Hipkins Chris: Electoral Referendum Bill — Second Reading 
Hipkins Chris: Electoral Referendum Bill — Second Reading 
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CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 I rise to speak on the Electoral Referendum Bill as an enthusiastic student of electoral systems. I think it was in about 1998 that I did a POLS 206 course at Victoria University taken by Professor Nigel Roberts in which he went through all of the different electoral systems that were on offer the last time that New Zealand discussed this issue. He transposed historical election data and tried to interpret what the outcomes would have been if those systems had been operating at those historical elections. It was a really interesting paper and it would be fair to say it captured my attention for the whole semester even though the nature of the topic is something other people would find very dry. It is fair to say I think the New Zealand public are being presented with an exciting array of options in the coming referendum. I will talk about a few of those in a moment. 
Going back to the history of how we ended up with MMP in the first place I think much has been written about and many people have commented on the fact that it was almost like an act of vengeance from the voters who were unhappy with the way that Parliament had been behaving. Laws had been passed without the consent if you like or the implied consent of the majority of the New Zealand public and those laws were at odds with public opinion. It was almost as though MMP was adopted as a way of trying to slow Parliament down and bring it back under the control of the people. I think MMP has done that to a large extent. We do not have the laws being passed very rapidly through Parliament now that we did under first past the post. Having said that I say there are a few exceptions to that and we have seen some in the short period of time that I have been in this Parliament. But overall I think MMP has led to a slower parliamentary process and a process that is more responsive to the views of all New Zealanders. 
MMP has also led to a much more diverse and representative Parliament and we see that when we look around the debating chamber. Now parties are represented in Parliament that were not here prior to MMP and ethnic minority groups are now represented in Parliament that were not here prior to MMP. So there is a lot at stake in terms of what a change to the electoral system might mean for the way that Parliament functions and what Parliament consists of. 
However I think that changing the electoral system is not the most pressing constitutional issue that we have. If we go back to the idea of voters’ vengeance—one of the books that was written about the MMP referendum in 1993 was called  
The Voters’ Vengeance 
—we realise one of the concerns was that Parliament rapidly passed legislation that the public did not necessarily support. We can do things that place more of a check on this House. We have a very simple representative democracy here in this Parliament and there are very few constraints on what this House can do. If we are talking about constitutional reform then the idea of introducing constraints is something that we might want to talk about. For example in the use of Parliamentary urgency should there be criteria that need to be met? I would argue that that would be a more significant constitutional discussion for us to have than one about changing the electoral system that determines how we end up getting here in the first place. 
Hon Dr Wayne Mapp 
: The Clark Government never even had question time in urgency. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: I do concede to Dr Mapp that having question time when Parliament is in urgency is a good innovation and I congratulate the Government on doing that. 
Coming back to MMP and this referendum however my concern is that the review of MMP will be undertaken only if the majority of people vote in the first referendum to keep MMP. I think that is disappointing. I would like to see the review of MMP happen anyway regardless of the outcome of that referendum. I think even if we get to a second referendum where MMP is traded off against another system it would be good for voters to know what voting to keep MMP will entail. I think improvements can be made to the MMP electoral system that will alleviate some of the public’s concerns and make them more inclined to want to keep it. They should know about that before they have to vote in both the first and the second referendums. I argue that we should do the review of MMP as soon as possible but certainly before the referendums are undertaken. 
Before I turn to the menu of options that voters will be given I want to briefly talk about the rules on regulating what campaigners can spend on this referendum. I particularly take exception to some of the examples that John Boscawen used in his speech when he talked about the amount of money that political parties have spent in general election campaigns. The nature of a general election campaign is very different from that of a referendum. There is a wide array of candidates campaigning across a wide range of issues so the amount of money and the volume of activity are much wider than is the case with a referendum. In a referendum there is a specific issue. There are usually a very limited number of choices and the debate is very limited in terms of what is covered so a smaller spending limit for referendums is very reasonable and relevant. To try to compare the spending limit for a referendum with a spending limit for a political party in an election campaign is I think a little unfair. 
I was amused by Mr Boscawen’s reference to the Auckland mayoral election. Almost by inference he seemed to be arguing that the candidates on the right needed to have a higher spending limit because they ran worse campaigns than the candidates did who were on the left in the Auckland local body election campaigns. I simply say people did not vote for John Banks because they did not want him; it was not necessarily because of the quality of his television advertisements or the lack thereof. 
I move now to the menu of options that voters will be given should they choose to remove MMP and adopt an alternative system. Obviously all New Zealanders are very familiar with the first-past-the-post electoral system; it is the system that we had prior to 1996. My concern is that I think going back to it would result in a real loss of the minority voices that we see in the House at the moment. 
We then have the preferential vote system which we saw in operation at the Wellington mayoral election. A National Party mayoral candidate argued there that because she had received more first-preference votes she should still be the mayor even though the candidate who actually ended up winning received more second and third-preference votes and ended up defeating her on that basis. 
Grant Robertson 
: As was done at the previous election. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: That National Party candidate had won at previous elections when that method was used. So the voters of Wellington will know what the preferential voting system looks like because they use it for their mayoral elections and I know that a number of other territorial local authorities also use a preferential voting system. 
There is also the single transferable vote system. Again candidates are ranked as one two three four five and so on. The difference with the single transferable vote system is— 
Hon Dr Wayne Mapp 
: Go for it Chris! Explain it to us. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: I tell that member to hold on to his hat for just a moment. The difference with the single transferable vote system is that the electorates are much larger and there are multiple members for an electorate. I think one of the public’s concerns about that kind of system would be that they like to know who their representative in Parliament actually is. One of the concerns about list members of Parliament—and I am sure we all hear it expressed from time to time—is that they are not accountable directly to an electorate. Whether anybody agrees with that— 
Hon Dr Wayne Mapp 
: Explain it to us. We know about the problems. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: I will get into the single transferable vote system in more detail. Wayne Mapp is very impatient but I will get into it in more detail. Basically under the single transferable vote system all of the candidates are ranked as one two three four etc. In order to be elected to Parliament—and again the threshold will differ depending on the size of the electorate—a candidate will have to receive a certain number of first-preference votes. If a candidate gets that number on the first preference then he or she becomes a member of Parliament. The number of first-preference votes needed would differ depending on the size of the electorate. If at the end of the allocation of first-preference seats there are still vacancies then the lowest-polling candidates drop out and the second preferences are reallocated. If based on that somebody receives enough votes then that person gets the next spot. It means that constituencies can have multiple members of Parliament. Rather than there being a single representative for an area there might be multiple representatives. 
Hon Dr Wayne Mapp 
: Not bad; pretty good. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: It is not a bad explanation. 
Finally the last system is the supplementary member system. I would call it “first past the post with the winner’s bonus”. I know it is the system that John Key seems to be leaning towards. I do not necessarily support it. If we look at what the supplementary member system would have done to our MMP elections we can see it could have dramatically altered the outcome of some of those elections. Of course voter behaviour might well have changed resulting from a change in the electoral system. We cannot just assume that if the electoral system is different voters will still behave in the same way as they did. Of course campaigns would also be run differently. We see National and Labour campaigning under MMP in areas where they did not campaign before because under first past the post there was no value in doing so. So voter behaviour could well change. 
Overall I will leave it at that given that my time is expiring although I will say I am looking forward to the ongoing discussion on this issue.