Shaw James: Electoral (Adjustment of Thresholds) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeShaw James: Electoral (Adjustment of Thresholds) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 24 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4739. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): It is a pleasure to rise and take a call on the Electoral (Adjustment of Thresholds) Amendment Bill. This bill aims to do a number of things that came up during the MMP review conducted by the Electoral Commission in 2012. The Green Party at the time really supported the review and noted that it was a Government review that was brought about because of its own coalition agreement. Although the Green Party has an electoral reform plan and a set of policies that are different in some part from the recommendations that the Electoral Commission came up with we said that we would support the changes that were recommended by the Electoral Commission because they were changes recommended by the Electoral Commission. It had done a great deal of work. It had taken submissions and I personally submitted on that. It took a great deal of time and thorough consideration to arrive at the conclusions that it did. The proposals that it made whether or not we actually disagreed with them were ones that were well-considered by the Electoral Commission and then were completely shelved by this Government because they were inconvenient to this Government’s short-term interests. That was unfortunate. It was unfortunate that we wasted the resources and the time of the Electoral Commission. It was unfortunate that we spent the money on that review and then did precisely nothing with it.So for those reasons we support Iain Lees-Galloway’s bill because it does advance at least some of the recommendations that were outlined in the Electoral Commission’s review. The three main recommendations were to remove the one electoral seat threshold to lower the party vote threshold to 4 percent and to review the party vote threshold after three general elections. I just want to respond to some of the points raised by the previous speaker Jono Naylor where he was kicking around a number of other options. I am sure the Electoral Commission did consider them as it was moving through its deliberations. Given that the Electoral Commission deliberated on those and then chose the recommendations that it did I do not think it is helpful now to kick around a whole bunch of other things that have already been considered.We do support this bill. The most important part here and the reason why we supported this one at the time is that public opinion and faith in the MMP system is degraded by the presence of the one-seat rule. We recognise that that is not convenient necessarily to all of the parties in this House but there is a greater need here I think which is the requirement for integrity in the system in the sense of public faith that the system is a good one and at least has the perception of fairness although I note as Mr Naylor said that that could be a relative thing. It is pretty apparent that a significant portion of New Zealand voters consider that the one-seat threshold is a rort. The media keep using the same thing when talking about for example Epsom and Ōhāriu. They refer to those two cases as kind of examples of how political parties undermine the overall system and use it to—Chris Bishop: A bit like Coromandel in 1999.JAMES SHAW: —I am just reporting what people say Chris—undermine and get around the electoral system. We know that this bill is not going to be supported by the Government for the same reason that the Electoral Commission’s report and recommendations were also not supported by the Government. But if they were then that would restore some level of faith or increased faith in MMP. It would be great if this issue did not have to come up via a member’s bill. It would have been better if the Justice and Electoral Committee took another look at those recommendations because any time you change the electoral system it is going to have winners and losers in terms of the MPs and parties that are in Parliament. One option would be to grandfather this bill out so that it takes effect in two or three elections’ time so that current MPs and parties—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry but the honourable member’s time has expired.