Education (School Boards of Trustees SingleTransferable Vote Option) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Education (School Boards of Trustees Single Transferable Vote Option) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. It is with great pleasure and considerable pride that I present to this House the Education (School Boards of Trustees Single Transferable Vote Option) Amendment Bill. This is a short and simple bill, but its impact is far-reaching. By making a small amendment to the Education Act 1989, it gives school boards of trustees the option of adopting the single transferable vote (STV) system for their elections. It is nothing more, nothing less, and nothing radical or compulsory. It merely gives schools and their boards greater discretion and sovereignty over how they go about ensuring that the wishes of parents are fairly reflected in the election results and that the boards are truly representative of the diverse school communities they represent.

This bill follows in the footsteps of my previously successful STV option bill for local bodies, which has been incorporated into the Local Electoral Act. That bill was also about increasing sovereignty, making elections fairer, and ensuring better, more representative outcomes. I cannot tell members how delighted I am that every enrolled voter will have the opportunity to use STV in the forthcoming local body elections as a result of my previous bill. Not only will 10 mayors and councils be elected by STV but also all 21 district health boards will be elected by the sophisticated system provided for under the Local Electoral Act.

The October local body elections represent a massive step forward for local democracy in New Zealand. No longer will there be minority mayors elected with as little as 24 percent of the vote, as happened in Napier in 1998, at least in the forthcoming elections for the 10 councils using STV. No longer will more than half of the votes for councillors be wasted in those council elections where STV will be used. No longer will significant proportions of voters feel unrepresented, because none of their choices were elected due to the impact of block voting under first past the post.

I am told by reliable sources that even more councils will adopt STV for the 2007 local body elections. That is because STV has already proved its worth with dairy farmers, who use it to elect the Fonterra board and shareholders council, and because many councillors and council returning officers have overcome their initial fear of STV and now recognise that it is a far superior electoral system than first past the post.

I am, therefore, obviously disappointed that the Minister of Education has indicated his refusal to support this bill, but I am not surprised. After all, Trevor Mallard was one of only three Labour MPs who crossed the floor to vote with National to defeat Labour MP Richard Northey’s original STV bill in 1998. Even ACT supported the 34 Labour MPs, 12 Alliance MPs, and one United MP who voted for that earlier version of the STV option bill, because they recognised that STV enhances democracy. I look forward to the support of ACT for this bill. I also look forward to the support of New Zealand First for my bill, as I know that Ron Mark was upset that he had to vote against the 1998 bill because of the coalition agreement with the National Party. I also hope United Future will maintain Peter Dunne’s consistent support for STV by voting for this bill. Indeed, if the National Party is prepared to allow this bill to go to the select committee, with the support of all the other parties in this House, then we could override Trevor Mallard’s opposition to fair electoral systems and send this bill to the Justice and Electoral Committee for the scrutiny that it deserves.

By promoting the change to STV for school boards, I know I run the risk of being seen as an electoral reform zealot who is trying to fix problems that do not exist, but I have not introduced this bill merely for the sake of pushing STV down people’s throats. I believe there are real problems with our current school board elections. To give members a personal example, I recall agonising over how to vote two elections ago. There were about 10 candidates for our local primary school board, and I could cast up to seven votes. I strongly supported four candidates, I was indifferent towards three, and I did not support the remaining three. In the end, I cast only four votes, because I knew that a vote cast for a less preferred candidate could cancel out a vote for one of my most preferred candidates. It was that personal experience that prompted me to introduce this bill.

I have not introduced this bill just to solve my problems with tactical voting; I have introduced it because I am concerned about the very low turnout in school board elections and the extremely high level of wasted votes at those elections. It has been difficult to get comprehensive information about this year’s school board elections, but I have discovered that of the approximately 70,000 voting papers that were issued in the South Island, only 25,000 came back.

In other words, only just over one-third of parents bothered to vote in this year’s elections. While I am certainly not claiming that STV would automatically lift the turn-out, it may have a positive impact, because more people would feel that it is worth taking the trouble to vote if their votes would be more likely to help.

