Ghahraman GolrizGOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): It's all right and congratulations I believe this is the first time I'm speaking with you sitting in that Chair Mr Speaker.It is a great pleasure after four years to have this bill heard debated in the House in the four months since it's been introduced. We have done the crucial work of bringing the voices of people like the Electoral Commission the 4000 people who were heard by them in the MMP review the Justice Committee all of the people who've submitted there the Waitangi Tribunal the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal. That by the way is where the seemingly disparate parts of this bill come from. The idea is that once we as a House hear from those expert independent institutions that is the way to do bipartisan electoral review. So it is heartbreaking to hear the National Party say we need another inquiry. It is heartbreaking to hear the Labour Party say that we will do an inquiry on matters that have already been the subject of inquiries without a commitment to in fact implement those recommendations once we have them.There will be a lot of people engaging. There'll be sector-based people there'll be NGOs there'll be communities who will come and pour their hearts and souls in to telling us what democracy should look like. But they've already done that on the subject matter issues that are contained in this bill. That was my point in putting them together.It's disappointing but not surprising to hear the Opposition will oppose this bill. You know having already addressed the disappointment with the National Party's refusal to take up matters that they oversaw an inquiry I'll turn to ACT and say: when will the one-vote-per-person ideal that you keep trotting out actually apply when it's not to do with opposing Te Tiriti - based democracy? That seems to be the only time that ACT believes in one vote per person.We've heard the National Party belittle young voters and say that they will only ever be voting one way or another. Well we actually don't know. The idea that you would limit democracy because you feel that the voters that you are disenfranchising may not vote for you that's callous. It has no place in this House.So the pressure is on Labour. You have announced—not you Mr Speaker but the Government—an inquiry. But we haven't yet heard from the Minister or the Government a commitment to that implementation. We know that things like prisoner voting that disenfranchisement came through a single-vote majority member's bill. We know that the MMP review sat buried since 2012. So there is another inquiry. We don't want it to turn into a Welfare Expert Advisory Group situation where we have robust independent recommendations that sit rotting away. It would be heartbreaking to see that inquiry so inspiringly announced be used only to vote down this bill to impede a proper debate of these issues in select committee after we've heard from our highest courts and institutions and then to see that inquiry going nowhere.The people out there in the nation that first declared full suffrage are watching. They expect better from us. Future voters young people are watching. The Make It 16 campaigners—their movement; not mine— expect us to put party politics aside. They expect us not to askew democracy in favour of political parties who are already here: the big parties the parties most able to get those big deep-pocket donors the parties most able to reach their already institutionalised voters. They expect better from us and we have our democracy at stake. It's a mixed-member democracy and we know globally that that is under attack. We know globally that interference is a real thing. We know that the more people that vote the more different kinds of people that vote the stronger that our decisions will be in this House. That is what we are here for. So let's hear that commitment from the Government. I tonight with the Green Party will celebrate that we did get in the face of being told repeatedly that electoral reform is not a priority more than half of this bill step by step put into Government law. It is a win for democracy. Thank you Mr Speaker.