King MattMATT KING (National—Northland): Oh hell! I think Willie Jackson needs to take a chill pill and lower the blood pressure a bit but very entertaining. I'm sorry Rino Tirikatene. We cannot support this. We cannot support this. Willie Jackson says that we don't support Māori and I've got to tell you this: under National Māori do better—more Treaty settlements. The numbers are all better. That is actually a proven fact. It's a proven fact.This is one of those bills where I sort of wonder what we're trying to fix here. Like are the Māori seats at risk? Why entrench the Māori seats? There's a whole lot of really important parts of the Electoral Act that are not entrenched—the number of MPs MMP process for list seat allocation. The 5 percent thresholds are not. So we're proud of our history ensuring Māori have a voice in Parliament from an early history. We're very proud of that. Māori representation across the list and the general seats has actually improved across the parties and across time so in actual fact Māori representation in Parliament has never been better—never been better.Our policy is to let Māori decide. So they can vote with their feet and while there's large numbers of them on the Māori roll National are more than happy for them to retain the Māori seats. If we get to a point where Māori vote with their feet and go off the Māori roll and it depletes to a certain level well then we can relook at that decision. But the actual fact is our priority is concluding the Treaty settlement process and encouraging the full potential of the Māori economy. Reforming Te Ture Whenua Māori Act would go a long way to achieving that goal.So after the controversy of the Electoral Finance Act from the Clark Government we had a policy of progressing our electoral law changes with a supermajority or consensus. So of the 10 last bills five were passed unanimously three by super-majorities. Only two relatively minor bills were passed by a simple majority one being a member's bill. We're interested to see where New Zealand First go. If they stick by their rhetoric they won't support this bill. So we'll see what they do. We'll see where they go.But there are a few provisions that are entrenched in this Electoral Act but the reality is—Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: Name them.MATT KING: —in entrenchment—well we've got them here. We've heard them before so I won't go through them. I'm only going to do a short call.Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: No no no—you missed one. You missed one.MATT KING: Eh? You want them? There's actually six.Kiritapu Allan: There's seven.MATT KING: Oh there's seven—six or seven. But the reality is this—[Interruption]DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Order! Now look really it's getting out of hand. I'd say to the Hon Clare Curran: just be careful—just be careful.MATT KING: Thank you Madam Speaker. The reality of this is that any entrenchment provision that we bring in can be reversed with a simple majority. So what we're doing here is we're trying to—Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: Why do we entrench anything?MATT KING: Well you could argue that—you could argue that. So the reality is this I don't see the Māori seats are at risk so I don't see that we've got a problem here that needs fixing. So this bill in my view is not necessary. I'm sorry Rino Tirikatene but we cannot support this. I don't commend this bill to the House.