Hodgson Pete: Electoral Referendum Bill — First Reading 
Hodgson Pete: Electoral Referendum Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:662;Page:10409] 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 Just to reaffirm: Labour will support this legislation’s referral to a select committee. I reiterate the comments of my colleague the Hon Lianne Dalziel in respect of the Government’s approach to this legislation and I say to the Minister of Justice that his conduct and approach to this process has I think been good. We thank him. We hope that it will continue and I think the Minister ought to be commended for the way in which he has approached this. My personal view of this legislation is that it is good enough. In fact I would go a little further and say that it is really rather good. It is less than perfect for reasons I will come to in a minute but it is rather good legislation. Given that it has to be legislation that is supported I hope by every party in the House then getting to the state of it being rather good at the point of its introduction is probably as good as one could hope for. So that is great. 
The next thing I will say for the record is that I will be voting for MMP and I think MMP should win in the first of the referenda. Not only that it is clear to me that MMP will win. That is my judgment. Of course I could be wrong. I think it will win for the reason that it won last time which is that it has allowed for a much more diverse Parliament than we have had. Since the advent of MMP we have had a Rastafarian a transsexual and any number of people who describe themselves as being various forms of gay. To my left is the first Samoan woman I think in the New Zealand Parliament and to my right is a part-Tahitian and so on. And so it is around the Chamber. We have now a much much more diverse and reflective Parliament. [ 
Interruption 
] We even have a veterinarian! 
Needless to say a number of these people were elected from electorates not because of the list but none the less the advent of MMP has allowed that diversity to arise to an extent that is greater than it would have done. I look across at Sir Roger Douglas and I would hazard the guess that Sir Roger Douglas would not have been able to make it back into this Parliament had first past the post been in place. I dare say he would agree. But the point is that that sort of diversity has been occasioned by the advent of MMP. 
The second thing is that although we have had instances of tails wagging dogs including arguably earlier this week it has not been a dominant feature of our Parliament. This is not the Israeli Knesset. Some things have been difficult to settle because of MMP. I do not think our approach to macroeconomic policy has gone well under MMP I do not think our approach to climate change has been brilliant under MMP and there are one or two other examples. But for the most part the Government of the day continues to be able to run the ship and to run the ship more or less. Nearly always it is a minority Government whereas before MMP there was an assumption that there would be a coalition majority but tradition seems to be a minority Government. And we have rewritten a little bit the constitutionality of the Westminster system. The previous Labour Government started it 4½ years ago; the present Government continued it 1½ years ago. 
The timing is long but I think it is tolerable. The reasons for the timing are first of all that we have this legislation because National made an election pledge and wants to keep to it. That is understood. The second reason is that should MMP win in the first ballot then we have to have an opportunity to do some tweaking before the election in 2014. In the event that MMP did not win the ballot of course there would need to be a big build-up and a great hoo-ha-ha not unlike the 1992-93 period. 
That means some people are already thinking ahead because they are presuming an MMP victory to the importance of Part 4. I simply make a couple of comments about Part 4. The first is a confession: I was on the select committee that drew up MMP in the first instance and I moved that the threshold be 5 percent. For better or worse it was voted in I think unanimously I cannot remember; but we went back and forth between 4 percent and 5 percent and between 100 120 or 140 total members because the royal commission had suggested 140. I suggested 120 members. We were just trying to get some momentum going. Whether it should be 4 percent or 5 percent is still moot; it always was and always will be. It is just a figure. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: German. 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: It is not German; it was occasioned—it does not matter why it was occasioned. It was a long-ago history. The point is that there is one thing that is missing. I am not particularly worried that it is missing but I am not sure whether the Minister is aware of the fact that in the 1993-95 period we had a big debate about whether lists should be open or closed and whether they should be regional or national. In other words there was a two-by-two box. We do not have a two-by-two box in this law; we have a two-by-one box. I do not mind that but I am letting the Minister know. I personally think that a national closed list is the way to go for all sorts of reasons but the public may have a different view. We would certainly want to hear from them should it come to that. 
I want to take the Minister on about his comments on advertising. I agree with him: this is the most transparent referendum we have ever had. The rules on transparency in this law as long as it passes in this form will be better than has ever been the case before. But there was a little bit of sophistry in the Minister’s argument and I feel the need to fill him out a little bit on that. That is to say something happened in the 2005 election that should never have happened I hope never happens again and arguably changes the construct of the way we approach electoral law. It is an important question because speaker after speaker has said that electoral law really matters that it is very central and I will go a little further and say that it is one of the cornerstones perhaps the cornerstone of our unwritten constitution. But if we are going to settle for transparency in this referendum and not for transparency plus expenditure caps whatever those caps are we may run into that problem again somehow sometime even with an organisation that does not meet the support of anyone in this House. We really just do not know what extraneous force might come on in an electoral process. If an electoral process is to be free and fair and if we are to go for a plebiscite that is as universal and as untainted as possible then it seems to be inevitable that we will have to reconsider the role of expenditure caps whatever they may be. It is simply too vulnerable to leave it untouched. I just say that to the Minister. He may or may not agree with me I am not sure but that in any case concludes my remarks.