Adams Amy: Electoral Referendum Bill — Second Reading 
Adams Amy: Electoral Referendum Bill — Second Reading 
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AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) 
: 
 I am very pleased to take a call in the House this afternoon on the second reading of the Electoral Referendum Bill. As the previous speaker did I will refer to some comments I made in respect of the Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Bill which the House has just finished debating. I spoke about the way that the Minister approached the process the way that the Electoral Legislation Committee worked and the help that we had from the officials on that legislation. I simply repeat my comments in this context because they apply to this bill too. 
From the Government’s perspective the starting point for this referendum is very much the view that I hear being expressed around New Zealand. I accept that I am just one person and the feedback to me is anecdotal and far from scientific but it is that most New Zealanders thought there would be a second referendum on MMP. Most New Zealanders as I hear them talking to me understood that when they elected to adopt MMP back in 1993—not by an overwhelming majority one would have to say—there would be a second chance to come back and say what they thought about it. What they had not done was to look at the asterisk and read the small print at the bottom of the page which stated that it would happen if Parliament agreed. That is where those people got lost in some of the technical detail. Of course Parliament looked at this issue in 2001 and by a very very narrow majority at that time it decided not have a second referendum because it thought that it was a bit too soon to do so. Even then Parliament did not say a referendum was not necessary; it just said 2001 was a bit too soon. 
It has always been National’s policy and it was made very clear at the last election that New Zealand should have a second referendum despite the technical wording that went in at first. Quite apart from anything else if New Zealand does once more signal that it wants MMP as its voting system then that will legitimise MMP and put to bed the festering unease about whether we should have ever had a second say on it. 
I find one thing slightly concerning and I will get it off my chest nice and early in the piece. There seems to be a bit of a mood from the pro-MMP lobby to say we have the electoral system that we want so there should not be any more debate on it now—that having got MMP we should shut the debate down. I do not think that is right. If we are firm in the view that MMP has worked well for New Zealand—and I would be the first to say it has done some good things—then we should not be afraid to put it back to New Zealanders and say: “OK this is your chance. You’ve had this system now since 1996. How is it going? What do you think of it? Should we endorse it?”. It has always been the view of the National Party and this bill is the driver of that that we should ensure that New Zealand has that chance and that the process is fair and easy to understand. 
For that reason the select committee spent a lot of time on the ballot paper which is a schedule of this bill to ensure that the language was as simple and as plain as it could be. The committee took some expert advice on that. We spent a lot of time on looking at the way that the systems were described—their names; their order on the ballot paper—in order to do everything we could to ensure that there was no perception of bias either for or against any particular system. As the chair of that committee it was certainly my view—and I think everyone on the committee shared it—that we needed to ensure that all the voting systems were put up in an unbiased way so that the public could have their say without us sticking in our fiddle as to which system it should be. For my part I have been pretty careful not to take a stand on any of the systems because as Mr Hodgson quite rightly said that is not for us politicians to do. This is a referendum and it is for the people of New Zealand. Our job in passing this legislation is to ensure as the Minister said in his opening contribution that the process is clear neutral and unambiguous. 
I will just comment on the issue of the timing of the referendum. One way that this process is different of course from the 1992-93 process is that the decision being made by the Government in this bill is that both referendums if there are two will be held in conjunction with general elections. We had some discussion with submitters on that issue during the select committee process. Of course what we get from combining the referendum with a general election is a far higher level of engagement and voter turn-out and that is absolutely something to be desired. I guess the counter to that and what we have to weigh up is whether the referendum messages—and there are some reasonably detailed messages about the differences between the systems—will somehow get lost in the clutter of a general election campaign. We spent a bit of time discussing that and I think that is certainly a fair argument. But my strong view and where the committee ended up is that the importance of having a high level of voter engagement if the result of this referendum is to have validity is absolutely fundamental. So we have the process whereby both referendums if there are two will be held in conjunction with general elections and I think that is important. 
This leads me to the issues of the public education campaign which will be a key component of the process. Coincidentally enough following on from the previous legislation we will have a public education campaign and around $5 million has been allocated for that. Against that we now have spending limits of $300000 on independent campaigners in this process. I think the relativity between those amounts should not go without comment. It is important that the public information is out there and dominates the debate. Certainly everyone is entitled to have a say in that. Let us just make the point that the limit is $300000 per campaigner and there could be any number of campaigners on both sides of this debate. As I said in my first contribution arguably the limits should have been higher—that is where I would have started from—but that is where the committee has come to on a consensus basis. 
The other thing I want to comment on which cuts across both bills—I did not make the point in the previous debate but I will make it here briefly—is that we were very concerned about the compliance cost of these limits. We did not want to make the regime overly onerous so we will require detailed returns to be filed only when campaigners are spending over $100000 and are really playing in the big end of town. People handing out a few leaflets and the like do not have to go through the expense of filing detailed returns. We have not required an automatic auditing provision either because we all know how onerous and expensive audits can be. Instead we have given the Electoral Commission the power to require an audit if it believes on reasonable grounds that there is merit in doing that. I think that is a good balance between ensuring that the system is robust and not imposing cost for the sake of cost. 
I would very much like to talk about a number of other matters. The bill provides for a very very interesting process and I look forward to seeing how it rolls out during the next year. However we will have more time for debate during the Committee stage so at this point I will simply end my speech by commending the bill to the House.