Ardern Jacinda: Electoral (Adjustment of Thresholds) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: Electoral (Adjustment of Thresholds) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 24 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4737. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): I have to start my contribution in this House first by thanking the member Iain Lees-Galloway for bringing a bill that generally has a consensus view in the public that this is something that this Parliament should do. So that is my first point: my thanks to him for bringing to Parliament something that the Government should have actually brought here but did not so we are being forced to have this debate via a member’s bill.Second though to begin my contribution I want to rebut what Jacqui Dean the chair of the Justice and Electoral Committee had to say. I have great respect for the chair; I think she is an excellent chair and I enjoy being a member of her committee. What she failed to acknowledge in her contribution—which seemed to focus solely on first the date of the implementation of this bill and second whether or not it is the most appropriate mechanism; she failed to make any other substantive statement on the content of the bill itself—is that the bill was drawn on 14 November 2013. It was perfectly reasonable for the bill to make reference to its coming into force in 2014 because of when it was drafted. Of course all members of the House know that commencement dates change frequently because bills are frequently delayed. So the only point that the chair of the Justice and Electoral Committee just made was actually to remind this House of how members’ bills can drag. Members’ bills can drag particularly when there are elections in between so I think it is unfair of that speaker to have called this member Iain Lees-Galloway lazy. It is absolutely outrageous when there is a very reasonable explanation for why we have the date that we haveon this bill.The second substantive point that she made in her contribution was the notion that there are better ways to bring up an issue like reform of our electoral system. We probably would not disagree with that. We believe—we would have probably preferred this—that the Government should ideally have taken the review recommendations of the Electoral Commission its full report on MMP and the voting system and should simply have packaged them together as a bill for this Parliament to debate; that the Government should have put to the floor the issues that were raised by that review and let us decide.Chris Bishop: By consensus.JACINDA ARDERN: That would have been a reasonable way for us to have that discussion. The Government did not do that. So what are we left with except the option of using mechanisms like members’ bills? I believe absolutely that Iain Lees-Galloway has done the right thing by bringing this bill to the House in this form.The member across the way starts raising the issue of building consensus around this issue. We have to acknowledge that in the past there has not been consensus on some significant electoral reforms. There were divergent views on issues like whether we should have MMP as an electoral system. The problem is that when you have got political parties debating issues like this self-interest is going to come into it. With all due respect do we really believe that ACT is going to want to get rid of a provision that allows it to have greater representation in Parliament? Really? Although I respect the member’s ability to step away from issues and take a non-personal approach and rather to take a considered view it is probably a bit of a stretch to ask him to go that far. I would welcome a counterview from the member but obviously smaller parties that have relied on the threshold before and the life raft position within this bill are probably not going to want to support it.Jami-Lee Ross: Labour is doing what is in its best interest too.JACINDA ARDERN: Jami-Lee Ross says that Labour has some self-interest in this bill. I welcome him to stand up and go through all of that self-interest. Ultimately we just want good electoral reform to the point that Iain Lees-Galloway has written to every member of this House and has said that for all of the other issues that were in the MMP report by the Electoral Commission let us debate every single one of them at select committee. Let us put them on the table. Let us have a discussion. If you think that we are simply just cherry-picking if the members think that then be willing to send this bill to select committee to discuss every single recommendation and to bring it back to this House.If there is a view that there is not consensus in Parliament I can tell you that the one place where there is consensus on this issue is among the general public. In a survey in December 2013 71 percent of people wanted an end to coat-tailing. In a Stuff poll in 2014 81 percent of people wanted an end to coat-tailing. The people have formed consensus around this issue and yet unfortunately we still have a view among some MPs that this is not something that we should proceed with. We should. It would improve our electoral system. I hope that the bill is sent to select committee so that we can have a decent debate.