Bishop Chris: Electoral (Adjustment of Thresholds) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBishop Chris: Electoral (Adjustment of Thresholds) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 24 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4744. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS BISHOP (National): This bill the sponsor of it would have you believe is being advanced with noble intentions. It is seeking just to implement the recommendations of the Electoral Commission review. Labour is not trying to play party politics with this issue; it is all for the glory of the country and the benefit of our electoral system! It is not about the self-interest of the Labour Party or the Green Opposition; no no it is all about the beauty of the electoral system. That is what they would have you believe except the truth is the exact opposite.There are four reasons why this bill should be voted down tonight. The first is that it has been advanced in bad faith by its sponsor. As I said before Mr Lees-Galloway would have you believe that this is some sort of noble endeavour except that—and here is the rub; here is where his argument falls down—the Labour Party’s intention to lodge this bill and to get rid of the electorate seat threshold waiver was announced before the Electoral Commission review reported back. So before the recommendation was made to reduce the threshold down to 4 percent and get rid of the electorate seat waiver the Labour Party had put on the record that it was going to get rid of it.That absolutely puts a lie to the claim that this is some noble sacrifice or noble act by Iain Lees-Galloway and the Labour Party members. They had announced it before the recommendations of the Electoral Commission. Why? Because this bill is all about politics. It is all about the fact that the Labour Party and the Green Party do not like the outcome of the 2008 2011 and 2014 general elections. They do not like them because they lost. They do not like the fact that the good people of Epsom elected my colleague David Seymour and they do not like the fact that my colleague Peter Dunne was elected by the good people of Ōhāriu so they are seeking to relitigate that through the petty political point-scoring of a member’s bill that they know has no chance of success and it is also hypocritical.The second reason is that it is hypocritical for Labour to advance this bill. Why? Because Labour itself has relied on coat-tail MPs in the past. When? Well in 2002 when it relied on the vote of Jim Anderton who took his good mate Matt Robson into Parliament with him after the election and who propped up the Labour Government of the time. So it was OK for the Labour Party back in 2002 to use Jim Anderton’s seat of Wigram and it carefully encouraged people who were actually Labour Party supporters to vote for Jim Anderton’s Progressive Coalition the vainglorious party named after him. It was OK for the Labour Party back then but the moment Jim shuffles off his political mortal coil the moment he is gone no no it is not good enough for any other party to use that provision. That is absolutely hypocritical and absolutely grotesque.The third reason why this bill should not advance is the reason that my colleague Judith Collins pointed to and that also Jacqui Dean pointed to which is that there is not any consensus on this issue. It is very important. Reform of our electoral law should be based on consensus—broad-based consensus. We know that the Labour Party has form or lack of form in this area I should say after its disgraceful attempt—not even its attempt but its successful measures—to ram through Parliament before the 2008 general election the disgraceful Electoral Finance Bill which cracked down on free speech and really struck a hammer blow to the heart of our democracy all because Labour did not like what some groups did in the 2005 general election. So notwithstanding the concerns of the Human Rights Commission the New Zealand Law Society most of Parliament and all the submitters to the select committee on that the Labour Government rammed it through. So we know that it has form when it comes to consensus on electoral law issues.The point is that when you do change electoral law it should be something that is almost above party politics. You are never going to completely get rid of party politics out of a situation where you get politicians talking about the electoral system but it should be something that is a little bit independent is looked at impartially is looked at a little bit neutrally and where things are done in good faith. That is certainly not what has been done by the Labour Party in the debate today.The fourth reason to close my speech is that there is a very good reason for the so-called coat-tail provisions. The very good reason in our electoral law for those provisions is that they actually increase the proportionality of Parliament. It was absurd to hear Denis O’Rourke railing against them saying that New Zealand First is going to vote for this bill. After the 1999 election New Zealand First did win an electorate seat when Winston Peters won Tauranga. It got 4.3 percent of the vote and it brought in four list MPs. So the New Zealand First Party has been a beneficiary of the provisions. If this bill had been in place if this was the law only one New Zealand First MP would have been elected. The coat-tail provisions increase proportionality. They make Parliament fairer. They make it more proportionate to the actual will of the voters. That is why this is a silly bill advanced in bad faith.