Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Oh thank you Madam Chair. Look I support this amendment by the Hon Nick Smith and the inclusion of an expiry clause. It makes absolute sense. The Minister has set up—a number of times she said it's a short-term fix and we do have concerns about what the long-term fix is but at least there seems to be an indication that at some point there'll be some broader discussion about it.The slight problem that I have with the suggestion from Dr Smith—Hon Simon Bridges: You said you're supporting it!Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: I support it but the issue is what happens is in the meantime there will be a whole number of local bodies which will adopt these separate seats for one ethnic group—Māori in New Zealand—and they'll do it without a referendum so the people will not get an opportunity to have their say on it. Then that'll be kind of permanent and so we'll have this very significant constitutional change in our country happening on a substantial scale and there's a whole bunch of members local body politicians who think this is a great idea where their voters seem—a large majority of the examples so far have shown that they don't like this as a proposition. So you'll have this so-called short-term fix bill come in without proper process in a rush under urgency against what was promised in the manifesto and then over the next year or so a whole bunch of separate seats based on ethnicity will be put into our local body electorate.Louisa Wall: Based on the status of Māori as the indigenous people of Aotearoa. Get it right.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Yeah and that is a perfectly legitimate argument for the member to raise if she wants to talk about this and make the argument for it but I would hope that she has the respect for other members of Parliament and for other New Zealanders to hold a different view which is to hold a different view that New Zealanders should be treated equally before the law. If she doesn't agree with that that's fine for her but I think you will find that there are many other New Zealanders who hold a different point of view. It's important in our democracy—and we all enjoy living in a democracy where we're treated equally before the law and the worry that many New Zealanders have is that we have inherited something from 100 years ago in this central government. That's something we've inherited from 100 years ago. What is a substantially new addition is to say we're going to extend that to local government and then at the same time we're also being told by some of the submitters that actually even that's not good enough; decision making should be 50:50 from Māori and everybody else. And so at some point you're left with the question of: well hang on a moment; what's happened to the foundations of our democracy—one person one vote—where we're all treated equally before the law? What's happened to that?Now I perfectly respect that member Louisa Wall's opportunity to have her say on this but what was seen through this process is that most New Zealanders are being deprived of their opportunity to have their say quite deliberately by this Government—quite deliberately.Hon Simon Bridges: That's probably why they're ramming it through.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Precisely. They're ramming it through but they're also saying that—the fundamental message of this piece of legislation is We do not trust New Zealanders to make the right decision in a referendum." That is what this piece of legislation is saying "We do not trust New Zealanders to make the right decision on this." and so they've brought this legislation which says "We do not trust referendums. We will scrub that opportunity for New Zealanders to have their say because we know best and we don't trust the instinct of New Zealanders." And the instinct of New Zealanders is—and it doesn't come as a great surprise to me. The instinct of New Zealanders on the majority is to say we actually want to be treated equally before the law and we don't want to go down more and more a path towards treating New Zealanders differently because of who their parents are and who their grandparents are and who their great-great-grandparents are. These are pretty basic and I absolutely—I absolutely—[Time expired]"