Appointments

Hon MARK BURTON (Minister of Justice) Link to this

I move, That, pursuant to section 28(2)(e) of the Electoral Act 1993, this House nominates Hon David Francis Caygill, of Christchurch, to represent the Government, and Hon Roger Morrison Sowry, of Paraparaumu, to represent the Opposition, to be appointed as members of the Representation Commission.

Further, I move, That pursuant to section 28(3)(b) of the Electoral Act 1993, for the purposes of determining the boundaries of the Māori electoral districts, this House nominates Whetumārama Weretā, of Lower Hutt, to represent the Government, and (Terrence) John McEnteer, of Wellington, to represent the Opposition, to be appointed as members of the Representation Commission.

The Representation Commission is the body charged under the Electoral Act 1993 with determining the number of electoral districts in New Zealand and fixing their boundaries. Section 28(2)(e) provides that two persons shall be appointed as members of the commission for the purposes of determining the boundaries of the general electoral districts, one of those members being nominated to represent the Government and one to represent the Opposition. Section 28(3)(b) provides that for the purposes of determining the boundaries of the Māori electoral districts, two persons shall be appointed as members of the commission—again, one of those members being nominated to represent the Government and one to represent the Opposition. Appointments to the Representation Commission are made by the Governor-General by Order in Council on the nomination of this House of Representatives.

I shall speak briefly to the nominees. Mr Caygill has served two previous terms on the Representation Commission. He is a former senior Cabinet Minister and served six terms as a member of this House. Mr Caygill is a lawyer by profession. Mrs Weretā has served three previous terms on the Representation Commission. She has a background in research, and is currently general manager of the Māori statistics unit of Statistics New Zealand. Mr Sowry commenced as Chief Executive of Arthritis New Zealand in September 2005. Prior to this, as members will know, he spent 15 years as a member of Parliament, holding numerous responsibilities that included being Associate Minister of Health from 1997-98, Minister of Social Welfare from 1996-99, and National Party spokesperson on health from 2001-03. Finally, Mr McEnteer runs a consultancy practice specialising in environmental resource management, Treaty of Waitangi issues, and business development from a dual cultural perspective. He has strong links to Tainui, and has held a number of directorships and trusteeships, including being an executive member of the Federation of Māori Authorities and chairperson of a Coromandel-based trust.

ANNE TOLLEY (National—East Coast) Link to this

I rise to speak to the motions on the Order Paper today. This process of course, as the Minister has just said, is required under the Electoral Act. The Representation Commission is known colloquially, I guess, by MPs and the public as the boundaries commission. There is a huge amount of interest taken in the work of that commission, both here in Parliament by MPs, because we are directly affected by it, and of course by the wider general public, who are also affected by it. It determines the electorate they can vote in, and the member of Parliament they can support or elect.

The commission is charged with the responsibility of setting down the boundaries for the next general election, and by law we are required to have two representatives nominated—one nominated by the Government and one nominated by the Opposition. There is also a requirement for two Māori reps, one from the Government and one from the Opposition. When people are nominated to the commission, political knowledge and experience are extremely useful to commission members. Although at all times they must be detached from the political process, if they have some knowledge of how it works it makes their job easier.

When forming electoral boundaries, commissioners have to take many factors into consideration. Communities of interest are particularly relevant and, in general, those communities that have those interests in common form a more cohesive electorate. For an MP to be able to cover an electorate or, more important—to put it the other way around—for members of the public to be able to readily access their elected representatives, is significant in the process. I want to spend a bit of time on that in the discussion here tonight.

My electorate, the East Coast, is I think the largest geographical area for an electorate in the North Island. My colleague Shane Ardern and I debate as to who has the larger electorate, but they are both considerable. Of course, there are some extremely large ones in the South Island. It makes it extremely difficult for an MP to adequately cover the territory. My colleague here Phil Heatley, who represents an electorate up in the Northland area, agrees that it makes it very difficult for members of the public to be able to pop along to their local MP when they have a problem or issue.

PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) Link to this

I think that the two nominees for the Representation Commission are really a reflection of first past the post. It is about time we came to terms with the fact that this is an MMP Parliament, and the representation on such committees should reflect that. There are eight parties in this Parliament, but if we listened to the member who has just resumed her seat we would think there were only two. I have to say that that goes for Government members also; they speak as if it were a Parliament made up of just National and Labour.

We are quite upset by the fact that smaller parties are not even considered in this issue. Names of representatives come up. The member went into the background of the people she is supporting. They have been around for so long—well before MMP came into being—that they are entrenched in first past the post and are not representatives of this Parliament as they should be. It is all very well for the member to say they have a good understanding of the political process, but, first and foremost, Parliament had better start understanding. Those two particular parties, Labour and National, had better start understanding that this is MMP. Like it or lump it, it is MMP. Smaller parties here should have some sort of say in who represents them.

