Commission at the time of its establishment was that it should oversee all matters relating to the conduct of elections in New Zealand. As one of those who can remember the design of it and as a member of the select committee at the time I well recall the discussions about the fact that we needed one central body to conduct elections to carry out the regulatory responsibilities in terms of the registration of parties etc. and to ultimately take over the handling of enrolments. At the moment we have a hopelessly split and divided system. Then we add into that the tier of local authority responsibility and we get a system that is totally unworkable and that has failed the public on this occasion. 
I am a strong advocate of the single transferable vote (STV) system. I do not hold that responsible but I do believe that inadequate preparation was made for counting the votes under it. I draw to the House’s attention this parallel. In our first MMP election in 1996 we experienced similar problems in getting results which were complicated then by a referendum as well. But the lesson that should have been learnt from that change was that when one makes a major change to one’s electoral system—and I will come back to the point raised separately by Dr Smith in the media in a moment—one needs to have thorough and adequate preparation. It was maybe forgivable in 1996 to have the delays the first time around. It is utterly unforgivable in 2004 to have a similar situation occurring. 
Dr Smith raised in the media the fact that we have one system for some elections and one for another. There is some merit in that point but I do not think that that in itself goes to the core of the problem. I take the point that people confronted with a range of voting papers may have scratched their heads and wondered which names to tick or which names of a series to strike out because they did not wish to vote for them. But the fundamental point is that we have a system administered by so many different authorities and we clearly did not have sufficient preparatory work done. Even the company involved in carrying out the election—and I was not aware until I became aware of who Electionz.com are that we had privatised the electoral system in New Zealand—now admits that it did not have the resources to do the job properly. That in itself should be raising huge questions about the level of preparation for this change. 
The reality will be that up and down New Zealand at the moment many people who have been cynical about local government over the years who have wondered what on earth its relevance has been and who have tended to ignore it will now have had their cynicism confirmed. I feel sorry for those candidates who are on tenterhooks. I feel sorry for the country.