Donald Rod: Education (School Boards of Trustees Single Transferable Vote Option) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Donald Rod: Education (School Boards of Trustees Single Transferable Vote Option) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:620;Page:15483] 
ROD DONALD (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I move  
That the Education (School Boards of Trustees Single Transferable Vote Option) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. 
 It is with great pleasure and considerable pride that I present to this House the Education (School Boards of Trustees Single Transferable Vote Option) Amendment Bill. This is a short and simple bill but its impact is far-reaching. By making a small amendment to the Education Act 1989 it gives school boards of trustees the option of adopting the single transferable vote (STV) system for their elections. It is nothing more nothing less and nothing radical or compulsory. It merely gives schools and their boards greater discretion and sovereignty over how they go about ensuring that the wishes of parents are fairly reflected in the election results and that the boards are truly representative of the diverse school communities they represent. 
This bill follows in the footsteps of my previously successful STV option bill for local bodies which has been incorporated into the Local Electoral Act. That bill was also about increasing sovereignty making elections fairer and ensuring better more representative outcomes. I cannot tell members how delighted I am that every enrolled voter will have the opportunity to use STV in the forthcoming local body elections as a result of my previous bill. Not only will 10 mayors and councils be elected by STV but also all 21 district health boards will be elected by the sophisticated system provided for under the Local Electoral Act. 
The October local body elections represent a massive step forward for local democracy in New Zealand. No longer will there be minority mayors elected with as little as 24 percent of the vote as happened in Napier in 1998 at least in the forthcoming elections for the 10 councils using STV. No longer will more than half of the votes for councillors be wasted in those council elections where STV will be used. No longer will significant proportions of voters feel unrepresented because none of their choices were elected due to the impact of block voting under first past the post. 
I am told by reliable sources that even more councils will adopt STV for the 2007 local body elections. That is because STV has already proved its worth with dairy farmers who use it to elect the Fonterra board and shareholders council and because many councillors and council returning officers have overcome their initial fear of STV and now recognise that it is a far superior electoral system than first past the post. 
I am therefore obviously disappointed that the Minister of Education has indicated his refusal to support this bill but I am not surprised. After all Trevor Mallard was one of only three Labour MPs who crossed the floor to vote with National to defeat Labour MP Richard Northey’s original STV bill in 1998. Even ACT supported the 34 Labour MPs 12 Alliance MPs and one United MP who voted for that earlier version of the STV option bill because they recognised that STV enhances democracy. I look forward to the support of ACT for this bill. I also look forward to the support of New Zealand First for my bill as I know that Ron Mark was upset that he had to vote against the 1998 bill because of the coalition agreement with the National Party. I also hope United Future will maintain Peter Dunne’s consistent support for STV by voting for this bill. Indeed if the National Party is prepared to allow this bill to go to the select committee with the support of all the other parties in this House then we could override Trevor Mallard’s opposition to fair electoral systems and send this bill to the Justice and Electoral Committee for the scrutiny that it deserves. 
By promoting the change to STV for school boards I know I run the risk of being seen as an electoral reform zealot who is trying to fix problems that do not exist but I have not introduced this bill merely for the sake of pushing STV down people’s throats. I believe there are real problems with our current school board elections. To give members a personal example I recall agonising over how to vote two elections ago. There were about 10 candidates for our local primary school board and I could cast up to seven votes. I strongly supported four candidates I was indifferent towards three and I did not support the remaining three. In the end I cast only four votes because I knew that a vote cast for a less preferred candidate could cancel out a vote for one of my most preferred candidates. It was that personal experience that prompted me to introduce this bill. 
I have not introduced this bill just to solve my problems with tactical voting; I have introduced it because I am concerned about the very low turnout in school board elections and the extremely high level of wasted votes at those elections. It has been difficult to get comprehensive information about this year’s school board elections but I have discovered that of the approximately 70000 voting papers that were issued in the South Island only 25000 came back. 