The analysis that I have done of results gleaned from newspaper public notices reveals a disturbingly high level of wasted votes in this year’s school board elections. For example, at Wellington College, 2,159 votes were cast. Of those, 1,123, or 54 percent, were for successful candidates. However, 318 of those votes merely boosted the majority of the candidates who had already won. Overall, only 37 percent of the votes cast in that election were effective. In other words, 63 percent of the votes made no difference to the election outcome. In case members think that is an isolated example, I can quote for them numerous other cases where there was a high level of wasted votes—for example, 46 percent at Auckland Grammar, 44 percent at Onslow College and Burnside High School, and 43 percent at Shirley Boys High School. When one factors in the boost votes, the effective votes at those schools were 50 percent or fewer in all cases. Those outcomes are the hallmark of an electoral system that is very crude and patently unfair.

I fully concede that STV is most needed where a large number of candidates are standing, and where significant groupings in a school community are unrepresented on the board. In other situations, it may simply not be necessary. However, if the Government is serious about improving school governance, it should recognise the benefits of STV for those communities that have a diverse ethnic make-up. Even Ministry of Education officials have acknowledged to the Minister that Pākehā parents are overrepresented on school boards, while Māori, Pasifika, and Asian parents are under-represented. The officials claim that this does not mean voters’ preferences are being ignored. They may be right, but in the example that they use, they make a presumption that exposes their limited understanding of first past the post. They reason that a low number of elected Māori trustees in a school with a high proportion of Māori students is because most Māori voters wish to elect non-Māori trustees. In fact, what happens with first past the post is that a dominant group wins all the seats, even when that group is a minority. In other words, if a school community is made up of three ethnicities, with one being 40 percent and two being 30 percent, it is quite conceivable that the 40 percent community could win 100 percent of the seats on the board.

I am not trying to advocate some sort of party or ethnic ticket for school boards; quite the opposite. I want schools to have the option of using an electoral system that maximises the opportunity for every community in the school to be fairly represented on the board, without resorting to separate seats or candidate tickets. STV does that because its proportional nature means that significant minorities are more likely to win their fair share of seats, and everyone is more likely to have voted for at least some of those who are elected. STV also means that a successful candidate needs to win a minimum quota of votes, whereas with first past the post, there is a risk of candidates being elected with low levels of support where a large number of candidates have split the vote.

I obviously believe that the arguments in favour of STV are compelling, but I also acknowledge that adopting this voting method has some practical problems and financial implications. I believe those can be easily overcome at minimal additional cost. The first and most obvious issue is the need for voter education to explain to parents how STV works. As the Government’s own literature in the forthcoming local body elections makes clear: “STV—It’s simple to vote.” In fact, as my T-shirt says, “it’s as easy as 1, 2, 3”, because that is all one does.

💬 Hon Member: It’s not a T-shirt.

Never mind. One ranks as many or as few of the candidates in one’s order of preference. The TV advertisements, which will start screening this weekend, make very clear not only how straightforward STV is but also how logical and natural the ranking process is.

The second problem is the counting of STV votes. Obviously, it is more complicated than first past the post, but it presents no greater difficulty. Already most schools use an outside provider to run their elections. Those organisations use specialist contractors to count the votes right now. Because of the introduction of STV for district health board elections, not only do counting companies have access to the sophisticated software that has been developed by the Department of Internal Affairs but they have developed sophisticated optical scanning equipment to count voting papers rapidly.

Contrary to the advice given to the Minister by his officials, I have been assured by the Department of Internal Affairs that its software is suitable for school board elections, and I have been assured by the counting companies that counting STV votes for school board elections presents them with little more work than what they have to do now. Yes, the cost would be higher, because the technology is more expensive, but even that cost would come down in time, and at the moment, it is only 10c to 40c more per ballot paper than first past the post.

In conclusion, while I acknowledge that schools do have limited budgets, I must pose the question: what price democracy? That is the challenge facing this Parliament.

