Barnett Tim: Electoral (Reduction in Number of Members of  Parliament) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Barnett Tim: Electoral (Reduction in Number of Members of  Parliament) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:635;Page:6322] 
TIM BARNETT (Labour—Christchurch Central) 
: 
 Labour opposes the second reading of the Electoral (Reduction in Number of Members of Parliament) Amendment Bill but in doing so we commend Barbara Stewart and New Zealand First for their initiative in bringing this issue to the House through the agreement that Labour has with New Zealand First. Unlike those on the other side of the House who make mean-spirited and waspish comments I think it is important in an MMP environment to accept that some of the smaller parties in the House have an absolute role in raising issues putting those issues into the political debating environment and seeing select committees do what they do very well which is to look at such issues further. 
I have been in this House somewhat longer than the previous speaker and I can remember that in the first period of MMP between 1996 and 1999—the hideous dying days of that National Government—a lot of members of the public became quite excited by the idea that a smaller Parliament would somehow deliver the goods. Labour argued against that. It was the early days of MMP. There was a referendum in 1999 on the matter but essentially the issue was never examined fully by this Parliament. Well we now have on record in this Parliament in this excellent report from the Justice and Electoral Committee—and I commend Chris Finlayson for the way he went through that report—the hard arguments against the idea that a smaller Parliament will deliver better democracy. 
New Zealand First has raised other issues such as those concerning the Treaty principles and the age of criminal responsibility and it is absolutely valid for this House to have an opportunity to look at such issues. Labour supported this legislation at the first reading because it is valid for the issue to be examined. 
I will focus on three particular arguments. The first is that the concept of MMP requires an adequate block of electorate members of Parliament and an adequate block of list members of Parliament. Under the system proposed in this bill the number of list members would start to reduce and the ability of MMP to deliver diversity in terms of adequately sized smaller-party caucuses race gender sexual orientation and so forth would be extremely limited. The concept of balance required under MMP could not be delivered under the proposal in this member’s bill. 
The second point is about the doability of in particular the function of an electorate member of Parliament. I represent one of the three key inner-city electorates which is in addition to the electorates of Auckland Central and Wellington Central. I am the Christchurch Central electorate member of Parliament and my electorate has an average population size. I am more than aware that the hours I need to work and the hours my office staff need to work to do the job adequately are already very large. In the larger geographic electorates—albeit with list MPs to help out on occasions—it is an almost impossible job to undertake in the contemporary environment and with the contemporary pressures on members of Parliament. 
Given that members of Parliament spend about 100 days a year in this House and given the other responsibilities of select committee work and to be in other parts of the country it is my view that if we tried to service very large electorates the divide the gap between the public and members of Parliament would be much larger. Certainly every school in my electorate—I think there are currently 31 of them—expects me to visit at least once a year. Each rest home expects to see me and each residents group hopes that I will go along to events. If we add all that up and look at the reality of life—and even for a moment consider the concept of work-life balance—I think that the idea of representing an electorate in this Parliament which is a role for some of us here would be impossible with larger electorates. 
Let us look in the select committee’s report at the information regarding population per member of Parliament. Again the previous speaker made reference to this. The report indicates that over the years our electorates have become quite considerably bigger in population base. The population of our country is increasing fairly fast and we are now seeing after the MMP introduction blip of 1996—when the number of members of Parliament was increased—that the number of people per member of Parliament is back to the maximum it has ever been. Under MMP even if we do not increase the number of members of Parliament the population will increase way beyond that. There are about 34000 people per MP; I am sure that by the next election that figure will be 35000 or 36000 and it will go up. So the second point I make is about the doability of the job. 
My final point is about the issue of other countries and their democracy. Again the select committee did very useful work in looking at the population per MP in a whole range of countries. It shows that smaller countries such as Iceland Estonia Slovenia and even within the European context Sweden have a low population per member of Parliament. Normally such countries combine that with not having a double layer of members of Parliament. 
Let us compare Australia with New Zealand—and we often make that comparison in different areas. A person living in Sydney New South Wales would deal with not only two levels of Federal Parliament but also two levels of state Parliament. Those four levels of Parliament are the equivalent to our parliamentary function in New Zealand. So it seems to me that if Australia suffers from over-governance in some ways maybe we in New Zealand can be accused if anything of suffering from under-governance. In my view we put a lot of pressure on politicians particularly our nationally elected politicians to carry out all functions from taking a regional—and even local—representative role on occasions right up to considering the national and international issues that we as members of Parliament have to consider. So I think that if we look to other countries we see that the size and function of our Parliament starts to make a lot of sense. 
Labour commends Barbara Stewart and New Zealand First for their initiative in bringing up this issue. I also commend the select committee for doing what I consider to be a very balanced and helpful job on this issue. But with reluctance I have to say that Labour opposes this bill continuing through the House.