Macindoe Tim: Electoral Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMacindoe Tim: Electoral Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 17 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13436. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Being lectured by Labour members on electoral propriety and fairness is a bit like taking lessons in personal security from Jack the Ripper. Labour is the party that brought us the Electoral Finance Act supported by some of the other parties opposite and it has yet to apologise to the electorate for doing so. But I am very pleased to see this particular bill the Electoral Amendment Bill before the House tonight because as my colleague the member for Coromandel—not “Coromandel East”—and the current chairman of the Justice and Electoral Committee was kind enough to point out I did actually chair the committee through the whole of last year when 90 percent of the work was done ably supported by the then deputy chair Dr Cam Calder. Both of us moved on to new roles at the start of this year as a result of which our names do not even appear in the report but I would like to think that we could claim a little bit of credit for getting it to this point and I want to acknowledge all the members of the committee who worked on the bill last year. They attacked the task intelligently and with vigour and I believe that a good job was done. So I thank all members across the House for that.Some excellent recommendations have come forward in this bill as a result of the work of the committee and these should streamline election day procedures and promote awareness of the importance of civics and voting amongst young people. It is particularly important that we encourage our young people to vote because all the evidence shows us that if they develop a history of voting as young people they will continue with that throughout their lives and it should also encourage a return to our historically high voter turnout. We can commend ourselves in New Zealand for the fact that we achieve that without having compulsory voting because we have just seen again in Australia that even though it has compulsory voting it does not get anywhere near to achieving that particular outcome.Some Opposition speakers tonight have criticised the recommendation to do away with streamers rosettes etc. but I just want to point out that election day must be absolutely fair. Members opposite can trivialise the reason for it but in fact it is very important that the day should be completely free of electioneering and politicalinfluence. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that it has not been and I believe that this bill is a positive step to ensure that it is as fair andunintimidating as it can be.The other point I want to make is to just highlight the absolute nonsense that we have heard from a number of speakers including the Hon Phil Goff Kris Faafoi most recently David Clendon Andrew Little and unfortunately even Denis O’Rourke about the apparent consensus on issues that arose from the Electoral Commission’s review of MMP because anybody listening to this debate has been subjected to complete nonsense on that issue particularly on the issue of coat-tailing. As a result of the MMP review that was conducted it was necessary for the Government to work to see what sort of consensus there was amongst the parties on all of the issues that arose. I have highlighted on this document just how different all the parties’ positions were on a number of issues. Yes there was consensus on a few things. All the parties agreed that list candidates should be able to stand in by-elections. All of them agreed that it should be possible to be both a list and an electorate candidate and that the party list arrangements should be essentially as they are at the moment. But those were not really the controversial issues.The things that were of particular heat out in the community included whether the party vote threshold should be lowered whether the one seat electorate threshold should be abolished and whether the overhang should be abolished. If I hold this document up—I have highlighted it in colour so that hopefully people can see on TV what the different colours are—when the Labour Party tells us that it is only the National Party that is out of step in fact looking at the recommendation to abolish the one electorate seat threshold of the eight parties in the House at the moment Labour the Greens and New Zealand First were in the minority. They were the ones that wanted to abolish the one seat electoral threshold whereas National the Māori Party the Mana party the ACT Party and United Future all wanted to retain the status quo. So it is completely wrong for those speakers to suggest that they would have had consensus if only it was not for the nasty National Party. What they really mean is that consensus means: “See it and do it our way.” Well that is not good enough and that would not reflect the will of the people.On the issue of the overhang the Labour Party and the Māori Party wanted to abolish the overhang the New Zealand First Party had a slightly ambiguous position but wanted to look into it further and the National Party the Green Party the Mana party the ACT Party and United Future all had the same view.On the issue of lowering the party vote threshold the National Party the New Zealand First Party and the ACT Party went one way; Labour and the Greens went a second way; and the Māori Party the Mana party and United Future went a third way. So it is worthwhile just clarifying the fact that there was no consensus. Without consensus no change was possible. I will leave it at that.I do want to say again how delighted I am that this bill has come to the House. I thank all members of the committee for the work they have done to this point. I congratulate the Minister of Justice—and what a scurrilous attack she received from the Labour Opposition justice spokesperson earlier—on the hard work she has done in a short time in bringing this bill to the House. That is a very good achievement and I look forward to seeing it pass its way through so that we can have these changes in place ready for the next general election.I seek leave to table the document that I have prepared which highlights the differing parties’ positions on the recommendations of the Electoral Commission.