I begin my remarks on the Education (School Boards of Trustees Single Transferable Vote Option) Amendment Bill, which is sponsored by Mr Donald, by saying that he and I share a view about electoral reform. We are both supporters of proportional representation. I would probably say that I am not that much of an enthusiast for MMP as a particular form of proportional representation, but because it was the one—[Interruption] I say to Mr Power that I always know what I say on these core issues, because they are issues I have championed and worked a lot on, unlike himself. Once we had decided on MMP—it was the system that was clearly going to gain support—and because I support proportional representation, that was the system I supported.

However, I say to the member that I respect his points of view on this issue. Like me, he has been a long-term supporter of electoral change, and I respect his point of view on the particular effort he has put up today. But, unfortunately, I have to tell him, much to the glee of Mr Power, that the Government will not support this legislation. Because of that, because of our respect for Mr Donald, because of his longstanding track record on this issue, and because we do not want him to think we are opposing the bill for any other reason than an evidence base that tells us it is not a good idea, I will spend a few minutes on saying why the Government will not support this bill.

First of all, the bill is unnecessary. It is not supported by members of the School Trustees Association. That is a test that I think we do have to apply. If those people wanted it, then we would want to listen, but they do not.

The bill would clearly add compliance costs. It would not add them so much to the voting process, because I think—I will come back to this point in a second—voters would find the process as simple as the member said, and as it states on his T-shirt. Everyone knows how to list, in order of preference, who they want to vote for. The problem, of course, is the compliance costs that would come out when the vote was counted. That is the big issue, and the big problem we face here.

Frankly, I am afraid that I cannot see how the single transferable vote (STV) would improve the democratic running of our 2,600 schools. If I could, I would urge Government members to think again.

Let us get the flavour of this bill. School board elections are, on the whole, pretty low key. They are the responsibility of the school boards that administer them. The last lot of elections cost $5.4 million to run. If we introduced STV, we would introduce a large number of administration changes that would fall on schools, trustees, and the Government.

💬 Rod Donald: How much?

I will come back to that, because I think the figure is reasonably easy to arrive at, in terms of all this. But whatever the system was, it would cost more money, and if we were to pay more money for it, we would want to see some real benefits.

At the moment, there are a whole range of things school boards can do if they want to make things more appropriate. If they want skill levels increased, or representation increased, they can stagger elections. They can co-opt if they want to. They can request organisations to appoint trustees. They can request a Minister to intervene to make sure things are done in a kosher way. They have all those options at the present time, in terms of trying to make their boards work.

We would have to decide which type of STV system we would use. There is not only one model of STV, of course. It would be a nonsense if different boards were allowed to use different forms of STV, because that would cause confusion. There is already flexibility in the legislation to allow people to do different things in terms of their voting system. So we would end up with a whole range of added complexities for school boards, when really they already have a lot of tools to try in order to make themselves skill-based and representative, to make sure things are done in a professional way, and to change things if they want to.

STV is about encouraging proportional representation. I heard the member say that he does not want parties running for board places—thank goodness! He does not want ethnicities running, thank goodness. Basically then, we should ask ourselves how representative school boards are now. If we flick through the figures, we see that it is pretty hard to say that they are not representative. If they are not then we can make them so, because the tools already exist to do that in a purposeful kind of way. So why go to a whole new system when, as the member said, there is no problem now? What are we trying to fix? Right now, it is certainly not the core question that proportional representation usually tries to adopt—that is, would we get different electoral outcomes from this bill? Not really; I do not think so. I do not think we would end up with a more representative system.

💬 Rod Donald: Give it a try.

I think there are a lot of things we want to give a try in life, but this bill would affect 2,600 schools and a lot of people who volunteer their time. We are talking about taxpayers’ money. I am all for trying things—that is why we pilot things all the time—but I do not think the member is serious when he says just to give this system a whirl. Basically, we would want to try it only if we could rack up good, positive reasons for doing so. In the end, the key question asks whether we would get different electoral outcomes. I really do not think the issues stack up to say: “Yes, we would, and it would be really worth going through all this.”

