Collins Judith: Electoral (Adjustment of Thresholds) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCollins Judith: Electoral (Adjustment of Thresholds) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 24 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4740. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): Look it is probably my fault you know. I was the Minister of Justice who really could possibly have spent the next 2 years trying to get consensus amongst seven different parties in Parliament. If only I had done that we could today have Colin Craig as an MP. If only I had done that. I mean for goodness’ sake! Let us have a look at the results. We have talked a lot today about this. [Interruption] That would have been good—and by the way all the rest of them. The Conservatives had 3.97 percent out of the 2014 election. Do you really think that if we had gone to that election with a 4 percent threshold the party could not have got another 0.03 percent? It would have been a doozy and we would have had that.Who actually benefited out of this so-called coat-tail one-seat threshold in this particular election the last one? The only one actually is the Māori Party. We would have had one member. I do not know how the Greens would feel about that. Did they really not want Miss Marama Fox in here? Let us go back to the 2011 election result. I know that these are facts and they do not like that in the Labour Party. But let us have a look at it. What have we got? The Mana party were in here. It was not supporting the Government was it? It was 1.08 percent of the vote and apparently that is no good either.Let us just go back a little bit more to 2008. Oh we had Mr Jim Anderton’s Progressive party. I have heard Mr James Shaw who has never won an electorate seat and never will talking today about—[Interruption] No he has not. He was talking about Epsom and Ōhāriu. Apparently the people do not like it. Which people do not like it? Clearly the people in Epsom and Ōhāriu do not mind because guess what? The people in Wigram were asked by the Labour Party to vote for Mr Jim Anderton’s Progressive party and guess how much he got—0.91 percent. It was not even 1 percent. He was just a minnow compared to that fabulous Conservative Party.Let us go back to 2005—an election that Labour claimed. What did we have here? Who was coat-tailing then? Well the ACT Party. It coat-tailed. It got 1.51 percent. It got Epsom and it also got one more MP. But actually Mr Peter Dunne’s United Future New Zealand Party which at that stage supported the Labour Government got 2.67 percent and he got one seat. But in the end he got three seats after his electorate seat. I did not hear the Labour Party members all crying about that one. No actually they were very happy to take Mr Peter Dunne’s party and also Mr Jim Anderton’s Progressive party. That was an election where we had eight parties represented here in Government and four of those parties had fewer votes in terms of the percentage than the Conservative Party at the last election. So maybe we should drop the threshold a bit more down to 2 percent.Let us go back to 2002. Guess who was coat-tailing again. Jim Anderton’s Progressive Coalition party. Guess how many seats it won in the electorate seats—one. Guess how much of a percentage of the vote it won. Hmm—1.70 percent. And guess how many seats in Parliament it got.Tim Macindoe: Two.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Two. You are so right Mr Macindoe: two. [Interruption] Mr Seymour you got that and Mrs Tolley. My goodness gracious. And guess who was crying about that then. The Labour Party? Mr Iain Lees-Galloway? Any distraught people from the left? No.The fact is if you can win an electorate seat in Parliament that means there are enough people there 60000-odd voters who think there is a little bit of sanity in that party. It actually brings in a bit of sanity and it actually means that a party has to go back to the electorate and say “Well this is what we’ve been doing.” and it actually stops people being complete fruit loops when it comes to politics. But when you have got parties that have no respect for electorates no respect for the work that goes on representing people whether they vote for you or not—people like Mr Shaw who is a nice chap but really he showed his colours today. He says that he submitted to the Electoral Commission so therefore he represents the people. Let me tell you this: most people did not submit. There is a reason. The only people generally who submitted were absolutely into politics and had an agenda and unfortunately I just could not get consensus. But is it not a good thing I did not otherwise we would have Colin Craig here?