Foster AndyANDY FOSTER (NZ First): I want to return to a theme which I've covered in previous stages of this debate—Hon Willie Jackson: Oh no thank you.ANDY FOSTER: —and actually I think that sometimes even you Willie Jackson listened to some parts of it and saw that actually there was a point there. The point that I wanted to make is this. If I were to quote Winston Churchill he said that If you have an important point to make"—Hon Willie Jackson: What about Winston Peters? ANDY FOSTER: —no Winston Churchill—"don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time—a tremendous whack." and that's exactly what I intend to do. But Chris Hipkins was actually right in one part of his speech. He said that it is all about one person one vote—and it is—and I think there are some people who are afraid that Māori wards—Chlöe Swarbrick: So disestablish the ratepayer roll. ANDY FOSTER: Just listen up. I think that some people are afraid that Māori wards actually mean that somehow Māori have more than one vote and that's wrong. They don't have more than one vote. But there is an issue which he also neglected which is that the structure we've got in the Act itself means that sometimes those votes have different weight and that is the fundamental issue. That is the fundamental issue that I want to—Hon Willow-Jean Prime: No they don't—how? How? ANDY FOSTER: I'll explain to you Willow-Jean Prime if you wanted to listen. Chris Hipkins said that Māori wards are one person one vote and that it doesn't give Māori extra votes and he's correct on that. But what he has failed to see is that there is a major flaw in the Local Electoral Act. Democracy also relies not just on one person one vote but on each vote being worth roughly the same. So in this House every five years the representation review gets done on the basis of the census and it says that every seat must be within a population of plus or minus 5 percent. They will ruthlessly move around the boundaries with of course a bit of input from political parties to make sure that it does and 22 seats got their boundaries moved the last time the review was done. The Local Electoral Act says that it's plus or minus 10 percent so it's still trying to achieve the same objective there. It does have allowances for communities which are isolated. You might be on an island or you might be in the Marlborough Sounds—those kinds of communities—so it does allow for that kind of situation. The Local Government Commission can have a look at that and actually that's one other thing that Mr Hipkins failed to note which is that while this legislation is about allowing referenda on Māori wards which are not available to other wards all the other wards are able to be contested with the Local Government Commission which in the 2021 legislation was not able to be done with Māori wards. The problem though in the Local Electoral Act is that in Schedule 1A of the Act—and you might want to have a look at it—what it does is it allows a Māori ward to be established potentially on 50 percent of the size of the population of a general ward. So effectively that means that in that situation a vote in a Māori ward is still one vote but it has twice the weight of a vote in a general ward. It could actually flip the other way but it doesn't happen very often. It could actually be a situation where the Māori ward is larger than the general ward and in fact there is one situation—and I've looked through the numbers. There is one situation—which it is—but for all the others it's the other way and it's sometimes very very significant and I do suggest that you actually look at that. So it is disappointing to me that this issue has not been addressed yet. I understand that it was actually looked at just a little bit when the Act was brought into the House in 2001-02 but it hasn't been done yet. As Cameron Luxton said what this does—and this is an area which I do think you need to think about—is you could actually support a Māori ward and actually a Māori ward was introduced when I was the Mayor of Wellington. You could actually—Chlöe Swarbrick: Yeah you voted for it Andy. ANDY FOSTER: Exactly—you could actually support a Māori ward but what you could do—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Mr Foster those "yous" are starting to add up. ANDY FOSTER: Oh sorry. One could support a Māori ward but actually be disturbed by the numbers and the numbers are actually quite disturbing. There are 26 territorial councils which have Māori wards. Ten of them are under STV. In one case as I've said Māori are significantly under-represented. In one it's within that plus or minus 10 percent but in the other they are all well underneath and sometimes significantly so. What makes this worse is we have the situation where we have this great enthusiasm for Māori wards but only half the people who whakapapa to Māori have decided that they want to be on the Māori roll for the national election and that also means that they are the only ones who are on the Māori roll for the local elections and the turnout is abysmal in comparison. Across the board the general wards' turnout is 47 percent and the Māori wards' turnout is 28 percent so it's significantly lower and what that means under STV is that at the first iteration on average you require three times as many votes to be elected—three times as many votes to be elected—in a general ward than you do in a Māori ward. That is an issue and in the worst of them is 10 times as much in the same jurisdiction. In the same council area it takes 10 times as many votes to get elected at a first iteration in a general ward than it does in a local ward. Under FPP it's not much different. The turnout in general wards is just over 48 percent and the average turnout in Māori wards is 32 percent and the other bit is that the number of non-contests in Māori wards is 23 percent against 12 percent. So those are significant differences. Hon Willie Jackson: This is stupid. ANDY FOSTER: I know numbers confuse you Willie. I know numbers confuse you but they are important and electoral integrity is important. Just in conclusion Labour's legislation was rushed through in less than one eighth—I'll use another number—of the time that this bill has taken to get through. Māori wards are generally far smaller than general wards in terms of population represented per person. Half the people with Māori whakapapa choose not to enrol in the Māori electorates or rolls but choose the general ones and the turnout in those wards is between a third and a half of what it is in the general wards. So there is a fundamental problem and in my view the Act—regardless of this bill—remains fundamentally flawed. It's quite clear that the Opposition either doesn't understand or doesn't want to listen but this is a fundamental problem for the democratic structure of this bill. So just to conclude as Cameron Luxton said you may well support Māori wards but this is a problem in the legislation which needs to be fixed and I commend the bill to the House. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): This is a five-minute split call. I call—Chlöe Swarbrick: Steve Abel. Steve Abel: Thank you Mr Speaker. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): No what—Chlöe Swarbrick: Steve Abel. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Steve Abel—thank you Mr Abel."