We are so concerned about this that we have written to the Prime Minister. We would like this issue addressed. We would like it addressed now, but I guess that is unlikely. We are certainly concerned enough that we want it addressed before the next Parliament.

I do not know what else to say, except that New Zealand First will be opposing this. I am hopeful that all the small parties will be opposing this. The Māori Party has four Māori seats, but the representative for, supposedly, the Opposition is an MP for National, which has never won a Māori seat in its life.

HEATHER ROY (Deputy Leader—ACT) Link to this

ACT New Zealand also will oppose both of these motions. A couple of months ago, much was made of the fact that in New Zealand we have had a decade of MMP—10 years of proportional representation. In fact, in many situations in this Parliament we still have an overhang of the old first-past-the-post system. The Representation Commission—or the representation on it from this House, in this regard—reflects exactly the fact that in many ways we have not moved on from first past the post to a proper MMP system.

In December 1986 the report of the Royal Commission on the Electoral System was released. It recommended that “each of the parties in the House of Representatives should have its own representative on the Representation Commission, to be appointed by the Governor-General on the nomination of the House. Such representatives should not be members of the House and should not have the right to vote at meetings of the commission.” As is often the case, however, this recommendation seems to have been lost in the history of time, and it was never implemented. What we have today is not reflective of the way this Parliament should be under MMP. Certainly, the way the Representation Commission appointments are made is not in line with MMP.

Appointments—one each for the Government and the Opposition—place a burden on those appointed, who need to apply the wisdom of Solomon when looking at boundaries and representation for our Parliament. Not only is that unfair on the small parties in this Parliament but it is also unfair on the two nominees, one from the largest Government party and one from the largest Opposition party. The burden on those people of representing what should be the whole Parliament is clearly unfair. That is unfair to the two people who have been nominated, because their appointment will promote the electoral interests of two parties only: the National Party and the Labour Party. When eight parties are represented in Parliament, I contend that that is a very unfair situation, indeed.

The system affords the other smaller parties direct representation in the House but, in fact, the commission has nothing approaching that. Smaller parties like ACT have won electorate seats—ACT, of course, has had Wellington Central in the past and now holds the seat of Epsom. United Future holds a seat, New Zealand First has held a seat, and the Māori Party holds electoral seats. Despite the fact that we should have the right to have our views represented fairly on the commission, our views, for the most part, are well and truly ignored.

This system needs to be reviewed very quickly. It needs that because we pride ourselves on having very fair political representation in this country, but in this regard we do not. ACT proposes—and I believe that many of the other small parties agree with this view—that, at the very least, the small parties should have a representative of their own on the commission. This means that National would have one representative, Labour would have one, and the small parties jointly would have one. If that is not palatable, we contend that nobody should have a representative—or, at least, that those representatives should not carry a vote on the commission. So there are two choices that would be much fairer than the present system. Certainly, we are not prepared to stay silent any longer and pretend that we have a fair system. We will be writing to the commission and suggesting those two options. We will suggest, firstly, that the small parties share a representative—and I believe that we have the support of the other small parties in this Parliament to do so. Secondly, if the commission feels that is unfair, we will suggest that there should be no representation from any party, so that officials can look in an unbiased way and make the decisions that, at the moment, only two parties—the major parties in this Parliament—can contribute to in any fair or meaningful way.

For that reason, ACT New Zealand will not be supporting either of these motions. We feel that the unfairness of the situation is paramount. This really is no reflection on any of the people who have been nominated. I am sure they are all very good people and have the best of intentions, but the unfairness of the situation that presently exists is the overriding consideration in this debate. For that reason, ACT will oppose both these motions.

NANDOR TANCZOS (Green) Link to this

The Greens are very pleased to be standing in solidarity with other small parties to say that we oppose these two motions, just as the Green Party opposed last year the nominations of David Caygill and John Isles to the Electoral Commission. We consider that it is just not tenable in the 21st century in New Zealand—which has a proportional representation system of Parliament that comprises eight political parties, which has had minority Governments for the last three terms, and in which there is the very strong likelihood that we will continue to have minority Governments for the foreseeable future—to retain a system whereby Labour and National get to appoint nominees on bodies such as the Representation Commission, and other parties have no representation whatsoever.

The fact that the National Party seems to be unable to get the reality of MMP, as evidenced by its election campaigns, simply highlights the problem that we and other members have already spoken about.

