Ghahraman GolrizGOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you Mr Speaker. I would like to do a special shout-out to my friend from across the aisle Willow-Jean Prime who has just resumed her seat. Thanks for taking call No. 5. It turns out I was No. 5. But also congratulations Rawiri Waititi. This is a good bill and it is not often that members' bills are pulled from the ballot. Yours was pulled mine had already been pulled and then the Government put in their bill. And that's because this is a good idea. It's an idea that has been around for a long time.There is absolutely no reason why those who are eligible to vote on the Māori roll should have to wait five years—and I did obtain I have to say as a cheat sheet my friend's notes on his bill because it is important to give voice to all of the concerns here—and sometimes up to eight years because of course if you become eligible to vote right before an election or far away from an election that five-year period can make it into about an eight-year period where you can't choose to switch rolls. That is an arbitrary restriction that limits democracy for Māori and that little thing that the Government keeps pushing for and keeps throwing around called co-governance".It is good that there is a Government bill now. It was my aim when I put in my bill the Electoral (Strengthening Democracy) Amendment Bill to give light to all of the different electoral reforms that had been recommended over the years by the likes of the Electoral Commission the Waitangi Tribunal the Supreme Court the Court of Appeal—all of these things that had been floating around and successive Governments had politicised: our democracy the rules that make our democracy fair. And so it's nice to have been able to give light to some of those reforms and to have this Government pick some of them up including the electoral funding stuff including this including prisoner voting including overseas voting.But this is particularly important—constitutionally important—because we know that there was a time when democracy as we know it in Aotearoa New Zealand was designed and it wasn't designed with all of us in mind. It wasn't designed to give voice to all of our concerns to empower all of our communities and it was certainly not designed to give force to Te Tiriti o Waitangi our founding constitutional document. We know that Māori have always had democracy as part of their culture and we know that tangata whenua have believed in decision making by democratic means in all sorts of ways for ever. This is one version of democracy and it was never built to empower Māori participation. We've realised that now because we see that Māori participation is unfairly down and we see that marginalisation is real here.So this is a good bill but the Government bill doesn't quite go far enough. Why wouldn't we say that someone who has indicated that they are eligible to vote on the Māori roll would automatically go on the Māori roll? Why not? Someone designed the rule that they're automatically on the other roll and it wasn't aimed at empowering Māori democracy. So why not shift it back? Why not call that Te Tiriti - based democracy?I do find it really a little bit devastating for my friend Paul Goldsmith that that side of the House put him up to talk against tactical voting as the National Party member for Epsom the one electorate where tactical voting is all there is. The issue of one vote per person remains with this bill with the Government's bill and with my bill when it comes to the Māori electoral option. We still all have one vote per person. It's just about giving voice and giving mana and autonomy back to Māori voters. This bill does that far and away beyond the Government bill. We don't always have to make deals with the conservative centrists; we can make deals with the Greens and with tangata whenua when we agree on things that the House should agree upon.So I commend this bill and I commend the Government's bill but I wish we were a little bit more progressive than all of that. Thank you Mr Speaker."