Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Madam Chair. So we're talking about the commencement of this bill the Local Electoral (Māori Wards and Māori Constituencies) Amendment Bill and the clause says that the Act should come into force on the day after the date of Royal assent." Parliament usually takes a number of months to read through a bill three times and have a select committee process. Then when it's passed its third reading it goes off to the Governor-General who signs the bill and gives it its Royal assent and so that's after Parliament has done its business with it. This bill of course has been highly truncated down to about a week and people have had a very small amount of time to make their comments made. So my simple question and suggestion to the Minister is that she changes that to "This Act comes into force three years after the date of Royal assent." I say that because that would give the people of New Zealand the opportunity in a general election to have their say on this issue because at the most recent general election the Labour Party manifesto said quite clearly that "Labour will ensure that major decisions about local democracy involve full participation of the local population from the outset." That was the statement of the Labour Party at the last election. So the moment they've been elected arrogance has taken hold. They've got rid of Winston Peters and they have wanted to bring in this piece of legislation in haste and without proper understanding on the part of the people of New Zealand. So the question is I suppose: does this really matter or not? The Minister's view is that it's just a short-term fix no big deal not consequential it seems—"A short-term fix and we'll get it sorted in time so that it happens ahead of the next local body elections." Now the obvious response to that would be that if you really wanted to get ahead and send the signal to local government that these referendums wouldn't amount to anything and the voice of the people wouldn't amount to anything then you could have introduced this bill a long time ago. The fact that the Government didn't introduce this bill is a reflection of the fact that they knew that the people of New Zealand didn't like it and that's the basic message of this bill which is to say "We do not trust New Zealanders to make the right decision on these matters. Whenever it goes to a poll it loses primarily." It loses because New Zealanders don't like it and New Zealanders don't like it primarily because they believe that people should be treated equally before the law. They recognise that in this House there are Māori seats that were brought in more than a century ago at a time when the country did face real issues—more than a century ago. Those independent Māori seats I believe have had their day but it's a very big step to say "Well we should extend that further to local government." So this is a constitutional issue that we should debate openly as a people and as a House and what we have here is a Government sneaking it through deliberately disguising and misleading the people during the election campaign and then bringing this bill through and not giving people a chance to have a say about it. So it seems to me that the obvious way around the matter having introduced this bill is to say that it should come into effect three years after it's been given the Royal assent. That would give the people of New Zealand the chance at a general election to toss this Government out and for the bill to be amended before it comes into effect and at least we could have a decent discussion about it. The other point that I'd want to make of course is this—Hon Simon Bridges: Well you can make it. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Thank you the Hon Simon Bridges. The other point I'd like to make is that indeed something that we try to avoid in this House is to bring legislation that is retrospective. Hon Simon Bridges: That's my point. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well it's a point that a number of us have made and Nick Smith has made which is that many good-intentioned good-natured New Zealanders have signed petitions in the full expectation that they will have their say on an important issue of relevance to them. Not everybody agrees with the concept of having different seats at local government on the basis of ethnicity and I just want to make the point that these are very difficult issues for New Zealanders to grapple with and we should have proper debate. We should not have it snuck through in this fashion. So I'd like to understand why we couldn't postpone this for three years."