Norman Russel William: Business of Select Committees — Appointments 
Norman Russel William: Business of Select Committees — Appointments 
[Volume:661;Page:9854] 
Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I stand to speak on the motion on behalf of the Greens. The Green Party will be supporting the Government’s motion. We think that it makes a lot of sense to establish a cross-party committee to deal with this incredibly important constitutional issue. Few things are more important than the very nature of our democracy. How we vote in members of Parliament and the very make-up of this Chamber will be determined by the outcome of the process that we are embarking on here today. So we think that it is essential that this matter goes to a cross-party committee. The Greens are of course big supporters of MMP and we have made that very clear all along. MMP is a much fairer system than first past the post and it provides a much fairer representation in the House for women and for Maori Pasifika and Asian people. For those reasons the Greens have been very clear that we support MMP. We also think it is essential that as this is a constitutional process the committee dealing with it has representation from across Parliament and for that reason we will be supporting this motion. 
I also think it is important to put this process into its historical context. The process that we are engaged in here today is part of the grand story of democracy in the Western hemisphere. Democracy in the European tradition and the American tradition has a long history that goes back to I guess Athenian days but in particular to the English Revolution of the 17th century then the American Revolution and the French Revolution all of which have made contributions. I think that the story of our democracy the process of evolution—and it is the process that this motion addresses today—has been a progressive one and MMP has been a progressive step in the evolution of our democracy. We certainly hope that by setting up a cross-party committee and going through a proper process we can make sure that our democracy is deepened rather than turned round to go back to a system such as first past the post which was an extremely undemocratic system. We also recognise that it is tremendously important for the diversity of voices in our country to be represented in this House and that MMP has been tremendously important in doing that. 
We think that the select committee process that is established also to some degree reflects the other conversation that we need to have about our democracy which is that it is not just about voting at elections; it is also about the discussion and the deliberative democracy that happens in a select committee process such as the select committee that is being established here. A democracy does not just start and finish with the ballot box. It is much much more than that; it is a deliberative process. A deliberative democracy requires processes such as this select committee to be established so that people can come along and have their say on what they think about the process that has been set up here for the MMP referendum. In that regard we encourage people to submit to the select committee particularly on the issue of spending caps which has been a controversial one—spending caps on the referendum and whether there should be spending caps. Currently within the legislation there are no spending caps and there are concerns that we could see a rerun of the Peter Shirtcliffe campaign from the last MMP referendum. 
We hope that by setting up a broad-based select committee which this motion does we will encourage the public to make submissions about how they think the referendum on their democracy should be run. At the end of the day this is the people’s democracy. It does not belong to the 122 people in this House or to the Minister; it belongs to the people of New Zealand. We certainly hope that the select committee process that is to be established under this motion will result in large numbers of New Zealanders making submissions on the legislation before us so that they can contribute to the process of the MMP referendum. 
Once again I say we think that MMP is the best system. It is much better than any of the other options on the table. It is a much fairer system than first past the post and produces a much more diverse representation of New Zealanders. We look forward to the ongoing debate and the referendum to come and we are very confident that the people of New Zealand will choose to stay with the fairest and most representative system MMP.