Luxon ChristopherCHRISTOPHER LUXON (National—Botany): As we have previously said in this House and we've said all the way through this bill we continue to oppose the Local Electoral (Māori Wards and Māori Constituencies) Amendment Bill and we oppose it as we have previously discussed for several reasons. The first is the process for the introduction of the bill being utterly unacceptable and especially so for what you consider to be a significant piece of electoral law reform. Let's be honest it has been a sham process with no meaningful public engagement; the departmental expert said there was no time for consultation or assessing or testing. The technical policy details didn't even live up to the Government's own standard of openness and transparency and a commitment to involve full participation of local populations on major decisions of local democracy. The Cabinet paper shows it was cynical politics to ride roughshod and break convention with how we handle electoral law. And the implications of all of this poor process is that the Government is not even trying to take the New Zealand people with them to secure their buy-in to make the case for such a significant change. They're just jamming and ramming it through and that's what they've done and that's going to cause some division across our country. We also oppose the bill because we believe the decision about Māori wards and constituencies is for local people in local communities to make about their local government not central government. We have very diverse and different communities all across New Zealand; some may want Māori wards and others may not. But our point is that fundamentally that is a decision for them to make not central government to make. And this is especially so on an issue of significant local electoral law reform. We never during this process even had the opportunity to really truly discuss and debate how local government and local communities should best meet their Treaty obligations. Local government and Māori are quite capable of doing that and achieving the outcome of deeper strategic partnerships without the central government dictating and deciding the means of Māori wards.The Labour Government's legislation of 2002 created the mechanism of Māori wards and asked councils to consider them regularly. The original reason for the 5 percent petition triggering a poll was a device the Labour Government created to enable Māori to lobby for Māori wards. And the Minister referenced a series of papers—the 1986 Royal Commission on the Electoral System the Waitangi Tribunal in 2010 and the Human Rights Commission of 2010—arguing for more representation. But almost 20 years on from that we have moved on and you have to ask whether the mechanism or the means of Māori wards has been simply superseded and passed by. Many submitters pointed to the Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) data that said since 2004 the proportion of local government elected officials who are Māori has risen dramatically to be broadly proportional with the Māori adult population. Now this positive increase in representation as we're also seeing in this House and central government is being achieved by more Māori candidates standing and more local voters voting for them and all without the requirement for a Māori ward or constituency. We are increasingly living up to the principle that the Americans have enshrined in their competition that We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal." We're increasingly living in a country in a nation where people are not judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character. And that is a good thing indeed. Now our 70 local councils with their 1600 elected members are already obliged under legislation to have improving and deepening relationships with Māori to ensure proper engagement and involvement with Māori in decision making. Local government and iwi and hapū take those responsibilities very seriously and in good faith; they work hard to improve them each and every year. They're not simply what someone called a "tick and flick" exercise as proponents of the bill tried to suggest. Sadly in this select committee process we never even got to hear the viewpoint of some Māori that Māori wards are about addressing matters of representation but do not necessarily empower iwi or hapū relationships. Council's responsibility to Māori does not end at whether they establish Māori wards or not; many iwi and hapū would prefer negotiating clear outcomes through their Treaty relationship with the council directly as a means of best delivering the Treaty obligations of article 2—you know the decision over resources and taonga; and article 3 obligations owed to New Zealand citizens are owed equally to Māori. Now none of those articles said the creation of Māori wards was the way to deliver those obligations and Ngāi Tahu has decided that it isn't and is a good example of that approach. Consequently Christchurch Council has declared it does not want or see the need for Māori wards. We have also repeatedly asserted electoral law is important and it's not something to be dealt with cavalierly. On this side of the House we do believe the electoral system belongs to the electors not the elected. And that is why many countries have referendum when determining their constitution. It is why New Zealand had a referendum over whether our Parliament was elected by MMP or first past the post (FPP). It is also why the local government law provides a referendum should a council decide to change its electoral system—from FPP to single transferrable vote or the opposite. Given the significance of this electoral law change it would be right to have put this to referendum too.I think it's also false for Labour members to argue that communities can simply just elect a new mayor and council in 2022 if they don't like the decision made under this bill because the bill specifically prohibits any further change until 2028. Even then we've not even been able to really ascertain whether once a Māori seat is established the legislation means it can in future be revoked like it can be for general wards. This is one of the technical issues that we talked about at the very beginning about its interrelationship with other pieces of legislation and we never got to discuss that properly. In the legislative statement the bill is purported to align the process and the treatment of Māori wards and constituencies with those of general wards and constituencies yet it simply doesn't do that. All it is doing is removing the right to past and future referendum on Māori wards. Now we canvassed much discussion around this highlighting the inconsistencies but this wasn't recognised by other committee members—where for example the law requires that when a council proposes general wards it must publicly notify its proposals and call and hear submissions and take appeals. These provisions don't apply to the creation of a Māori ward under this legislation. If the Government genuinely wish to align the process it would require the same legal process for creating Māori wards as for general wards. You can make general wards have a 5 percent petition as well. So there are several technical implications and consequences of the legislation that haven't really been fully explored due to the urgent process and the determination frankly to implement the bill as it is by the Government. We didn't really get to discuss and consider its interaction with section 9 of the local electoral legislation and the use of polls on any other aspect of representation arrangements. We didn't really get to talk about the Local Government Act 2002 section 76AA where it specifies a council must publicly notify and have public submissions on ward changes yet it doesn't for Māori wards. We didn't get to discuss the interaction on the Auckland super-city legislation. We didn't get to discuss—deeply enough—the retrospective nature of this bill and the general misalignment of this treatment of general wards and constituencies with Māori wards. And as I said at the very first reading this is not the most important local government issue at this time.Local government is struggling on several fronts. The sector is overwhelmed and it's facing the most significant period of change I think in 30 years. And there are much more pressing strategic issues to address at this time that could make a big difference to the daily lives of our citizens—if we started to talk about and solve problems around infrastructure housing transport water resource management consenting processes climate change impacts and poor customer experiences. So in closing we oppose this bill because the process for the introduction for this bill has frankly been totally unacceptable and even more so when you consider it a significant piece of electoral law reform. It frankly deserved better than this. The decision about Māori wards and constituencies is fundamentally for local people and local communities to make about their local government not central government. It's not for central government to get in the middle of the relationship between councils and iwi and hapū. Electoral law is very important; it's not something to be dealt with cavalierly. And on this side of the House we believe that the electoral system belongs to the electors not the elected. That means that we build the case we take it to the New Zealand people and we win the arguments when we want to drive progress through our electoral system. While the bill purports to do so it isn't aligning the treatment of Māori wards and constituents to general wards and constituencies and we don't know exactly when that will happen. There are several technical implications and consequences: the interaction of legislation I've talked about and as I said we oppose it because frankly there are a lot more pressing and important issues to deal with at this time. Thank you—that's why we continue to oppose the legislation.SPEAKER: Before I call the member I'm just going to issue a general warning—not to that member who hasn't yet made his maiden speech and I think there's another member who is going to speak tonight who also hasn't made his maiden speech—but the Standing Orders Committee when we considered the Standing Orders last year very deliberately reinforced the fact that members are not to read speeches. And for members who are not the brand new members who haven't done their maiden speeches I will be interrupting them in future. So it's no criticism on that member but just a general warning for the next few speakers."