In those circumstances, how can having one political representative of the Labour Party and one of the National Party on the Representation Commission possibly be appropriate or just? How can representatives of the two dinosaur parties possibly represent anything other than dinosaurs? It is just not possible. We believe that it is just not tenable to allow this situation to continue. For that reason, as I have said, the Greens oppose these two motions.

Just to reiterate a point that Heather Roy made, this is not in any way to question or impugn the integrity or ability of the nominees. We are not attempting to do that, at all.

This is simply about the position. However, it is an exacerbating factor that both David Caygill and Roger Sowry were first-past-the-post politicians. Their experience of electoral matters has been wholly, or largely, conditioned by that bygone system. So that just makes it even more difficult for those people to represent the small parties in an MMP environment. That may not be true of the nominees for the Māori electoral boundaries, Whetumārama Weretā and John McEnteer. Nevertheless, their positions remain untenable for the reasons that have been outlined by myself and other members.

How can a representative put up by the National Party properly represent the Opposition in this Parliament? The Opposition is not just the National Party, of course; it includes the ACT party and the Māori Party—never mind how those people can possibly start to represent parties like the Greens, which is abstaining on confidence and supply. Of course, in an even worse situation are the parties involved in confidence and supply agreements with the Government, such as the Progressives, New Zealand First, and United Future. A Labour Party nominee cannot represent either those parties or the rest of us—it is just not possible.

So the Green Party opposes political representatives on electoral bodies like the Representation Commission and the Electoral Commission. We join voices with the other small parties to say that it is time to come up to date and realise we are in an MMP environment—a proportional representation Parliament—and that these kinds of cosy first-past-the-post-arrangements between Labour and National simply cannot continue. We will vote against these two motions.

Dr PITA SHARPLES (Co-Leader—Māori Party) Link to this

The motion nominating Whetumārama Weretā and John McEnteer to represent Government and Opposition on the Representation Commission is a topic of much debate amongst tangata whenua. Tangata whenua have long held a view about the unique status of tangata whenua representation within the New Zealand democracy. This status is underpinned by three essential values: first, our status as tangata whenua people indigenous to Aotearoa; second, tribal leaders of Māori nations entered into an agreement with the Crown in 1840—Te Tiriti o Waitangi—that marked the beginning of constitutional arrangements in this land; and, third, the recognition of the special constitutional status accorded to Māori by virtue of the four parliamentary seats since 1867.

But the constitutional status needs to have life breathed into it by the quality of the representation delivered. The motion today is one means of achieving that quality. Members of this House will recall a report of the Royal Commission on the Electoral System, Towards a Better Democracy, which was produced 20 years ago. In that report the committee noted the overwhelming support of Māori submitters for retaining separate Māori representation as a measure of self-determination—mana motuhake—and the demand for formal recognition of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and all its protections and rights that it guarantees. The report suggested that these claims were not an end in themselves but rather the most effective means to ensure the cultural survival of Māori. Therefore, the question we consider today as being of the utmost importance concerns the ongoing protection of the rights and interests of tangata whenua. But we have to ask whether it is fair that these rights and interests are to be put forward by two people to represent the Government and two people to represent the Opposition, as members of the Representation Commission.

In the case of the Māori electoral seats in particular, is it not strange that the party that holds a majority of Māori electoral seats did not have a particular influence in the appointment process for the commission? We know that part of the difficulty for this Parliament is that our very existence is not one that falls into line with either black or white, left or right, or Government or Opposition thinking. We have always been proud of our position as the independent Māori voice in Parliament. The party accords particular priority to our relationship with tangata whenua, and, in this fashion, to enable the expression of rangatiratanga, along with the kāwanatanga partner.

We support the position put forward by New Zealand First that representation must mean something about moving forward and recognising we are no longer in the days of first past the post. This is particularly so when we look at the impact that Māori political representation has had in both of the largest parties. National, which has four Māori members included in a caucus of 48, has consistently denied the value of the Māori electoral seats. Labour’s Māori MPs have recently voted against the principles of Te Tiriti, and even more recently have introduced a fresh new concept of confiscation—the Crown stratum.

In 1993 Māori voted for MMP by a much higher margin than others. The MMP—mixed-member proportional—voting system provided an opportunity to make progress in the path towards tino rangatiratanga, or self-determination, through the means of indigenous political representation. The quest for the political emancipation of Māori has been one that Māori have looked to since the advent of MMP, as well as looking to the mechanism of the Māori electoral option to hold as a restorative right to be heard. Yet, as recently as last year, we have seen that the path to political equality has been fraught with obstacles. One needs only to turn to the report of the United Nations special rapporteur to recognise that honour and justice have not yet been accorded to the Māori voice.

