Willis NicolaREFERENDUMS FRAMEWORK BILLFirst ReadingDebate resumed from 1 August.NICOLA WILLIS (National): New Zealand has a proud tradition of being one of the oldest and fairest democracies in the world. It is a democracy founded on the idea that we respect the people and we respect their right to a democratic voice in things. We do not have a written constitution but what we do have are strong conventions that members of this House of this Parliament for many years for generations have respected and our sense of fairness around those conventions reflects our sense of Kiwi values.We do not expect that our electoral laws will be the plaything of the Government of the day because we put our electoral laws on a pedestal. We recognise that they are significant and that they have a bearing on the make-up of this Parliament and the decisions that are made for our country. So it is that a series of conventions have been established around those electoral laws and how they apply in the case of referendums. It has conventionally been the case that the Opposition is consulted on the wording of referendums and is consulted on any changes to electoral laws. Specifically we have always had the case that when referenda are proposed by the Government they are put forward in a bill and that bill suggests wording and that wording goes to a select committee and is available for full public scrutiny so that those who are experts on it are able to decide whether or not they think the wording will skew the feedback on that bill or whether they think the wording is appropriate so that Opposition members can suggest changes to the wording of that referendum so that people who have an interest in it have the ability to influence it. Why is it the case that that has conventionally been what we do with a referendum? It is because we recognise that referenda are politically sensitive and they are constitutionally significant. So this bill that we have in front of us is an appalling step away from the conventions of this House as they pertain to a significant issue of electoral law. This referendum bill abuses the Government's power by overturning convention and instead it allows the Government to write the question for a referendum as it sees fit divorced from public scrutiny and divorced from the processes of this House as they apply to select committees and as they apply through the scrutiny of the Opposition. This is a shabby bill. It is not fair play. It calls into question the very legitimacy of the referenda and it is fair for us to suggest that the motivation behind this change in convention is simply political expedience because if it's anything more than political expedience why is it that this bill expires in 2022? Why is it that this is not binding on future parliaments? If the process suggested in this bill is such a great process then why isn't it the process that will apply into the future? I would suggest to you that the reason it's not going to apply into the future is that members sitting opposite me know that this is not the way things should happen in this Parliament because when referenda questions are put forward members of the public have a right to scrutinise those. But instead we have a situation where those on the Government benches are uncomfortable because there are differences of opinion between the Greens and New Zealand First and Labour about how these referenda questions should be put and they are nervous that if these questions were put to full public scrutiny and if they were put forward to a full select committee process they would lose control of what is in those questions. I put it to this House that actually it is exactly that sort of political expediency that we have worked hard as a Parliament to avoid impinging on these sorts of electorally significant practices. This referendum bill is an abuse of power. It gives the Government control over what issues and questions will be put at the 2020 election in a significant break from our constitutional convention and a significant break from the democratic processes that this House has respected—Hon Andrew Little: There is no convention.NICOLA WILLIS: —and if Minister Little thinks it's so important and it's such a great piece of law then why will he not allow the select committee to examine the wording of these questions as has conventionally been the case? Why will he not allow members of the Opposition to have a word in it and why weren't we consulted on this bill if it's such a great piece of law? We weren't consulted because that member knows that he should be ashamed of himself for manipulating the democratic process in this way.