Goldsmith Paul; O'Connor GregHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Well that was a slightly surreal finish to that speech from the member on the other side Tāmati Coffey. It's my pleasure to stand and speak on this Electoral (Right to Switch Rolls Freely) Amendment Bill in the name of Rawiri Waititi. I do sadly have to pass on the message to the MP that we won't on this side be supporting this bill either for very similar reasons to the previous Labour Party speaker—and of course Labour's votes are essential to passing any bills in this House as it is with the numbers at the moment. What's happened of course is that the Government has introduced a bill which is dealing with this issue around switching between the two rolls.The practice up till now has been that only once every five years at the time of the census for four months afterwards people have the ability to choose between the two rolls. The logic of that was because the numbers of the Māori seats were determined by the number of people on the Māori roll because fortunately in this part of government we still adhere to the principle of one person one vote and equal voting rights—all New Zealanders should have an equal voting right—and so the number of Māori seats should be proportional to the number of people on the Māori roll. So changing unfortunately of course—that basic principle that foundational democratic principle is under threat at the local government level and we'll be fighting very hard in the next election to restore equal voting rights to that part of our government but that's a side issue.But on this issue of course switching between the rolls within that five-year period between censuses could have some impact on the overall proportionality at the second election but of course population changes in general electorates also have an impact as well and so that's not a not-overcomeable issue. The primary issue that we had with the legislation that the Government introduced and which is part and parcel of this bill as well is that it didn't acknowledge in allowing people to switch between rolls at any point including on election day or the day before election day and it didn't allow for the very real possibility of what the previous Minister of Justice Kris Faafoi referred to as tactical roll switching" and that is people deciding which vote would have more impact in any given election whether it's on the Māori roll or the general roll and deciding which one to go for in the lead-up to an election. So we weren't enthusiastic about that.What we've managed to achieve in our discussions with the Government is to ensure that we had the ability to have an exclusion around a period of a general election of three months and also local elections as well because that would be inappropriate. The Government did recognise this issue at the time when they introduced their bill because they had an exclusion around by-elections for that very reason. There was no great logic for excluding by-elections but not excluding general elections and central elections so the Government made that change and therefore we were prepared to support that bill.This bill of course introduced by Mr Waititi doesn't have that exclusion and therefore we're less inclined to support it. It also has some unusual features: the suggestion is to name everybody who's on what's now called the general roll—to divide it between the Māori roll and the non-Māori roll. I'm not quite sure that that's an appropriate way of doing it. I don't sort of regard myself as non-Māori; I regard myself as a New Zealander and to sort of describe us as something that we are not is not something that is a very appealing proposition. So I'm not quite sure why he had that in mind. I also think—Rawiri Waititi: It's not untruthful; it's true.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well it may well be true but it's not—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! [Time expired]"