The United Nations report recorded compelling evidence that historical and social processes that systematically disadvantaged Māori, such as colonisation, discrimination, and racism, were deep-seated in the nature of New Zealand society. It was as a result of Professor Stavenhagen’s observations on the ongoing political marginalisation of Māori that he made the following recommendation: “The Treaty of Waitangi should be entrenched constitutionally in a form that respects the pluralism of New Zealand society, creating positive recognition and meaningful provision for Māori as a distinct people.”

We have heard that around town, in various faculties and law firms, rumbling moves towards constitutional debate are being held behind closed doors. The Māori Party is here today to say that this debate is a vital one in our evolving maturity as a State, and that the State must respect the rights of iwi nations to be fully involved in those discussions.

I return to the issues raised by New Zealand First, which challenged the motions on the grounds that they do not represent the full range of political parties, and the diversity of representation that has already been envisaged and, indeed, was established through the introduction of MMP. I make it clear today that although we support the challenge raised by that party, the Māori Party absolutely endorses the two Māori members who have been nominated to represent the Government and Opposition on the Representation Commission.

Whetumārama Te Rangiita Weretā has a legendary reputation in presenting a voice for effective Māori political participation. She was instrumental in the work behind the Picot report in 1988, and provided vitally needed critique about the status of Māori in the reformed educational environment. In 1994 she was part of Te Aho Matua o Te Ture, a standing Māori committee, alongside Bishop Manuhuia Bennett, Judge Michael Brown, and Professor Mason Durie, that advised the Law Commission on the “development of a bicultural framework for the law in New Zealand”. She has also had her fair turn in the bureaucracy, as manager of Māori language services, whether it be Te Puni Kōkiri or as general manager for Māori statistics at Statistics New Zealand.

Meanwhile, John McEnteer has made a huge contribution across every sector of Māori development, including fisheries, Māori land, the Federation of Māori Authorities, Mighty River Power, the Capital and Coast District Health Board, and the Department of Social Welfare. Alongside Whetumārama he possesses unique and specialist skills in his background on the Representation Commission. It was John McEnteer also who described the special rapporteur’s report as an “insightful and intelligent report”, a report that is wide ranging, and displays a good understanding of the situation. He understands only too well, as, indeed, does Whetumārama, the hard work ahead that is required to achieve true political representation.

Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future) Link to this

United Future joins with other parties in this House in opposing these two motions. The suggestion that we have one representative representing the Government, however that is defined, and one representing the Opposition, however that is defined, is anachronistic. It is out of time and out of place, and, frankly, we should have nothing more to do with it. In the longer term the solution may well be to have no political representatives on the Representation Commission. But if that is too big a step to take, United Future would certainly support the proposition that has been advanced that there be one representative to cover the Government, one for the Opposition, and one for the smaller parties, as well. The suggestion at the moment that just the two major party representatives can cover the interests of six other parties is, frankly, preposterous. It is arrogant to assume that that can be the case. I say that with no disrespect to the individuals who are involved; they are placed in a difficult, if not an impossible, position.

The absurdity of this situation was highlighted by some discussions that took place earlier, when this motion was first contemplated, about the status of both New Zealand First and United Future. As parties in confidence and supply agreements with the Government, were we to be covered by the Government nominee, or were we free to choose whom we would be covered by? I understand that even the advice of the Crown Law Office was sought to clarify that point. The problem is really one of trying to fit square pegs into round holes, and it highlights how absurd the situation has become.

I can recall periodic outbursts over the years, when these types of debates have taken place. About 10 years ago a debate took place when the then leader of ACT, Richard Prebble, ourselves, and one or two other parties—I think New Zealand First, as well—joined forces over appointments to the Electoral Commission on precisely the same basis as this. I even recall—and you, Mr Assistant Speaker, will, as well—back to somewhat before the advent of MMP, when the then small parties in the House, who were the Alliance, United, and, I think, New Zealand First, came together to oppose the design of the ballot paper by the two major parties because it was being orchestrated to the major parties’ advantage. So what we see tonight is one more attempt by the old club to do things its way. Frankly, that time has long passed us by.

The smaller parties will not win the vote on the motions tonight; the two old parties will ensure that they prevail. But the message should be loud and clear. When we have parties as diverse as the five parties who will vote against the resolutions all saying that this system of representation is unacceptable and that the time for change is nigh, then it behoves both the Government and the major Opposition party to listen to them, and to ensure that when we next vote on the Representation Commission’s membership in about 5 years’ time, the law has been amended to address these concerns. I am pleased to stand alongside the other parties that are opposed to these motions this evening and to indicate that we will also vote against the motions. We do this in the confident expectation that this will be the last time we do so, because by next time the message will have been received and the law changed to provide for more flexible, proper, and adequate representation.