Peters Winston: Appointments — Representation CommissionText is incorporated into the Bound VolumePeters Winston: Appointments — Representation Commission[Sitting date: 03 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13161. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): Nothing that I wish to say on behalf of New Zealand First is going to be I hope interpreted as a reflection on the current nominations but the public of this country must have confidence that the procedures by which the Representation Commission is put together are fully representative. Two decades after or 20 years after a referendum in this country to decide that we would move to a new political system called MMP you have got some people in this House who think we are still there under the first-past-the-post system. Twenty years on they have not learnt a thing. I know some of them look like they have been here for two decades or more but the fact is their thinking—Hon Dr Nick Smith: Look in the mirror.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Oh really? Ha ha! Listen grandad I would not shout to somebody if I were you to look in the mirror. That is not a very smart thing to say at all—not if your name is Nick Smith anyway. But back to my points. I have been unfairly detoured here. The fact is that two decades on we have a Minister of Justice who is a member of the Law Society who walks into this House and says: “I’ve got a great idea. We’ve got a nomination and so has the Labour Party and that’s it.”—“We have a nomination and so has the Labour Party and that’s it.” All the rest of the other parties do not matter at all.It gets even worse. I can recall when New Zealand First had all of theMāori seats—not just some of them; all of them—and the National Party nominated the person to go as theMāori representative on the commission. Do you remember that? You have got to be pretty arrogant when one party has got all theMāori seats and you have got none and yet you put up your own friendlyMāori on the Electoral Commission.Here we are in September 2013 and the Minister of Justice who has painted herself as a new-age and modern lady comes in with this dusted-off model from the last century. I know it is like her ideology but it is a dusty old off-the-back-of-the-van model that is not democratic at all. We want to know why it is that the Government has not had the decency to ask other parties for their views. At least the Labour Party had the decency to say: “We’ve got our own nominees. What do you think?”. I mean it is not total consultation is it? But at least it is a start—at least it is a start. Those members even wrote to us but not the National Party—the born to rulers; those who think that they have got a right to rule but do not know what noblesse oblige means. They have got no understanding of culture and taste and history. They are still back doing it.So I say to the Minister why not now withdraw this start the process over again and properly consult all the political parties in this country? Imagine that it is 7.30 on election night and you are strung out to dry because some other party holds the political power and the balance of the future. Imagine then what you would think. Well I know what those members would do. They would be all cosy saying: “Can we help? What would you like to know? Can we help? Do you want to be consulted?”. Oh yes therewould be an outflow of friendship and cooperation the likes of which you see only when they realise how desperate their position is.Denis O’Rourke: They’re going to get desperate.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Well doing this is just putting off the inevitable. It just means that other parties find it an absolute affront when this could be a mutual choice of people. So rather than have a “Judith-mander” why do we not have some democracy?