Adams Amy: Electoral Referendum Bill — Third Reading 
Adams Amy: Electoral Referendum Bill — Third Reading 
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AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) 
: 
 I rise to take a call in this third reading debate on the Electoral Referendum Bill. I start off by responding to some of what the member who has just resumed her seat Lianne Dalziel has said about it. I think it is only fair to say quite a number of people in New Zealand do not like MMP and thought they were to have another referendum. The fact that those people do not share the views of the Labour Party does not make them somehow part of a nasty political conspiracy. 
In fact I was at a forum the other day on this matter and I was talking to one of the lead campaigners for the campaign for MMP. She was telling the assembled group that she and her mother had had a very interesting debate about this very point. Her mother was staunchly pro - first past the post and had always thought there should have been a second referendum. The campaigner of course took the opposite view and in the great tradition of never discussing sex religion or politics I think things became fairly heated. 
But it is misleading to stand here in this House and try to suggest that there is some sort of nasty hidden political conspiracy because there are people in New Zealand who do not agree with Labour. A lot of people wanted to have a second referendum on MMP; a vast number of people always thought there would be a second referendum on MMP. This Government has always committed to giving the country that referendum. 
I will not stand here and argue about which electoral system is better. The whole purpose of this bill is for New Zealanders to make that decision. Our purpose in putting this bill before the House and the purpose of the Electoral Legislation Committee in its work on it was to make sure that the referendum process was as fair balanced and engaging as it possibly could be and in that respect I think this Parliament will have done an excellent job when it very shortly passes this bill into law. 
I will touch on one other aspect of that: the issue of the campaign spending limits which I also mentioned in the debate on the Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill. I believe it is important that there are some controls on the ability of parties to wade into this debate. It is important that there are limits on and proportionality between the amount being spent on the public education campaign to ensure New Zealanders are brought up to speed and the amount spent by third parties. 
Finally I touch on this: when we have the debate as a country around which electoral system we prefer I think it is really important that the debate goes beyond simply what the voting system is. The effect of the changes associated with some of these systems touches on matters like the number of electorates we will have in this country. A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests to me that the options in this referendum have the potential to give us anything from 30 electorates nationwide through to 120 electorates and that there are a number of stages in between those numbers. That alone is a really interesting debating point. How big should our electorates be? Should they be single-member electorates? Should they be multi-member electorates? How big is too big? How small is too small? I think it is important that when the country starts to think about these issues we realise that the issue is not just a question of how we will vote and how the seats will eventually be divvied up. That is of course an important part of it but I ask members to think through to what a change means to our system of representation and to our roles in this House of Representatives. Whom do we represent and are we able to do that properly? Certainly I will have issues if the electorates continue to get bigger and bigger geographically about how well we can really represent the voices of constituents. 
There are a number of aspects to this debate that I think will make for a very interesting next 12 months or however long the period will be over the teacups and over the roast turkeys. I hope New Zealanders will engage in this debate and leave aside the silly maxim about not discussing religion sex or politics. Those have always been the best three topics of conversation in my view. I hope people will actually start to have these discussions and ask the family over the Christmas table about what they think and what a change will mean. If we get some of the stuff out we might be surprised at how many members of our own families have a different view from ours. I end with one plea: that we respect that everyone will come to this issue with their own views and that we should discuss those views on their merits rather than attacking people who hold opposing views. With those words I commend the bill to the House.