Dalziel Lianne: Electoral Referendum Bill — Third Reading 
Dalziel Lianne: Electoral Referendum Bill — Third Reading 
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Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 Labour will be supporting the final reading of the Electoral Referendum Bill on the basis that the legislation has been improved by the select committee process and the input of the more than 1000 people who submitted to the Electoral Legislation Committee especially the 50 or so who submitted in person. Again I place on record that the approach adopted by the chair of the committee Amy Adams and also by the Minister of Justice enabled a compromise to be reached that enabled Labour members to support the bill. With this bill the major sticking point was again the need for a cap on third-party spending believing as we did that without the cap the potential for advertising to distort the effect of the campaign by the well-resourced anti-MMP group which is largely made up of corporates over that of the under-resourced pro-MMP group which is largely made up of community groups was too great. 
I have made much of two issues during the course of the debate. I believe that this referendum is a citizens initiated referendum masquerading as a Government referendum. Secondly I believe that there is a strategy in place to replace MMP with a form of first past the post with 30 supplementary list members who are voted on separately and with a party vote that is proportional only to those 30 members. Part of the strategy is to ignore public demands for changes to some aspects of MMP before subjecting it to a referendum. I am firmly of the view that if the Government truly wanted to test public opinion about MMP it would have allowed that review to precede the first referendum. But it did not allow time for that which makes the need to review MMP post the referendum even more imperative regardless of the outcome of the first referendum. My amendment which was rejected by the Government was designed to achieve that. 
If a second referendum is required—and I doubt that the public will fall for this strategy but just in case they do—then allowing MMP to run up against a brand new purpose-designed system without any review of its flaws would mean that the second referendum would lack integrity. That is why Labour will commit to the review regardless of the outcome of the referendum and if a second referendum is required we will commit to the timetable proposed by this Government and hold it in 2014 but the MMP system that the new system will run up against will have been reviewed so that the public get a real say a real choice. I believe that the Government’s position—that people need to vote on the system they are used to—is spurious because they could also at the same time be voting on a system they have never experienced on the other side of the MMP debate. New Zealanders want us to revisit the thresholds and that we must do. There are other aspects of MMP that must be reviewed. 
So why are we having a referendum on MMP anyway? The announcement was made by John Key at his party conference leading up to the 2008 general election. It was No. 10 on the list of 10 pledges he released that day but I always felt that it was the pledge that certain interests had wanted since the 2005 campaign had gone so horribly wrong for National at the last minute. And this is where there is a link between this bill and the previous bill. Business interests and groups like the Exclusive Brethren had poured millions of dollars into that campaign first through the device of billboards that dominated the landscape from the beginning of the year to avoid the electoral spending caps and to set the scene for a misogynist and racist campaign—remembering of course the “Iwi/Kiwi” slogan and the distorted photographs. National was supposed to win that campaign with Don Brash positioned to deliver to his backers everything they had hoped for: privatisation of our remaining asset base relaxation of the rules on overseas ownership of land making funding from Votes Health Education and Housing currently dedicated to the public systems fully contestable with the private sector— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy) 
: I am sorry to interrupt the member but I am not going to allow a cross-debate to go on while the member is speaking. We tolerate a few interjections but an interchange was going on that was quite separate from the debate. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: I will just recap on what Don Brash was positioned to deliver: privatisation of our remaining asset base relaxation of the rules on overseas ownership of land making funding from Votes Health Education and Housing currently dedicated to the public systems fully contestable with the private sector a return to market rents for what little remained of the public housing stock and replacing ACC with private insurance. It would have been Ruth Richardson on speed. We can see why National’s backers were appalled by Helen Clark’s ability to put together a series of arrangements that prevented National from taking office and they blamed MMP. 
Roll on John Key in the lead-up to the 2008 election and here is a quote from the coverage of the announcement because I think it speaks volumes about why we are having this referendum: “Mr Key who made the referendum one of 10 election pledges in his speech to National’s annual conference today said he believed voters would reject MMP. ‘I think the country may well vote MMP out but I think they will vote in another proportional system’ he told reporters.”—he knows what is coming—“ ‘I don’t think they’ll go back to first past the post.’ ”—he knew exactly what was on offer—“But after 12 years of MMP it was important to give voters a choice he said. ‘I do think voters thought they were going to get an opportunity to kick the tyres and we’re giving them that opportunity.’ ” 
That announcement set off alarm bells for me. First there has been a view quite widespread that people were promised a second referendum after MMP had been in for a while. In fact it was a review that was promised and it was promised by a National Government. It was not promised by a Labour Government. It was promised by the party that brought the MMP referendum into effect. That review occurred after the 1999 election when Labour was in Government. It was chaired by the Rt Hon Jonathan Hunt as the Speaker of the House and all parties were represented on that review. 
Personally I think that approach was inadequate. Personally I think we should have had an independent review of this place take place. I think that would have given us some further grounds for making changes to MMP which I think we could have considered 12 years into the new system. However there were those who continued to make mischief by expressing the view that a second referendum had been promised. Quite frankly if one says things often enough people start to think they were promised something. That is exactly what happened. And guess who did not deliver on this false expectation? Of course it was Labour who did not deliver on it even though we were not the Government at the time the system was changed in the first place. 
So this referendum is not only drawing on that populist view about MMP; it is actually about delivering to National’s backers the opportunity to get rid of MMP altogether and replace it with a system that looks like and sounds like—but is not—proportional representation. I quoted this in the Committee stage but I will quote it again from  
New Zealand Herald  
columnist John Armstrong: “And before anyone mouths the words ‘supplementary member’ let’s beware of false prophets in sheep’s clothing. No doubt those wanting a return to those dark ages will seductively offer the supplementary member system as a halfway house between [first past the post] and MMP. That system is in part proportional. It might look like a compromise. It is not. It is nothing short of snake oil elixir. Had last year’s election been fought under that system with a Parliament made up of 90 constituent seats and 30 list seats National would have won 67 of them compared with its current 58. That party would have had an absolute majority of 14 seats with just under 45 per cent of the vote. The Greens’ current entitlement of nine seats would have been slashed to just two. So much for proportionality.”. 
We have achieved a limit on expenditure which I hope will limit the ability of the parallel campaigners to distort the truth about the supplementary member system. It is not proportional representation and it is not a halfway house; it is first past the post with a winner’s bonus and it is nothing more. It will do nothing for diversity in this place. It will do nothing to provide a critical check on the unbridled power unleashed by Governments of both colours when absolute majorities were assured. That was what the people of New Zealand voted to reject in 1993 and as long as they are told the truth about what they are being offered they will reject it again.