Goff Phil: Electoral Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: Electoral Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 04 March 2014. Volume:696;Page:16310. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): There is one way of characterising this bill the Electoral Amendment Bill as it is reported back from the Justice and Electoral Committee and that is that it contains the good—and I will come to that in a moment—it contains the bad and it contains the ugly. The ugly is what is omitted from this bill because this bill is a result of the Justice and Electoral Committee inquiry. I have got that inquiry in front of me and there are things that are recommended by the inquiry that the Minister of Justice has taken out. There are things that the Minister said in her introductory speech in praise of the new clauses on the EasyVote card that she has taken out and there are things that were not put in there at all despite the fact that the independent Electoral Commission said they should be there.That relates to the question of coat-tailing which has been used by the National Party to rort the system to maintain itself in power. That is all there is to it. The majority of New Zealanders said in their submissions—the majority of New Zealanders say in every poll that has ever been taken on the issue—that they want the coat-tailing provision taken out. It is the coat-tailing provision that keeps Peter Dunne and John Banks in the House and keeps the majority for the National Party. That was not what the electoral law was ever intended to do and the National Party has rorted this system to keep itself in power. I want to come back to that in a moment.Let me say what was good about the bill. What was good about the bill was the stupid clause that was originally in the bill which said that there should be no wearing of ribbons or rosettes—Scott Simpson said it would terrify the voters if they saw somebody wearing a ribbon or a rosette—has been taken out by the select committee and the select committee is wise in doing that. For 150 years party members have been able to wear a ribbon on election day and why should they not? There was no evidence that that would do any harm and I hope that Scott Simpson will get to his feet and apologise for the nonsense that he spoke in the first reading of this bill because the good thing that the select committee did was remove the nonsense about not wearing a ribbon. You know the funny thing about the new electoral legislation is that you can actually vote 17 days before election day. Far from being intimidated by ribbons or unduly influenced by them voters see all the hoardings up. The campaign can be seen in the full swing of it during the 17 days when 17 percent of New Zealanders go down to vote. So it is just nonsense to say “Take away the ribbons. Take away the rosettes.” The select committee has made a wise decision.Unfortunately in making that wise decision its members have done what they have been told to do by the Minister and that is to remove the material relating to the EasyVote card. The EasyVote card is really important for people in my electorate— which is multicultural—who have problems with English. They know that they can take their card along and show it to the polling clerk. The polling clerk looks at it and in a very simple and efficient way can issue the vote to the voter.The National Party has learnt something from the Tea Party in the United States. In the United States the Tea Party went out of its way to stop people from participating. It wanted all sorts of identification to make it as hard as you can to get people to participate on the basis of the fact that those who are disadvantaged are less likely to vote. I argue that that is exactly what this Minister is doing in this clause. She is saying: “Make it harder for them.”It is not what she said when she introduced the bill. What did she say when she introduced the bill? She said: “Another important change enabled by this bill is the greater use of the EasyVote cards during the electoral process.” She was in favour of them. She said: “This bill will enable EasyVote cards to be used as a record that an ordinary vote has been cast. It will also allow the cards to be used instead of a declaration form for special voters. [It] will simplify and speed up the issuing ofordinary and special votes. It will also make the scrutinising of the rolls that occurs during the election counting process more accurate and efficient.” What changed Minister between the speech that you gave on the introduction of this bill and now when you do not want the EasyVote card registered at all as a statutory right for people to use to increase participation to make the democratic process work better?All of the arguments about the EasyVote cards were dealt with by the Justice and Electoral Committee when its members did their inquiry. Every argument that the Minister and the National members have raised against putting the EasyVote card in this bill—they are taking it out—was contradicted by what the Justice and Electoral Committee said in its report. It is important that we refer back to that because when the Justice and Electoral Committee did an inquiry on the EasyVote card it said it was really important because it simplified voting procedures. That is what we are trying to do in this legislation surely. Is electoral legislation not about making the process more efficient easier to understand and simpler and getting more people to vote?What I allege that the Minister is doing is exactly the opposite. Too late she realised her mistake after her first reading speech. “Oh my God this will make it easier for those people to vote who perhaps don’t understand the system that well and might make the terrible mistake of voting Labour!” So Minister you have taken these clauses out of the bill without any argument and without any justification in contradiction of what the Justice and Electoral Committee argued in its inquiry and in contradiction to what you yourself said in the first reading debate.We had plenty of abuse including the argument that I had been seen with some electoral fraudster. Yes I was there standing alongside Kanwaljit Bakshi from the National Party. I did not hear any comments from the Minister about that. If we are going to get into dirty politics we will talk about endorsing businesses overseas that your family has a connection with. That is what we can do if we really want to get down to that level of argument Minister—[Interruption] You brought it in and that is why I am replying to it.This bill is a dirty effort to actually distort the electoral process rather than enhance it. I want to come back to coat-tailing. New Zealanders time and again have said it is wrong that John Banks or the ACT Party got elected with I think three four or five members of Parliament in 2008 when the New Zealand First Party got a higher vote but did not get an electoral seat because it was not gifted one by the National Party. The party that got a higher percentage of the vote was not represented at all and the ACT Party was represented simply because there was a cup of tea and the then Leader of the Opposition John Key said to the National voters: “You’ll help us. You’ll help us rort the system. You’ll help us get elected if you vote for the ACT candidate”—who was then Rodney Hide—“in Epsom.” They did it again with John Banks and the tea party last time. New Zealanders have seen that and they are disgusted by that. The Electoral Commission which is independent—independent; and we need independent people to determine how this electoral law should work properly—said “Get rid of it.”My question to the Minister if she wants to get to her hind legs again and take a call or to any National Party person is why that is not in the bill. Why was it just the National Party that stood in the way of getting rid of rorting the system which is what the coat-tail provision allows? I challenge National members to stand up and explain why that is not in the bill. It is a rort. New Zealanders are against it. The independent Electoral Commission is against it. The National Government sees self-interest because it cannot hold on to coalition partners in rorting the system so it can have an ACT member or members and a United Future member or members. That is not the way to make electoral law in this country.Democracy is too important to rort the process by making it about the self-interest of the governing party instead of the honesty the integrity and the efficiency of the law. That is what it is meant to be about. It is meant to be about honesty efficiency and integrity. In two ways Minister you have undermined this bill. You have undermined it by not putting the provision in to get rid of coat-tailing when that is what New Zealanders expected of you. They voted for MMP with the promise from the Prime Minister that if that happened there would be a review. There was a review. The review clearly said to get rid of coat-tailing and you have ignored it. Why? Not a hint of an explanation because the explanation is clear to everybody. It is not in the self-interest of National maintaining power to take that clause out. That is about as simple and about as appalling as the explanation is for not taking the coat-tailing provisions out. Why take the EasyVote provisions out? You do not want those other people to vote—no Mr Chairman not you but the Minister. She does not want that provision in the bill because it will facilitate more people to vote.