Williams ArenaELECTORAL (INTEGRITY REPEAL) AMENDMENT BILLSecond ReadingDebate resumed from 12 May.ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): The Electoral (Integrity Repeal) Amendment Bill was sent to the Justice Committee of which I am a proud member. I am proud to defend the waka-jumping provisions introduced by the Electoral (Integrity Repeal) Amendment Act 2018 which this member's bill seeks to repeal. Simeon Brown: Oh my goodness! Shameful.ARENA WILLIAMS: The member opposite Mr Simeon Brown says that's a shame.Simeon Brown: It is. ARENA WILLIAMS: And I say Mr Brown please wait and let me have my say because you've had yours as I explain why we oppose this bill.First the question of Do the waka-jumping provisions curtail an MP's freedom of speech?" Let me start by acknowledging the arguments of my colleagues around the House who have for the most part engaged in this debate extremely passionately and respectfully and the Hon Dr Nick Smith for not only bringing this bill forward but also his 30 years of service. In the time that I have known him we have never once agreed but I admire him for his loyalty to his party and the unwavering commitment to those he represented. The Hon Dr Smith gave particular attention to his arguments and the arguments of submitters about the way the waka-jumping provisions curtail an MP's freedom of speech and I don't wish to underplay that because I share his commitment to MPs' ability to freely express themselves. The Attorney-General acknowledged it in the section 7 analysis from December 2017 of the 2017 waka-jumping bill and he concluded the impairment of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act rights particularly freedom of expression and association were significant. I'll bring your attention to the Attorney-General's finding that the freedom of expression in this House has a special constitutional value. I think that's true.So are they justified? The argument we've heard from some submitters—and the Opposition have picked up and run a mile with it—is that New Zealand already has electoral mechanisms to hold politicians to account for breaking their electoral mandate and that the size of the problem that the waka-jumping provisions are addressing is small; maybe it doesn't exist? That analysis mischaracterises what the problem is and I'll come back to that. But the argument continues. They said that New Zealand already has effective political sanctions that do everything the waka-jumping provisions do. It says that political imperatives electoral judgments and media scrutiny are the best tools we have for regulating the views of politicians and ensuring they're accountable. I don't agree with those submitters. Without the waka-jumping provisions some MPs have a disproportionately large platform with which to express themselves. It serves no one but the MP personally and it definitely does not serve the voters who elect them.Matt Doocey: Come serve a big party.ARENA WILLIAMS: So what do they do then Mr Doocey? The waka-jumping provisions are effective because they do three things and let me tell you what the first is Mr Doocey.The first is that they protect from some sort of lone wolf defection and that's what's been talked about most in this debate but it's only one of three. That's in the situation where the distortion of political proportionality is the issue and it was summed up by Chris Bishop when he said "We want MPs to say unpalatable things."—as if he wasn't saying that those things would be so unpalatable to the party that the MP stood for that they would face expulsion. The idea here is that one person acting alone can be the critic and conscience of the country that they can say unpalatable things thereby holding back a Government from doing something it was elected to do. That's a fantasy; it's not what's at stake here. Every brooding complicated heartthrob in this place sees themselves as the person who will stand against the tide of a Government who has lost their moral compass. So do; in that situation resign. Use your enormous platform that your resignation has bought you to say the thing you so passionately believed. You can exercise your freedom of speech and not the one that you earned from the voters who elected you.The second thing that the waka-jumping provisions do is that they protect from a party merger or split situation in the middle of a parliamentary term. They don't protect from a party merger or split situation before an election as is appropriate and they don't hold that party merger back from contesting the election and putting their case to the voters building power in the communities that they seek to represent. It does none of that. A merger or split in the middle of a parliamentary term lumps voters with a group that has little accountability to electors in circumstances where they probably have a huge amount of power.The third effect of the waka-jumping provisions and Mr Brown I hope you're listening is that there's no protection in law or the Standing Orders to limit the participation of an MP in the House for past criminal convictions lying deception or gross misconduct in employment and I think that's something we can all agree should be provided for. An MP