Huo Raymond: Electoral Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHuo Raymond: Electoral Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 13 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:15946. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RAYMOND HUO (Labour): Well done I say to Paul Foster-Bell. Before I start I would like to acknowledge those MPs Government Ministers the Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister who attended so many Chinese New Year celebrations over the last 4 weeks. The celebrations will culminate tomorrow when the Chinese Lantern Festival hosted by the Asia New Zealand Foundation will be opened officially at Albert Park in Auckland.Now back to the Electoral Amendment Bill. We can actually borrow some wisdom from these ethnic celebrations. For instance there is a so-called gold trumpet rule which is relevant to this bill I believe. The ancient Chinese saying has it that the ruling party ruler or emperor etc.—you name it—while exercising some sympathy or democracy in modern language asked those who wished to present opposing or dissenting views to blow their gold trumpet. But the problem was that the ruling party had made the gold trumpet available only to its supporters so whenever the ruling party asked the opposition to give their dissenting views or opposing views by blowing their gold trumpet there was total silence.Applying that rule to this bill the ruling party is obviously National and those who do get hold of the gold trumpet are probably John Banks and Peter Dunne. The Minister of Justice Judith Collins has refused to abolish the coat-tail clauses and refused to stop deals being stitched up over cups of tea. I guess the only opinions or views she would have sought would be those from John Banks and Peter Dunne. For all others—the Opposition parties the general public the independent Electoral Commission—their views are simply ignored. ACT as a party gained only 3.65 percent of the vote in 2008 but won five seats on the back of the victory in Epsom and Mr John Banks won the seat again but only with the help of a cup of tea. That was the single-biggest concern people have about the MMP system.This bill seeks to introduce some small yet mostly sensible changes to the Electoral Act but the bigger issue is what is not in this bill and that is the much-needed changes to our MMP electoral system. Before the last election John Key did say that if people voted to keep MMP the system would be reviewed by the independent Electoral Commission. New Zealanders did vote to keep the MMP system it was reviewed by the independent Electoral Commission recommendations have been presented to us and to the general public and those recommendations include abolishing the coat-tails clause and reducing the party vote threshold to 4 percent. But the justice Minister Judith Collins has refused to introduce these amendments to MMP in time for this year’s general election. As my colleague Mr Lees-Galloway explained in his earlier contributions Judith Collins did say that such kinds of changes would require cross-party consensus and she did try to seek cross-party consensus but stopped. So applying the gold trumpet rule there was silence.New Zealanders need to have confidence in the integrity of the electoral system and Labour believes that these changes need to be made in time for this year’s general election. People are sick of deals being stitched up over cups of tea. That moment between John Key and John Banks in Epsom hurt Kiwis’ confidence in MMP and it is time to restore that trust. Labour has already had a bill drawn to amend MMP abolishing the coat-tails clause and reducing the party vote threshold to 4 percent as explained by my colleague Mr Lees-Galloway in his earlier contributions. It is very important for the Government to keep faith with the people and to follow through on the democratic choices that they have made because the people made the choice they voted to keep the MMP system the system was reviewed by the independent ElectoralCommission and recommendations have been presented to us to the general public but this Government has refused to restore that confidence.