Street Maryan: Appointments — Electoral CommissionText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeStreet Maryan: Appointments — Electoral Commission[Sitting date: 10 December 2013. Volume:695;Page:15426. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): It gives me pleasure to rise to support the reappointment of Sir John Hugh Williams as president of the New Zealand Electoral Commission. We are very fortunate in that we are a very small democracy here in New Zealand but we are able to draw on a range of people with extraordinary experience and ability whose integrity in the carrying out of their duties is beyond reproach. I see Sir John Hugh Williams as one of those people. His past career has been traversed by the Minister who moved the Government motion. He has not only been appointed as a QC in 1988 and a High Court Justice in 1997 but he also engaged with communities in New Zealand through being a chancellor of Massey University and even more significantly I think as a city councillor for Palmerston North between 1983 and 1989. That indicates that here is a person who has cared enough about his communities to put himself forward for elected office but also for appointment. It is critical that people who hold such positions as president of the New Zealand Electoral Commission have the confidence of this Parliament.In respect of the speaker who has just resumed his seat and whose vote against this motion will break the unanimous support of this reappointment I have only to say that it is important that every party be recorded for its view in this House and that theHansardreflects the speeches around this reappointment for posterity and that speech the speech just given by the Hon Peter Dunne will go down as the whining death throes of a minor party in its terminal state. It is not appropriate I think for a parliamentarian whose party has slipped below the threshold for registration to take the president of the Electoral Commission to task in such a way.It was a unique experience in New Zealand history and it represented a new challenge for the Electoral Commission. Perhaps on reflecting on that experience it may seek to do things differently in the future but I am not persuaded that it did anything wrong in the way that it carried out its decision making around the deregistration and the reregistration of one of the smallest parties in this country.But what will be important is that the other parties have registered their support. It is absolutely critical with this kind of appointment that it is a parliamentary appointment. It is a nomination by the Government for a reappointment in this case and the Government would not have moved to reappoint Sir John Hugh Williams without good reason. Labour shares those reasons—the confidence in the man; the confidence in his ability and his reputation—and it is essential that these comments are recorded so that at a later date when parties do perhaps disagree with judgments of the Electoral Commission it is known that it was a parliamentary and a cross-party appointment. That is part of the protection of the apparatus of our democracy.Although the Hon Peter Dunne may say what he likes in this House and that is his right and privilege as a member of Parliament it needs to be seen that the vast majority of parties in this House with perhaps the United Future party being the sole exception approve and support the reappointment of Sir John Hugh Williams. I am pleased to lend my support to my colleague Andrew Little’s comments in this respect. Labour will support this reappointment and will recognise that as a parliamentary appointment we have committed ourselves to that reappointment and that will stand for the duration of his appointment period. Thank you.Motion agreed to.