Burton Mark: Electoral (Reduction in Number of  Members of Parliament) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Burton Mark: Electoral (Reduction in Number of  Members of Parliament) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:629;Page:1837] 
Hon MARK BURTON (Minister of Justice) 
: 
 I am pleased to join this debate although not so pleased to have the member who has just resumed his seat misrepresenting what actually took place in question time yesterday. But I suppose that is something I have become accustomed to from that member. However I find myself in some agreement with some of what he said surprising as that may seem. I will start by acknowledging what I think is the genuine intent of the sponsor of this bill Barbara Stewart. She has raised some issues that are legitimate to raise but one of the concerns I share in part with the National member Dr Worth is the fact that this in effect is a piecemeal approach—an attempt to tweak the current electoral legislation—and I think therein lies one of its fundamental flaws as a bill. To try to modify one piece of the electoral arrangements without looking at the implications and flow-on effects to the whole is almost certainly always going to produce more problems than it may set out to solve—if indeed the problems are real as suggested by the member. 
We have heard reference to the Royal Commission on the Electoral System of 1986 and I think we should bear in mind that the royal commission specifically recommended that if New Zealand went down the path of a mixed-member proportional representation system it needed 120 MPs in order to populate that system and to make it work effectively. So that was not some arbitrary decision made—as perhaps the impression might have been given—by politicians for some personal reason; rather it was specifically the recommendation that was the backdrop to the change in our electoral system that ultimately took place in the 1996 general election following the 1993 referendum. 
So I think we should look very seriously at the warnings and guidance given by the royal commission in saying that the need for 120 members of Parliament was proven by the extensive process it went through. The commission talked about the risks in reducing the size of Parliament in terms of the relative reduction in the effective scrutiny of the executive. That should be a matter of real concern to all members of the House. I happen to sit on this side of the House at this point in my political career and I am a member of the executive but I still believe passionately as a democrat that there must be effective scrutiny of the executive. Frankly one of the by-products of MMP as was predicted at the time has been a serious increase in the role and the influence of the select committee process and we need to have enough members of Parliament to operate those committees effectively and for members to be able to do their jobs thoroughly. Again the royal commission was mindful of that when it talked about the need for 120 members of Parliament. 
The other thing that is of concern to me and Barbara Stewart may unintentionally have done it today is that we see perpetuated the idea that New Zealand has a relatively large number of members of Parliament. That simply is not true. The example was given of Australia. It is very popular for people who want to make this argument to be very limited in the information they provide. Australia does indeed have 150 members of Parliament in its Federal Lower House and a dozen for each of its states in its Upper House. It has a bicameral system. But what the member forgot to mention of course is that it has states. It has six states and two territories and we can take one of the larger ones Queensland as an example. If we add in the Legislative Assembly numbers there are 129 elected representatives for Queensland. If we look at Victoria with its two houses the numbers are even greater. It has 44 and 88 members respectively added to its Federal representatives to give a total of 228 elected representatives for a population of a little over 5 million. 
The point needs to be made that there is a cost to having a democracy: it is an adequate number of elected representatives. We mess with the structure in one part without looking at the whole at our peril. I certainly think that good intention or not this bill is a matter of ad hoc tweaking around the edges of the system—I think in the case of the member moving it with sincere intent. But for some others it is a purely political expedient and I am concerned about that. The Labour Party will not support this bill because in the end any major addressing of the electoral arrangements for our country should be handled comprehensively not in a piecemeal way.