Roy Heather: Appointments — Representation Commission 
Roy Heather: Appointments — Representation Commission 
[Volume:635;Page:6657] 
HEATHER ROY (Deputy Leader—ACT) 
: 
 ACT New Zealand also will oppose both of these motions. A couple of months ago much was made of the fact that in New Zealand we have had a decade of MMP—10 years of proportional representation. In fact in many situations in this Parliament we still have an overhang of the old first-past-the-post system. The Representation Commission—or the representation on it from this House in this regard—reflects exactly the fact that in many ways we have not moved on from first past the post to a proper MMP system. 
In December 1986 the report of the Royal Commission on the Electoral System was released. It recommended that “each of the parties in the House of Representatives should have its own representative on the Representation Commission to be appointed by the Governor-General on the nomination of the House. Such representatives should not be members of the House and should not have the right to vote at meetings of the commission.” As is often the case however this recommendation seems to have been lost in the history of time and it was never implemented. What we have today is not reflective of the way this Parliament should be under MMP. Certainly the way the Representation Commission appointments are made is not in line with MMP. 
Appointments—one each for the Government and the Opposition—place a burden on those appointed who need to apply the wisdom of Solomon when looking at boundaries and representation for our Parliament. Not only is that unfair on the small parties in this Parliament but it is also unfair on the two nominees one from the largest Government party and one from the largest Opposition party. The burden on those people of representing what should be the whole Parliament is clearly unfair. That is unfair to the two people who have been nominated because their appointment will promote the electoral interests of two parties only: the National Party and the Labour Party. When eight parties are represented in Parliament I contend that that is a very unfair situation indeed. 
The system affords the other smaller parties direct representation in the House but in fact the commission has nothing approaching that. Smaller parties like ACT have won electorate seats—ACT of course has had Wellington Central in the past and now holds the seat of Epsom. United Future holds a seat New Zealand First has held a seat and the Maori Party holds electoral seats. Despite the fact that we should have the right to have our views represented fairly on the commission our views for the most part are well and truly ignored. 
This system needs to be reviewed very quickly. It needs that because we pride ourselves on having very fair political representation in this country but in this regard we do not. ACT proposes—and I believe that many of the other small parties agree with this view—that at the very least the small parties should have a representative of their own on the commission. This means that National would have one representative Labour would have one and the small parties jointly would have one. If that is not palatable we contend that nobody should have a representative—or at least that those representatives should not carry a vote on the commission. So there are two choices that would be much fairer than the present system. Certainly we are not prepared to stay silent any longer and pretend that we have a fair system. We will be writing to the commission and suggesting those two options. We will suggest firstly that the small parties share a representative—and I believe that we have the support of the other small parties in this Parliament to do so. Secondly if the commission feels that is unfair we will suggest that there should be no representation from any party so that officials can look in an unbiased way and make the decisions that at the moment only two parties—the major parties in this Parliament—can contribute to in any fair or meaningful way. 
For that reason ACT New Zealand will not be supporting either of these motions. We feel that the unfairness of the situation is paramount. This really is no reflection on any of the people who have been nominated. I am sure they are all very good people and have the best of intentions but the unfairness of the situation that presently exists is the overriding consideration in this debate. For that reason ACT will oppose both these motions.