STV is a more costly form of voting. The member himself will know that instead of being able to sit down with a piece of paper, which under current arrangements one can, and just by hand count up the votes for one’s local school—so that it costs basically a biro, some time, and a piece of paper—it would be very difficult to do that without computing if we were to use STV. Nobody who uses STV does not also use some computer-based form of counting to get the result in a reasonable period of time. Local governments, hospitals, and so on that use that kind of voting all have computer-based systems. I have no doubt that we would end up with the same pressure for that if we were to introduce STV for school board elections.

I do not think that voters would have any difficulty in understanding STV. As I said before, it is the complexity of handling their votes that would cause issues for us, and in relation to 2,600 schools and a computer-based system, it would all come down to saying that all that is being loaded in for no real reason.

I do not want to labour the point today because, as I said at the beginning, I respect Mr Donald’s commitment to proportional representation issues. He wants to pitch forward that argument into what ought to be the good democratic environment of the running of our schools. That is why Tomorrow’s Schools was introduced in the 1980s and that is why we all stick to it now. We want community involvement.

But, frankly, I have to say that we already have good community involvement. The current system is cheap to run and simple to understand. I have not heard people complaining that they want to move to a proportional representation system, where in the end we would have greater compliance and regulatory costs without any real gain in terms of what we were doing with the system. So I say to Mr Donald that I am sorry but on this occasion we will have to agree to disagree. The Government will vote against this bill.

The National Party will oppose this bill. Like Mr Maharey, I have some sympathies for the campaign that Mr Donald has waged over a long period of time for the single transferable vote (STV). In fact, I voted for STV in the referenda when the option was put before the public—I was one of the 14 percent. But I very much have to say from the outset that not one parent from any of the 63 schools in my Rangitikei electorate has walked through one of my three electorate office doors, or used email, phone, or fax to say that he or she really wants to change the electoral system for school boards. I am afraid there is just no interest in the wider school communities for this legislation to proceed.

I was a little astounded to hear Mr Donald say—and I think I have this right—that if a party chose not to support the bill, its opposition was to fair electoral democracy, or words to that effect.

💬 Rod Donald: Words to that effect.

Well, I say to Mr Donald that a couple of things trouble me about that comment and, through the chair, I would like to address those to him. When the Electoral Options Referenda Bill came before this House to give the public another say on the electoral system, the Green Party voted against it. I say to Mr Donald that if he is talking about fair electoral democracy, then that concept has to apply well beyond school boards of trustees elections, and should also apply to the wider electoral system throughout New Zealand.

I also have to say that despite the New Zealand public voting overwhelmingly to look at this system again, in the case of reducing the number of MPs to 99 the Greens chose to vote against that particular move at the select committee. So all that we in the National Party ask for is a thread of consistency from the Green Party on matters of electoral reform. When the Green Party co-leader stands in the House and says that opposition to this bill is opposition to fair electoral democracy, I am afraid I have to say to him that he needs to go back and look at his party’s voting records, when it comes to issues of electoral reform. That party has not listened to the public when they have given very clear messages about their expectations on electoral reform.

I, for one, truly believe that Mr Donald’s intentions in respect of this legislation are pure. He has never made any secret of the fact that he and his colleagues feel very strongly about the single transferable vote as an electoral option. As I said earlier, that is the option I voted for during the referenda.

However, I conclude my very short 5 minutes by saying that there is no demand for change whatsoever in the education sector, or amongst parents, caregivers, and those who wish to run for school boards. I have seen no evidence of it in my electorate, at all. National will not be supporting this bill in going to its next stage through Parliament.

I want to ask whether this bill is about enhancing democracy in schools or, as I suspect, about promoting an electoral system, regardless of the context. I am speaking as a former school principal, and I am very much aware of the kinds of scenes I always experienced. When we had a parent teacher association meeting we were lucky to have a quorum, and when we desperately tried to form a committee, we were lucky if we got enough people to nominate themselves to be on the committee. The same often goes for a board of trustees, because this is more about volunteering and social service than about politics.

