Tisch Lindsay: Inquiry into the 2002 General Election — Consideration of Report of Justice and Electoral Committee 
Tisch Lindsay: Inquiry into the 2002 General Election — Consideration of Report of Justice and Electoral Committee 
[Volume:617;Page:13125] 
LINDSAY TISCH (National—Piako) 
: 
 I always enjoy hearing about other electoral systems and I thank the member for that. I too have travelled to some of these places. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: Tell us about them! 
LINDSAY TISCH 
: No it is not a travelogue tonight but I say to Murray Smith that we find some commonality when we see how other countries operate and make comparisons with what we have here. 
I want to comment briefly on the inquiry as a member of the Justice and Electoral Committee and I refer the House to page 9 of the report which talks about a fundamental review of the Electoral Act of 1993. It is our view that major changes need to be made and we cannot make significant changes in the 3-year cycle. Tim Barnett and I have talked about this before. That is why National supports this inquiry in its entirety. The report states that any substantive changes need some time. We cannot rush these things and we cannot hope to get the best results by making some minor changes for the 2005 election. We need to think through the issues. The comments that have been made by other speakers including Richard Prebble and Rod Donald have raised valid points and I take them on board. Let us get it right and let us take the time to do it. That is why we support the recommendations in this review being done for the 2008 election. We cannot hope to do these things properly on an ad hoc basis. 
If we were to go back to previous reports that have been done we would see that that was exactly what they have commented. On page 6 of this report there is a very good comment from the 2001 report of the Government’s Election Framework Taskforce about the election cycle. The last sentence of the paragraph quoted there states that the result of the reviews and whatever held over time is “an Electoral Act riddled with ad hoc fixes and additions and very limited capacity in the system to consider the overall effect of the changes being made.” That probably summarises very succinctly the issues we currently have with the legislation. 
I want to mention two important parts one of which certainly affects me as an electorate MP for a rural area—and on looking around the Chamber I see I am the only one here at the moment who represents a large rural area. I refer to clause 64 on page 25 of the report under the heading “Tolerance level between electoral boundaries”. It is a huge concern when major changes are made. At the last election the electorate of Karapiro disappeared and became Piako. Barbara Stewart knows a lot about it because she comes from this area as well. The old Karapiro electorate was made up of a community of interest. It was centred on Te Awamutu Cambridge Matamata—where I live—Morrinsville and Te Aroha. It changed completely with Te Awamutu going to the King Country electorate. That electorate extends from halfway between Cambridge and Te Awamutu to way south of the mountain to the area where Shane Ardern comes from. There is no community of interest. Even the geographic boundaries which in the past would have defined the electorate boundary are nonsensical. The new electorate of Piako encompasses Cambridge Matamata Morrinsville and Te Aroha and heads around the north of Hamilton on the outskirts to take in Horotiu Taupiri Ngaruawahia and Huntly. Those groups have absolutely no community of interest. There is no likelihood ever that they will have any affiliation with those areas in the southern part of the Waikato. 
Clause 64 of the report refers to the tolerance level. It states: “New Zealand’s plus or minus 5 percent level is relatively low by international standards.” When we compare that with Australia we see that its level is plus or minus 10 percent. Canada France and Germany have a level of between plus or minus 20 percent and the United Kingdom has a level of between plus or minus 10 and 20 percent. There are some very good examples now around the world—and Rod Donald acknowledges that. Do we have to have the same tolerance level at every election? My view is that no we do not. Constituency MPs could probably service their electorates better if the Representation Commission recognised geographic areas as opposed to it being just a numbers game. 
That is one of the points I certainly would be interested in pursuing later on when the committee is set up. I hope the Government actually does set it up—a point that was made earlier. Of course time runs out fast and we would certainly want to make sure that all efforts were made to have it in place. The minor changes for 2005 have been acknowledged but the bigger picture is the changes for 2008. 
The second major point I want to refer to is the electoral organisation structure. To my mind it is an absolute nonsense that we have so many different organisations controlling the way we have elections. We have the Chief Electoral Office which is responsible for the conduct of elections and referenda the registration and supervision of candidates and receiving returns on donations and expenses. It is a stand-alone operation. In addition we have the Electoral Enrolment Centre which is responsible for all electoral enrolment activity and is part of the business unit of New Zealand Post. We then have the Electoral Commission which is responsible for the functions associated with the registration and regulation of political parties and receiving their returns on donations. That is the third group responsible for running elections. Previous reports have said that there needs to be one integrated body that has an overview of how elections are run. 
Certainly we would be interested in being part of the establishment of a committee that looks at the long-term effects and how elections will be run in the future. With those comments I want to say that National will be supporting this report.