Donald Rod: Education (School Boards of Trustees Single Transferable Vote Option) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Donald Rod: Education (School Boards of Trustees Single Transferable Vote Option) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:620;Page:15494] 
ROD DONALD (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 School boards of trustees elections are the largest democratic event in this country. All 2580 New Zealand schools are involved. More than 13000 people are needed to become trustees. These trustees make important decisions on behalf of the pupils parents and communities they represent. They have overall responsibility for the governance of their school. They are responsible for the school’s vision and the planning required to achieve that vision. They must ensure the school complies with the law and is a responsible employer and they are expected to ensure that students are achieving. 
The Government gives enormous discretion to boards of trustees to choose how they want their schools to develop but this Government will not let boards of trustees choose the electoral system they believe will encourage participation in the election process and will ensure that the make-up of the board reflects the diversity of the school community. This is Mr Mallard’s chance to let schools make one of the most crucial decisions they should be allowed to make—that is how to recruit and elect trustees who have a mix of skills and experience talents and backgrounds to ensure that schools function well. 
Minister Maharey said that this bill is not supported by the School Trustees Association. I have a letter from that association that states: “The association’s view is that the association has no view.” So the Minister’s comment is not true. The Minister asked whether we would get different outcomes. I would say that almost certainly we would and what is more they would be better outcomes. The Minister claimed that schools hand count votes now. I am afraid he is desperately out of touch. The reality is that most schools contract out their elections. They already use the likes of Canterbury Education Services and elections.com to run their elections and count their votes. The latter already runs 19 of the 21 district health board single transferable vote (STV) elections in most of the 10 STV council elections. It has assured me that it can run STV elections for schools just as well as the first-past-the-post elections it already runs for schools and for very little more cost. 
Marian Hobbs and Deborah Coddington implied that STV was inappropriate for schools because it is a political electoral system. That view could not be further from the truth. The fact is that STV is used more by non-political bodies in New Zealand such as Fonterra the Victoria University of Wellington Council the Anglican Church trade unions and even kennel clubs. In Britain and Ireland STV is widely used by a vast range of organisations that simply want to elect their committees by a system that is clearly superior and fairer than first past the post. 
As former associate professor of political studies at Auckland University Graham Bush said: “If there’s one voting system worse than single member first past the post it is multi-member first past the post.” He concluded the article I am quoting from: “There is no better time than now to ground our modernised local government system on a democratised method of voting.” He wrote that article in 1994 and it has taken a decade to bring about the necessary changes to the way we elect our councils. 
I hope that it will not take a decade to make STV an option for school board elections. I hope that the Government will belatedly appreciate the merits of STV and recognise that schools such as Wellington College Auckland Grammar Onslow College Burnside High School and Shirley Boys High School should have the option of using STV if they want to. However after today’s debate I fully appreciate that there is limited understanding of the flaws of first past the post so I will table some of the results from the last election shortly. 
Over the next year or maybe decade in Parliament I will endeavour to encourage members parents and existing trustees of the merits of a change. I hope it will not take as long as it took Sir John Hall to get STV introduced for elections in New Zealand as it may take to get STV an option for school board elections. He first promoted STV for parliamentary elections in 1877 and never succeeded. Meanwhile STV was in use in 1917 when Christchurch City elected Ada Wells its first woman councillor. Unfortunately despite the best efforts of councillor Elizabeth McCombs who later became New Zealand’s first woman member of Parliament STV disappeared from local elections in 1933. 
In conclusion I celebrate STV’s restoration 71 years later for this year’s local body elections and I look forward to my colleagues in this House allowing school boards to be able to choose it for their elections as well.