There is a difference between local body elections and school board elections. I support the single transferable vote (STV) in local body elections, but when we have elections in schools—and it is hard enough to get an election, with not enough people standing—we know they are apolitical, and we know they are more about service. They are not about policy planks. I do not think I have ever experienced a board of trustees election at which someone has arisen and said: “I think our school needs to spend more money on the maths curriculum.”, or: “Our school needs tennis courts, and that’s what I’m on the board of trustees for.” I have never ever heard a policy plank put up at a board of trustees election. Instead, I have seen people stand up and say: “This is me. I’ve got ‘this sort of’ experience, and I’d like to serve.”

Will STV improve the composition of boards? I want to remind the member, Mr Donald, that school boards at the moment have a variety of mechanisms to ensure that we have a good representation on them, and a good level of skills. There are things like staggered elections. Boards can hold elections every 18 months for 50 percent of the trustees. Most important, boards can co-opt up to four trustees. I know that in Christchurch where it was very difficult to get representatives from within small ethnic communities, that is exactly what I did. I would go to Ngāi Tahu or to the Māori parents, and sit and work with them—it was the same with the Somalis and with the Chinese—in an effort to get their representation on the board. If I was unfortunate enough to have a board that had no one with treasury skills or financial skills, I would also go out to seek those people. It was not just about representation of the kinds of parents; it was also about representation of skills. So I do not think that STV will improve the composition.

What are the problems with this model? First up is the cost. I heard Mr Donald ask: “What price democracy?”. I think that we do have democracy in our boards of trustees, in terms of their composition and representation. Therefore I must make a choice of what I spend my money on. I know I would want it spent on special education more than anything else, if I were thinking in my own portfolio as Associate Minister of Education. I would much rather spend any extra small amount of money there than I would on a strange and wonderful voting system—which is good, but in its own place.

We can talk about complexity. God save us! If we have staggered elections and STV, that could be highly exciting. We can talk about inappropriateness, because STV is about representation of different kinds of parties or policies—but not so inside schools. If we are looking for a good spread, then let me tell members what the spread is in our schools now. At the national level, school elections elect male and female trustees in equal numbers. In terms of ethnicity, the 2001 boards of trustees election figures show that 16 percent of elected trustees were Māori, compared to 13 percent of the adult population. On the other hand—and I will accept it—Pasifika and Asia are under-represented, but there we have the ability to co-opt. So I do not believe that STV is the way to go.

If I go back to my original argument, I ask whether this bill is because we want a method of election popularised and understood by the community, or because we want improved boards of trustees. I have to say that I do not accept either. I want to remind members of something. In 2001, 34 percent of schools did not hold elections, and another third of schools had only one or two surplus candidates. So if we have no surplus candidates or only a few candidates, STV would not be the thing that made the difference. I am sorry, but I truly suspect that this bill is more about trying to use boards of trustees elections and schools to educate the public about STV, than about ensuring representative boards of trustees.

I personally find it difficult to say, on behalf of New Zealand First, that this is not a bill that deserves our support. I say that because I was one of those members, like others in the House, who professed to being an ardent supporter of the single transferable vote (STV). But when I look at the issue that is before us in this bill, I find a number of contentions. The first one is in the explanatory note. When I see the words and phrases “superior voting system”, “fairer”, “tactical voting”, “reduces the level of wasted votes”, “this encourages positive voting”, and “it gives the ability to vote for a more preferred candidate”, I see a number of selective comments about any electoral system. They could apply equally well in the minds of those who support first past the post as they do in the minds of those who support MMP, and, I would say, as a supporter of STV, apply equally well to the system I support.

But I look now at the issue before us, namely school boards. The first port of call in this issue is the boards of trustees, which have a School Trustees Association. So I sought an opinion from them, as other members would have, as to whether there was any call for it. The answer was no. Had there been any indication from individual schools that STV should be encouraged? The answer was no. If the member who is proposing this bill went to the list published last week, and on the Internet as well, of the annual statements of all schools in this country, he would see the size of rolls in the year 2000 and as at 1 March 2003. The overwhelming impression he would have had, if he had done so, is that there are hundreds and hundreds of schools in this country that have very small rolls.

