Turei Metiria: Electoral (Administration) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Turei Metiria: Electoral (Administration) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:658;Page:7457] 
METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I do not intend to take a long call on the Electoral (Administration) Amendment Bill. The Green Party will support its first reading to get it before the select committee. We look forward to submissions by the public on the bill. 
We think that the overall purpose of the bill is very good. The bill establishes a new Electoral Commission. The commission will combine the functions of the current Chief Electoral Officer and the Electoral Commission and it will eventually also have oversight over the electoral roll which as my colleague Lianne Dalziel explained will be transferred by a second bill at a later stage. The intention of this legislation is to provide integrated efficient and consistent oversight of and decision making in electoral administration and to have those measures in place well before the next election. So there are quite reasonable intentions behind the bill. It is fundamentally important that the oversight of our electoral system is run by an independent and impartial body that has the power to make fair and effective decisions about the running of our democracy. It is a crucially important part of our democratic process. 
The bill is an improvement on the existing three-agency arrangements which create we agree unnecessary duplication and potential confusion. The independence of the Chief Electoral Office which is located as part of the Ministry of Justice causes some problems in our view under the current arrangement. So this bill is an improvement as it moves that office to some extent and therefore we support it going to a select committee. 
The bill is by no means perfect and we are interested in the submissions on how it can be improved. When the National Government consulted the Greens on the proposal we suggested from the outset that an Officer of Parliament - type body should be established that it would be preferable to ensure that the new agency is absolutely and fully independent of the Government and does not report to a Minister. The Officer of Parliament model is used here in Aotearoa with the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment for example. It is also used in Canada for their electoral organisation and management. It places the oversight of the body with Parliament as opposed to a ministry of the Government managed by one particular political interest. It reinforces its role to oversee and enable free and fair elections which is a core concern of the House of Representatives and of Parliament. Certainly an Officer of Parliament model would be perceived by the public as more truly independent and would have more ability to comment on how the electoral process is operating because it would not report to a particular Minister in the executive. 
I note that in the regulatory impact statement there is a comment that the Officer of Parliament model provides a high level of independence because of the institutional separation of that body from the executive branch of Government which is what we would like to see. But then the statement goes on to describe why that would not be appropriate and it refers to criteria that were established by the Finance and Expenditure Committee in 1989 saying that the proposal does not meet the criteria. On my reading of those criteria it does. The criteria state: “an Office of Parliament must only be created to provide a check on the arbitrary use of power by the Executive;”. But the role of the new commission would be to manage New Zealand’s elections including referenda for the public as a whole. That includes all of the electoral tools that the public have to decide who is in their House of Representatives. It is absolutely crucial that power over those issues is not held by the executive and that there is a body that is fully independent from any potential arbitrary use of power by the executive. 
There have been arguments about that in the not too distant past saying that Governments and politicians have long had their sticky fingers in the business of electoral issues. The Electoral Finance Act was one. There was a lot of criticism from the public about that. The best way to deal with that criticism is to take those issues out of the hands of politicians particularly those in the executive and to put them in the hands of an independent agency. 
The criteria further state: “an Office of Parliament must only be created to discharge functions that the House of Representatives itself … might carry out;”. I am not 100 percent sure—I have been here only 7 years which is not quite long enough yet to work out all of the functions that the House of Representatives might carry out—but it seems to me that the integrity of Aotearoa New Zealand’s electoral system is a core concern of the House of Representatives and that therefore the issues that the electoral body would be concerned with are sufficiently significant that the House itself would choose that an independent agency would have control and management of those. 
We would still continue to argue that an Officer of Parliament model is the best model for the management of those issues and that that discussion should continue through in the select committee. We will be very interested to see what the public thinks about whether higher levels of independence and accountability of that agency to the voters through their House of Representatives would be gained by the agency that this bill implements or by an Officer of Parliament. 
We would also like to see the new agency tasked with providing guidance and advice on electoral finance rules. That is another area where we do not want politicians’ sticky fingers in the business. We want there to be an independent assessment of those rules and a great deal of clarity for the public and for political players so that they understand what those rules are and how they are applied. 
We do not agree that the board of the new Electoral Commission should be appointed by the Minister. There is consultation in the process with the Minister talking with other political parties but it is a decision that is made by a recommendation by the Minister to the Governor-General and we think that that power again could be taken out of the hands of the Minister so that there is no imprint of any one particular political force on the board and there is a greater sense of independence and separation of the agency. 
That is one reason why we continue to advocate strongly for an independent agency to continue now with the process of the electoral system referendum that was proposed by National. Now that the timetable has been set in our view it is crucial that the Government of the day takes its hands off the issue and allows for an independent agency to manage the questions—how those questions are set and how they are decided on. 
There is a really interesting issue around whether a preferential system like single transferable vote (STV) should be used in Part B of the first questions of that referendum as to which is the most preferred system. The Electoral Commission as it is established at present could do that work particularly around the establishment of the questions and how they would be managed. This bill and the agency that it establishes would not come into effect until 1 October 2010 and that is quite a long time away. Nonetheless that new agency could certainly be charged with the responsibility for informing and educating the public about the different options that the Electoral Commission is proposing on the issues around MMP for example and other kinds of proportional or first-past-the-post systems such as supplementary-member representation. Despite the fact that the agency will not be set up until October of next year it is quite possible for the whole referendum issue to be transferred to the Electoral Commission at this stage and then from there to the new agency after October 2010 in time for the referendum in 2011. 
The public do not want their electoral systems to be fixed for the benefit of any one particular political interest. Since this Government has clearly expressed a preference for a particular system—that is the first-past-the-post system supplementary-member representation—the issue is now tainted in the minds of the public. So it is important that the Government takes its hands off because we must ensure that the questions that are put to the public on the electoral system are such that they believe that decisions are being made in their best interests and not in the best interests of particular political players particularly of the Government which has the most power in these circumstances. 
We support the bill as far as it goes. We will continue to argue for a truly independent agency through an Office of Parliament. We look forward to the submissions on that issue and to the continuing discussion that the country is having around the nature of elections election finance electoral donations and electoral agencies. It is a very important discussion for the public to be having and we hope that it will be managed in a careful and independent way where political interests such as those of the National Government are not promoted. Thank you.