Boyack RachelRACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): Madam Chair thank you for the opportunity to take a call. During the earlier stages of this committee debate I asked a number of questions of the Minister that were particularly focused on the consistency of this bill. I've got some real concerns around the consistency and even some of the statements the Minister has made around the role of democracy. So I have a specific amendment to put on the Table today which is on the title—which is the debate we're debating today. The part that we're debating is the title. My specific amendment is that we replace the piece that says (Electoral Legislation and Māori Wards and Māori Constituencies)" with "(A Rare Misstep)" because I believe that this bill is a rare misstep on the part of the Minister. I think that it makes a number of errors in law and errors in the intent of the law and errors in terms of how this law will be implemented. So I may just take some time to go through those because I think—Hon Kieran McAnulty: Absolutely. It is your amendment.RACHEL BOYACK: It is my amendment and I'm going to talk to it. I think we've made a massive rare misstep here on the behalf of the Minister. I think this would be one that would definitely go down in the history books.So let's talk to the first one. The first one is that what this law does is enact the ability for a referendum to take place on a Māori ward that's implemented. But yet there are a number of other things that a council could do which I outlined in some speeches yesterday such as implementing geographic wards implementing general wards implementing rural wards implementing a new voting system changing the number of councillors per ward—all of these things can be changed through a representation review but don't have to go through the referendum process. So I say it's a rare misstep on the behalf of the minister that he is about to put a law through that would allow for only one part of those changes to go through to a public referendum. Surely that's an error? Surely that's a mistake? Surely that's a rare misstep on behalf of the Minister? I would have thought so. So I think that's why we should change the title of this bill from "(Electoral Legislation and Māori Wards and Māori Constituencies)" to "(A Rare Misstep)". We could even go so far as to say "(A Rare Misstep on Behalf of the Minister Simeon Brown)". I think that would be an appropriate title for us to have here.Another one of the comments that the Minister made was that this was returning the bill back to what it originally was. Now if we were doing so we would have allowed for a petition to lead to the referendum—so a rare must step on behalf of the Minister who claims that we are returning to the exact same law. But it's not the exact same law. Under the previous law if the electors wished to have a referendum they had to have a petition of 5 percent of electors wanting that referendum. What this law actually does is it imposes a referendum on those councils that have introduced a Māori ward since we as a Labour Government changed that law. For the Minister to stand up and say here in this Chamber yesterday that he was returning the law to exactly as it was before well I say it's a rare misstep. So I say let's change the title of this bill to be accurate—to be accurate that the Minister has made actually more than a rare misstep. We could say "a few" rare missteps—a few rare missteps that he has made in putting this legislation together and then making statements in this Chamber that clearly don't back up what the actual legislation does in terms of its intent and in terms of its implementation.The last thing I wanted to mention was some comments where I think the Minister has made another rare misstep around the role of the Local Government Commission vis à vis the role of a referendum. The Minister has claimed that it's absolutely fine for us to have a referendum on this particular matter because the Local Government Commission can make changes to what councils have done through their processes if people make an appeal to the Local Government Commission off the back of some decisions of a council. Again we're seeing an inconsistency here. If we really want to talk about democracy we would have a consistent approach between what we're doing for Māori wards and what we're doing for all other decisions that are made by a council. I gave the very good example of Nelson City Council. They did make some changes. There was an appeal made. The Local Government Commission upheld the council's decisions that had been made through the representation review. So I say that again it's another example—I think I have pointed out three missteps so perhaps we could say "(Three Rare Missteps on Behalf of the Minister)". But I really would like to hear from the Minister if he's willing to entertain my Amendment Paper because I think it's a very good one."