Dalziel: Third Reading Electoral Referendum Bill
new-zealand-labour-party
Wed Dec 15 2010 13:00:00 GMT+1300 (New Zealand Daylight Time)
Dalziel: Third Reading Electoral Referendum Bill
Wednesday, 15 December 2010, 5:31 pm
Speech: New Zealand Labour Party
Lianne Dalziel
Labour Spokesperson on Justice
Third Reading Electoral Referendum Bill
14th December 2010
Labour will be supporting the final reading of the Electoral Referendum Bill on the basis that the legislation has been improved through the Select Committee process and the input of the more than a thousand people who submitted to the committee, especially the 50 or so who submitted in person. Again can I place on record the approach adopted by the chair of the committee Amy Adams and also the Minister who enabled us to reach a compromise that enabled us to support the Bill. In this Bill again, the major sticking point was the need for a cap on third party spending, believing as we did that without the cap, the potential for advertising to distort the campaign by the well-resourced anti-MMP group largely made up of corporates over the under-resourced pro-MMP group largely made up of community groups, was too great.
I have made much about two issues during the course of the debate – I believe this is a citizens’ initiated referendum masquerading as a government referendum. And secondly I believe there is a strategy in place to replace MMP with a form of First Past the Post, with 30 supplementary list members, who are voted on separately with a Party Vote that is proportional only to those 30 members. Part of this strategy is to ignore the public demands for changes to some aspects of MMP before subjecting it to a referendum. I am firmly of the view that if the government truly wanted to test public opinion about MMP they would have allowed that review to precede the first referendum. But they didn’t allow time for that, which makes the need to review MMP post the referendum even more imperative – regardless of the outcome of the first referendum. My amendment which was rejected by the government was designed to achieve that.
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If a second referendum is required – and I doubt that the public will fall for the strategy – but just in case – then allowing MMP to run up against a brand new purpose designed system without any review of its flaws would mean the second referendum would lack integrity.
That is why Labour will commit to the review regardless of the outcome of the referendum; and if a second referendum is required we will commit to the timetable proposed by this government and hold that in 2014, but the MMP system it will run up against will have been reviewed so the public get a real choice.
I believe that the government’s position that people need to vote on the system they are used to is spurious, because they could be voting on a system they have never experienced on the other side. New Zealanders want us to re-visit the thresholds and that we must do.
So why are we having a referendum on MMP?
The announcement was made by John Key at his Party Conference leading up to the 2008 election campaign - it was number 10 on the list of 10 pledges he released that day, but I always felt that it was the pledge that certain interests had wanted since the 2005 campaign had gone so horribly wrong for National at the last minute.
Business interests and groups like the Exclusive Brethren had poured millions of dollars into that campaign - first through the divisive billboards that dominated the landscape from the beginning of the year to avoid the electoral spending caps and to set the scene for a misogynist and racist campaign - remember Iwi - Kiwi.
National was supposed to win, with Don Brash positioned to deliver to his backers everything they had hoped for - privatisation of our remaining asset base; relaxing rules on overseas ownership of land; making funding from Vote health, education and housing currently dedicated to the public systems fully contestable with the private sector; market rents would be back for what little remained of the public housing stock; ACC would be replaced with private insurance. It would have been Ruth Richardson on speed.
You can see why National’s backers were appalled by Helen Clark’s ability to put together a series of arrangements that prevented National from taking office and they blamed MMP.
Roll on John Key in the lead up to the 2008 election and here is a quote from the coverage of the announcement:
“Mr Key, who made the referendum one of 10 election pledges in his speech to National's annual conference today, said he believed voters would reject MMP.
"I think the country may well vote MMP out but I think they will vote in another proportional system," he told reporters.
"I don't think they'll go back to first past the post."
But after 12 years of MMP it was important to give voters a choice, he said.
"I do think voters thought they were going to get an opportunity to kick the tyres and we're giving them that opportunity."
This announcement set off alarm bells for me. First there has been a view - quite widespread - that people were promised a second referendum after MMP had been in for a while. In fact it was a review that was promised and that occurred after the 1999 election when we were in government. It was chaired by Rt Hon Jonathan Hunt as the Speaker of the House and all parties were represented on it. However there are those that continued to make mischief with this view that a second referendum was promised - and if you say these things often enough, people start to think they were promised that; and guess who didn’t deliver on that false expectation - Labour, even though we weren’t the government at the time that the system was changed.
So this referendum is not only about drawing on the populist views around MMP; it is actually more about delivering to their backers the opportunity to get rid of MMP altogether and replace it with a system that kind of looks like and sounds like but isn’t proportional representation.
I quoted this in the committee stages, but I am going to quote it again – from Herald columnist John Armstrong:
“And before anyone mouths the words "supplementary member", let's beware of false prophets in sheep's clothing.
No doubt those wanting a return to those dark ages will seductively offer up the supplementary member system as a halfway house between first-past-the-post and MMP.
That system is in part proportional. It might look like a compromise. It is not a compromise. It is nothing short of snake oil elixir.
Had last year's election been fought under that system with a Parliament made up of 90 constituency seats and 30 list seats, National would have won 67 of them, compared with its current 58.
That party would have had an absolute majority of 14 seats with just under 45% of the vote.
The Greens' current entitlement of nine seats, would have been slashed to just two.
So much for proportionality.”
With the limit on expenditure, I hope we have limited the ability of the parallel campaigners to distort the truth about the Supplementary Member system. It is not proportional representation and it is not a half-way house – it is first past the post with a winner’s bonus and nothing more. It will do nothing for diversity; and it will do nothing to provide a critical check on the unbridled power unleashed by governments of both colours when absolute majorities were assured. That was what the people of New Zealand voted to reject in 1993 and as long as they are told the truth about what they are being offered – they will reject it again.
ENDS
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