Parker DavidHon DAVID PARKER (Labour): Referring to the last speaker Cameron Brewer most of those people could still vote if their primary place of residence was still where they're not currently living. If they're currently displaced from their house and their primary place of residence remains their old home they can still vote there. So that's a nonsense argument. Who pays the rates? [Interruption]DEPUTY SPEAKER: OK just calm it a little bit. Mr Parker hasn't got such a loud voice as everybody else so just take the level down a bit.Hon DAVID PARKER: Thank you Madam Speaker. I don't have a very loud voice but I don't think I should have to shout in this place to be heard. We've heard the argument about rates. Well in effect it is generally the tenant who pays the rates as Celia Wade-Brown and other speakers have said. What is wrong with limiting the right of people to vote in a local election to the people who live there? What's wrong with that? It's a pretty simple proposition. It's what happens overseas. In most jurisdictions they seem to operate fairly enough. Who suffers the lack of services if on a close vote the candidate who wins the election is effectively voted in by a small number of people who are voting in more than one locality? The people who live locally; the people who pay the rent who pay the rates.Andy Foster: There'd be a whole lot of other people who voted for them to even get to that point.Hon DAVID PARKER: Yeah I know. But in the end if it's one person one vote and one extra person gets to vote in an area and sways the election because they've been able to vote from outside the district that does affect the outcome. I would've thought even Mr Foster would be able to count and work that out. This is an anachronism in today's world and I don't think we need property owners to have a right to vote outside of the area in which they live. If they want to move to an area and live in their house that they own in another area well they can vote there but until they do they should not be able to vote there. I think this bill should be supported through the House. I don't want to take this so close to the night that we're not going to get a vote tonight so—Greg O'Connor: Keep going—keep going.Hon DAVID PARKER: No he tells me to keep going. [Interruption] Well he's thinking that maybe if he exercises his power of persuasion he'll be able to cause enough people to vote for this to go to select committee. I really think that if the National Party and ACT and the New Zealand First Party let this go to select committee they'd hear that most people in New Zealand don't think that there should be a right that is accorded to an owner of property who doesn't live in an area to vote. They would find that most people think that the people who live in an area who suffer the lack of services if a council comes in on an austerity vote and shuts the libraries shuts the pools—it's the local people who suffer those consequences and they're the people who should determine what the rates are. They're the people who pay if they own and live in a property and they're the people who pay if they rent a property off a landlord. I don't support this bill and I do note the—Tom Rutherford: You don't support it?Hon DAVID PARKER: I do support this bill—I'm a bit tongue-tied tonight. I do support this bill—you see I've just used up another 15 seconds there. Only 54 seconds—I've only got to make another 10 mistakes and I'm there! In terms of the one person one vote I do want to disagree with something that the Māori Party representative Rawiri Waititi said. I did think that the Rotorua bill was wrong. I do think it is important that suffrage be on the basis of one person one vote and I did think that having wards that had different numbers of voters in them were wrong. I extend that same principle to here where if you have a ward that effectively doesn't have voting that is in proportion to the number of residents that live in an area that to me is a distortion of the voting system as well. I support this bill.