In the district where I come from, numerous schools have rolls of 19, 23, 28, 30, 35, and so on. When I looked carefully at the Northern Advocate, and at the local press, the Northland Age and the Northern News in the course of the school boards of trustees elections, I saw that the number of voting parents was very, very small indeed. We spoke about STV to the directors of Fonterra, who budgeted for that for the first vote and for the last vote, and the extra cost, above normal voting procedures, is quite high. To suggest that small schools with a parent roll of 25 to 35 should go to this trouble in order to achieve what the bill sets out to be a more desirable outcome is, I believe, false and invalid.

Although within our party there are those who would support STV as a preferred system, when we look at the particular and special example of boards of trustees, I do not think this is a valid one. It is more costly, and, in the end, who says that if 15 parents are voting for a four or five person board, STV will give any better indication of choice? In my book if one votes for the first five, one votes for the first five. If one votes for the first four, then one votes for the first four. If there is a substantial number on the electoral roll, that is a different matter. Therefore the examples of large schools, which were used by Mr Donald, would pertain mostly to secondary schools. I know there are two or three intermediate schools in this country that have rolls of 1,000 pupils. Most primary schools have rolls of fewer than 300 or so, even in our large centres, but the average primary school with a large roll just would not merit a costly vote of this type, and it would not give any better indication of parental support for the school.

I am sorry to disappoint Mr Donald but ACT will not be supporting this bill. It is rare that I find myself agreeing with Marian Hobbs but elections for school boards of trustees are not appropriate for single transferable vote (STV). They are not same as local body elections or health board elections. People do not stand for boards of trustees as a political statement. Marian Hobbs is right. She said parents stand up and say: “These are the skills that I think I have to offer.” They do not align themselves with any particular political party or even stand as an independent. Local body and district health board elections are often used as a staging post for people who want to go further on in politics.

There are a lot of things wrong with school boards of trustees, but the voting system is not one of them. One of the biggest problems is apathy. Some boards like to put a positive spin on it as they did when I was on the board of trustees for a very large girls school. We took it that the parents were pretty satisfied with what we were doing. Be that as it may, there were 1,800 to 2,000 girls at that school, and when we had a “meet the candidates” meeting just 12 parents turned up. So whether one has a small school or a big school, there is still a problem with parents putting their names forward and being involved in the board of trustees. At Epsom Girls Grammar School, which was in a very tightly zoned area, the only time we had packed halls was when we announced that we might be thinking of changing the uniform or changing the zoning. It was interesting that the people who turned up to the zoning meeting were those whose children went to King’s College, St Cuthbert’s, or Diocesan School for Girls and were very worried that their property prices might drop if they were suddenly zoned out of the tight zoning area.

The problem with apathy is often that parents do not feel that they have too much say in what goes on in the school. They think that by being on the board of trustees they will have some say in the governance or the curriculum, but increasingly that is not the case. They find that they have to comply with all the regulations and edicts that come out of the Ministry of Education and the Education Review Office, and with a number of Acts, the Occupational Safety and Health Service, and the Holidays Act. All of these things keep them away from the reason they decided to stand for the board of trustees in the first place. So they get disillusioned with their role as a parent representative.

Marian Hobbs also pointed out that boards of trustees have the power to co-opt other parents on to the board if they do not have fair representation. In fact, if there is not Māori representation on the board, then they are required to have a Māori representative or consultant in the school’s community who can contribute. Boards and schools go out of their way to co-opt other parents and other members of the community who will provide that balance. There will very rarely be enough people standing for a board of trustees for an STV voting system to proceed smoothly. Other members have stood up today and said they support STV. I do not even support MMP. I would vote against it tomorrow, even though it would put me out of Parliament. Contrary to what people say, it does not increase democracy. All MMP does is increase the number of backroomdeals that are done, so people can stay in power or in support of the Government.

