Smith Murray: Appointments — Electoral Commission—Membership 
Smith Murray: Appointments — Electoral Commission—Membership 
[Volume:624;Page:19003] 
MURRAY SMITH (United Future) 
: 
 I rise to speak on the motion moved by the Hon Rick Barker. United Future opposes this motion and we will vote against it. 
I start by saying that that is no reflection whatsoever on John Isles and it is not a personal reflection on his ability to do the job but it is because we like the other smaller parties in this House believe that the provision of political representatives on the Electoral Commission and on the Representation Commission is anachronistic. It is really one of the last if not the last vestige of first past the post. It seems strange to me that the major parties want to hold on to something that is anachronistic and harking back to first-past-the-post days when we are now well advanced in terms of the mixed-member proportional system. It is time that those parties started to release that last area and to recognise that it is no longer appropriate to have in this day and age. 
Under the proposal the Government parties—that is the Labour Party and the Progressive Party—would have one representative while the Opposition parties which comprise six diverse parties all non-Government parties would have one representative to represent all their diverse views. In fact it is not as simple as saying as the motion does “Government” parties and “Opposition parties” because United Future is neither one nor the other. We are a party that generally but not exclusively supports the Government from outside Government. In that regard we represent a positioning between Government and Opposition that is really a new creation of MMP and that United Future has given strong effect to in this term of Parliament. 
In previous MMP Governments as people will know a small party has generally been part of the Government and has supported it but in both previous cases those parties failed to go the full distance and therefore caused huge instability in terms of Government in this country. After the last election United Future deliberately took a whole new pathway which is the pathway of being neither in Government nor in Opposition. Instead we are a party that has the freedom to move from one side to the other in terms of supporting the Government or opposing it but our pledge is not to bring about instability in our political system. 
It is quite arguable and it is probably the case that the Greens are in a similar sort of position—albeit more tenuous in terms of their relationship with Labour. Once again it is hard to classify the Greens as comprising a pure Opposition party: though outside Government they have a similar sort of relationship with the Government. That means that they support the Government from time to time but oppose it most of the time. 
That is a feature of MMP that makes this whole dichotomy between Government on the one hand and Opposition on the other a real farce. We are not in a first-past-the-post situation where two parties swap places every few years and where one is for everything and the other is against everything. We now have a diverse range of parties and the interests of those parties will necessarily be very different. 
How can Mr Isles wear six different hats in representing National’s view on the Electoral Commission while at the same time representing the views of New Zealand First ACT the Greens United Future and the Maori Party? That is simply impossible. In my experience of situations where people are trying to represent a diverse range of views inevitably they end up being completely impotent in terms of what they want to do. They have to go along and say: “Speaking with my National hat on I think such and such but speaking with these other hats I think so and so.” and so on. At best they are indecisive and at the end they are completely unable to reach a position because their various representations prohibit them from doing so. 
There really is no need for political representation on the Electoral Commission or on the Representation Commission. I reiterate comments that have already been made that in 1996 the Electoral Commission recommended unanimously that those provisions be removed and in 1995 the Representation Commission commented adversely on the presence of political representation. 
The key reason is that if there are to be political appointees then the perception quite clearly is—even with the best of intentions in this case of Messrs Caygill and Isles—that there is political interference in the work of those two supposedly independent commissions. The commissions have important roles—the Representation Commission in setting electoral boundaries and the Electoral Commission in being called upon to determine issues relating to the election process. It is absolutely imperative that both of those bodies are not only apolitical in terms of their approach to making their decisions but are also seen to be apolitical. 
Putting political representatives on the commissions totally undermines that process therefore it is not surprising that both of those commissions have come out very strongly saying: “Please take them away from us. We don’t want them. They are anachronistic. They are detrimental to our endeavour to try to create an image that we are apolitical and will treat all parties so—not just the parties already represented in Parliament but the ones yet to be represented. We are there to act in a totally unbiased way and will not give any political party preference over any other.” 
It is clear however—and it is to their shame—that Labour and National do not trust the Electoral Commission and the Representation Commission to do the job without those parties having representatives on the commissions. Labour and National are the big boys and they want to influence the decisions of those two bodies. Why else would they put their political representatives on them? Why else would only Labour and National support the motion and all other parties which have arisen largely as a result of MMP oppose it? Why else would there be political appointments if they did not want politically to influence the decisions of those bodies? 
What is also strange is that the Government already appoints the commissioners anyway. If it wants to have a political influence it has tons of opportunity for that. The Government can already put on to the commissions people that it feels will do the best job. What is it trying to do then by putting a representative on who has a political hat? If the Government wanted another way to do that and if it felt that somehow the Opposition representative would counteract its political influence it could get a cross-party agreement of all caucuses on the appointment of commissioners to ensure that there was an apolitical element to the process. 
But the Government does not need to go down that path. This is a silly provision; it needs to go. This motion of course would not remove it even if the motion was defeated but it would mean that the positions remained vacant. We believe that until the parties—the Government parties in particular at the present time but also the National Party—wake up to the facts that this is an anachronistic provision that it is a last vestige of first past the post and that it is time to let it go the best option is that the positions remain vacant so that the commissions can get on and do their job in an apolitical fashion and without any perception of bias. We will oppose the motion.