Coffey TāmatiTĀMATI COFFEY (Labour): Thank you Mr Speaker. I also want to thank my colleague on the other side of the House Rawiri Waititi and Te Paati Māori for bringing this bill to the House. It's sensible and it's something that as the member Rawiri Waititi previously alluded to has been called for for a long time. There were 20000 people—well just under 20000 people—in the last election who approached the Electoral Commission and said Can we please switch rolls?" Whether it was from general to Māori or Māori back to general there was a desire for just under 20000 people to change their rolls because of many different reasons and we traversed some of that yesterday.It is a sensible bill and it's obviously the member's first member's bill as well so whilst we want to support it we on this side of the House won't be supporting it tonight and for really good reason. It's because in this House timing is everything and the member's member's bill was actually pulled out of the ballot box the day after we had presented our Government bill to address this very issue—the very prior day. So we're faced with a situation right now where we've actually already got a bill in train. The Government is progressing the Electoral (Māori Electoral Option) Legislation Bill and a lot of the kōrero today will actually be mirrored by what we talked about just yesterday when we had the second reading of that bill. We're expecting to be at the committee of the whole House stage very soon on that one. It's been through the Justice Committee. It's been open for submissions; people have submitted into the process. There is a potential double-up going on here. We agree with exactly what this member's bill is trying to address: the fact that many people out there many people that are of Māori descent want to be able to change rolls. We want them to be able to do that too so we've got our own piece of legislation to deal with that.I want to just acknowledge though that the status quo is that four months every five years is how long you get to be able to decide if you want to be able to swap rolls. And some people catch that time frame; a lot of our whānau don't. Whether it's because they're out there working taking care of their families actually many people miss that opportunity. So as a Māori electorate MP there's actually a lot of pressure on us when it comes to actually listening to the concerns of our people who for whatever reason want to have this conversation but only tend to have it whenever election year comes around. And then we have to tell them "Oh actually the last time you were allowed to change it was actually two years ago." and they completely missed the boat.Rawiri Waititi is right: you know you then have to say the next time that they're available to do this is 2024. That's a really long time in-between the ability to be able to change the rolls and it's become more prominent because as we freed up the legislation to enable Māori wards to be in councils all across Aotearoa actually there's a new focus on the Māori roll. We have 66 new Māori councillors sitting around decision-making tables all across Aotearoa and that's really important. The only way that you can vote for one of those people who is sitting in those Māori wards though is that you have to be on the Māori roll. So naturally there are going to be people that want to be able to support their whanaunga support their friends who are standing for election in local government to be able to stand in those Māori wards but they want to be able to vote for them too.As somebody that has stood for Parliament before in both a general seat and a Māori seat I understand the frustration. I understand the frustration of those around me who when I decided to put my hand up for a general seat everybody that I knew wanted to jump on the general roll—my whānau my friends—and actually they do have that ability to but the timing of that was all wrong. When I decided to stand for a Māori electorate seat the same thing happened but in reverse. This is a system that has been murky from the start and the prior member Rawiri Waititi actually talked about the imposition of the Māori seats on our whānau Māori all across the country. It's a system that we've had to adopt over the course of the years. It was imposed on us at the start but actually our Māori seats are a taonga now. Actually our Māori communities all around the country said it's the only mechanism to have guaranteed representation of their voice in this Parliament.So I support the concept here. I support the concept that our whānau should be able to change rolls freely. We support the sentiment of this member's bill. But we've already got a bill that's on the go and for that reason we won't be supporting this bill. It does speak to what we believe in the New Zealand Labour Party to be true which is that in our 2020 manifesto commitment we included that actually we are committed to protecting the integrity of New Zealand elections. We are committed to ensuring that voters Māori and non-Māori have access to the polls and we're also including in that a commitment to reviewing the financing rules when it comes to elections as well. These are processes that we want to—well especially this one in terms of being able to change rolls freely. We want to get this sewn up so that it's actually in good time for next year's general election 2023.Whenever we make changes in this House to our voting rules it needs to be taken really seriously. This isn't something that we should be tampering or tinkering with around the edges; it's something that needs cross-party support. So I'm proud that the Government bill that pledges to do something about this the Electoral (Māori Electoral Option) Legislation Bill has actually had a cross-party approach to it. It has been around the different parties so that they have been able to input into it. We're still about to approach the committee of the whole House stage so I'll probably pass on a message to the member that if there are Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) or amendments that he wants to put in actually we have a train that's already going and a process that's already going and I would encourage him to be able to put up those SOPs so that we can have that debate.Because he's right: we have to have a good robust debate about this about any kind of reform that involves our voting system here in Aotearoa. I want to have that and let's have that as a committee of the whole House. Bring your amendments so that we can actually focus on getting this piece of legislation through in time for the 2023 general election and so that we can actually send a vote of confidence out there to Māori all across the country who if we look at our voting statistics have got a declining participation in our electoral system. Anything that we can do to make it more open to allow Māori to be able to participate in our election process has got to be a good thing.So this is a very well-meaning bill. It is something that I appreciate the member has brought to the House but tonight we won't be supporting it because we already have a piece of legislation. It is well in train. It's ready for the committee of the whole House stage. I look forward to some of those finer points that he brings up that are contained in his member's bill—I look forward to debating those as a whole House. I commend it to the House—I don't commend it to the House."