In other words only just over one-third of parents bothered to vote in this year’s elections. While I am certainly not claiming that STV would automatically lift the turn-out it may have a positive impact because more people would feel that it is worth taking the trouble to vote if their votes would be more likely to help. 
The analysis that I have done of results gleaned from newspaper public notices reveals a disturbingly high level of wasted votes in this year’s school board elections. For example at Wellington College 2159 votes were cast. Of those 1123 or 54 percent were for successful candidates. However 318 of those votes merely boosted the majority of the candidates who had already won. Overall only 37 percent of the votes cast in that election were effective. In other words 63 percent of the votes made no difference to the election outcome. In case members think that is an isolated example I can quote for them numerous other cases where there was a high level of wasted votes—for example 46 percent at Auckland Grammar 44 percent at Onslow College and Burnside High School and 43 percent at Shirley Boys High School. When one factors in the boost votes the effective votes at those schools were 50 percent or fewer in all cases. Those outcomes are the hallmark of an electoral system that is very crude and patently unfair. 
I fully concede that STV is most needed where a large number of candidates are standing and where significant groupings in a school community are unrepresented on the board. In other situations it may simply not be necessary. However if the Government is serious about improving school governance it should recognise the benefits of STV for those communities that have a diverse ethnic make-up. Even Ministry of Education officials have acknowledged to the Minister that Pakeha parents are overrepresented on school boards while Maori Pasifika and Asian parents are under-represented. The officials claim that this does not mean voters’ preferences are being ignored. They may be right but in the example that they use they make a presumption that exposes their limited understanding of first past the post. They reason that a low number of elected Maori trustees in a school with a high proportion of Maori students is because most Maori voters wish to elect non-Maori trustees. In fact what happens with first past the post is that a dominant group wins all the seats even when that group is a minority. In other words if a school community is made up of three ethnicities with one being 40 percent and two being 30 percent it is quite conceivable that the 40 percent community could win 100 percent of the seats on the board. 
I am not trying to advocate some sort of party or ethnic ticket for school boards; quite the opposite. I want schools to have the option of using an electoral system that maximises the opportunity for every community in the school to be fairly represented on the board without resorting to separate seats or candidate tickets. STV does that because its proportional nature means that significant minorities are more likely to win their fair share of seats and everyone is more likely to have voted for at least some of those who are elected. STV also means that a successful candidate needs to win a minimum quota of votes whereas with first past the post there is a risk of candidates being elected with low levels of support where a large number of candidates have split the vote. 
I obviously believe that the arguments in favour of STV are compelling but I also acknowledge that adopting this voting method has some practical problems and financial implications. I believe those can be easily overcome at minimal additional cost. The first and most obvious issue is the need for voter education to explain to parents how STV works. As the Government’s own literature in the forthcoming local body elections makes clear: “STV—It’s simple to vote.” In fact as my T-shirt says “it’s as easy as 1 2 3” because that is all one does. 
Hon Member 
: It’s not a T-shirt. 
ROD DONALD 
: Never mind. One ranks as many or as few of the candidates in one’s order of preference. The TV advertisements which will start screening this weekend make very clear not only how straightforward STV is but also how logical and natural the ranking process is. 
The second problem is the counting of STV votes. Obviously it is more complicated than first past the post but it presents no greater difficulty. Already most schools use an outside provider to run their elections. Those organisations use specialist contractors to count the votes right now. Because of the introduction of STV for district health board elections not only do counting companies have access to the sophisticated software that has been developed by the Department of Internal Affairs but they have developed sophisticated optical scanning equipment to count voting papers rapidly. 
Contrary to the advice given to the Minister by his officials I have been assured by the Department of Internal Affairs that its software is suitable for school board elections and I have been assured by the counting companies that counting STV votes for school board elections presents them with little more work than what they have to do now. Yes the cost would be higher because the technology is more expensive but even that cost would come down in time and at the moment it is only 10c to 40c more per ballot paper than first past the post. 
In conclusion while I acknowledge that schools do have limited budgets I must pose the question: what price democracy? That is the challenge facing this Parliament.