who once elected is found to have been in prison for something like serious fraud is not required to disclose that in this House. They're not subject to the rules that protect staff or taxpayers' money. They're not required to recuse themselves from decision-making in this House or in select committee which is directly relevant to their offending and their victims. They're not required or even encouraged to resign. The very most basic standards that voters expect of us as parliamentarians as the guardians of our democracy are not set out in rules or in law by which we govern ourselves here. Voters are entirely reliant on the media during selection and election periods who can be defrauded like any other human being or on party discipline to identify those people who are unfit to hold office.This is where I want to speak directly to the Hon James Shaw. That member has broadly agreed with many of his colleagues on the opposite side. He said "The waka-jumping provisions that I will be voting down are obnoxious and anti-democratic." and that "The Green Party executive made a decision some time ago that we would not exercise as a party this piece of legislation." He went on to dispassionately observe that when they—meaning the National Party—went through all that trouble with Jami-Lee Ross they didn't exercise the opportunity to use this legislation. And those comments are the reason I'm singling him out. There is no need to read into what I'm saying with any specific allegation or gossip. I'm singling him out because he got up and he flogged the Hon Dr Nick Smith for being unprincipled but I'm not interested in the National Party's principles on this matter after sitting through the select committee; I'm interested in what he had to say. And so what did he say?Well I wanted to hear that Mr Shaw would use the waka-jumping provisions in the circumstances he described as "all that trouble". I hope he would expel someone in his caucus who abused their power who hurt their staff who hurt their colleagues. I'm talking here about the most intimate kinds of abuse of power that thanks to the Francis report we know happen in here all the time. No amount of commitment to liberal values makes any member immune. It's important to me that Mr Shaw can look at those young women in his own party who aspire to be MPs in Parliament who are staffers and say that if they were on the receiving end of that kind of abuse of power he would act and not wait for his party to weigh up their options in the context of the politics of the day because who knows what the political context will be? This stuff happens when the stakes are high. And if we repeal the waka-jumping provisions the party will never be the loser and it's unlikely that Mr Shaw would be the loser. But what about me and what about those women?Now I want to speak directly to those young women in any political party or from any political stripe who aspire to be MPs and staffers in this place. You've heard Government speeches which have defended the waka-jumping provisions to allow a party leader to essentially expel a member of their caucus all from women—that's because the Labour members of the Justice Committee which heard evidence on this bill are all women: Māori women ethnic women all women. And you heard speeches from the Opposition parties which ranged from questioning why backbenchers would ever support something which took away our free speech in this House to out and out belittling our ability to read. One member said we were allowing ourselves to be handcuffed. And to those women out there I say watch closely when women MPs give up our power and hand it over to our woman leader. Watch what happens when that woman leader has the power to expel men who abuse their power. Watch the power shift watch the panic rise and watch the ones who panic most. Watch and understand that power isn't evenly shared in this place because these women can read and we aren't handcuffed because we're into it because these women know that our ability to speak freely in this House is curtailed by many things and there are constitutional and legal rules which prevent us from saying a great number of things but we find ourselves shouting over the noise of the toxic gender politics in this place far more regularly.So staff and MPs shouldn't be dependent on having the right person in the right position within a party hierarchy to feel safe and able to do their jobs. Nobody should have to put up with bullying. There should be absolutely no tolerance for harassment at all and removing the waka-jumping provisions in the way that this member's bill proposes would take away one of the only mechanisms that allows leaders to stamp it out and to be leaders. This bill intends to reverse the provisions of the Electoral Act 1993 that allow an MP's seat to be declared vacant upon their departure from the political party for which they were elected. It would repeal these provisions introduced to the Electoral Act 1993 through the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Act 2018 and the effect of that relatively innocuous change is a step backwards for the MPs of this House to speak freely and for the proper running of this place. That's why we oppose it."