The other big problem with boards of trustees is that they are under threat. The Minister has commissioned research that shows the optimum is one board of trustees for 200 schools—ram all the schools together and have as little parent representation and as little parent involvement as possible. The last thing that this Government ever wants to do is to give power back to parents and give parents the right to choose.

United Future also opposes this bill. Many of our members also agree that the single transferable vote (STV) system can be good in certain situations, but definitely not in this situation.

The main reason we oppose the bill is that the school trustees themselves do not support it. There are 13,500 trustees throughout New Zealand, and every 3 years over 2,500 new trustees are appointed. According to the School Trustees Association, not one school to date has asked that its board be elected by STV rather than first past the post. As Jim Peters has said, the School Trustees Association has confirmed that the Green members did not even take the time to consult it to see whether it was open to, or even required, this type of—[Interruption] According to our sources the Green members did not do so; Rod Donald interrupts and says that the Greens did, but our sources say that they did not. Our attitude is that if something is not broken, we should not try to fix it. Let things that are running well run well.

STV is lauded as a system that would help to elect minority candidates on to school boards, but is there any evidence that the current system does not achieve that? It is not a pure first-past-the-post system, in which the focus is on finding one winning candidate, and voters have only one vote. The correct description for the current electoral system for boards of trustees is a block vote, because multiple officers are elected, and electors have the same number of votes as the number of vacancies. Voters give their preferred candidates one vote each, and the candidates with the highest number of votes win. Because block voting allows for multiple votes in a way that first past the post for constituency seats in a general election does not, it does not discriminate against minority candidates in the same way. In most cases the outcome would be similar to that of an STV election. Once again I say that if it is not broken, why fix it?

The other aspect is that running an STV election is more complicated, as we have heard. If it is more complicated, it is more time consuming and it is more costly. Therefore, why should the school boards have to face extra time constraints and extra costs for their elections? Under this bill, those schools choosing to adopt STV would be responsible for educating eligible voters and training returning officers—all extra demands on resources that boards could better spend on our children’s education.

However, I am glad that this bill is being dealt with today. I have noticed that the Greens have kept delaying their members’ bills recently, with the result that we get to members’ day and there is very little legislation to debate. I do not know whether that is part of a cunning master plan to hold back all of their bills until election year, but the effect has been to bung up the system and to deny members from parties like ours—I have a wonderful member’s bill on the drinking age—the chance to have our bills balloted and debated. Given the Greens’ supposed concern for democratic rights, as expressed in their intentions regarding this bill, I find those tactics very questionable indeed. United Future will not be supporting this bill.

I endorse the comments that Mr Adams has just made about members’ bills being repeatedly deferred, and I am sure the Green Party will take note of that. The more members’ bills we get through, the better.

In regard to this bill, I too will not be supporting it, and Government members have already indicated our position. I speak from personal experience of having been, for many, many years, a member of parent teacher associations, school committees, and boards of trustees. In fact, I was still a member of a board of trustees when my children were at university and long out of the State school system. I continued to serve on the board because I had a great deal of interest in school governance. That really is the crux of the issue for parents who get involved in their children’s schools or in schools near where they live: they do want to serve.

But we also have to acknowledge that the number of parents who stand for election, and the number of schools that are required to hold an election because there is a contest to fill the positions, are decreasing. That can be attributed to the increasingly busy lives that people lead and, sometimes, to people not feeling confident enough to stand for election to a school board of trustees. One of the aspects that the single transferable vote system could introduce to the equation is to make standing for election even more intimidating and more off-putting for those parents whom we most want to stand for the boards.

Overarching all of that, I think the most important aspect is that the School Trustees Association, which is the authority on matters of school governance, does not support this bill. I believe that it is incumbent upon the members in the House to take note of that organisation. It represents all the school boards of trustees, and we would be wise to follow its advice.

Some members have been putting across that the Greens are trying to force this voting system on schools, whereas the bill clearly states that it will be available to schools. Even if the national school trustees body is not at this point pushing for the system, there are schools that would enjoy it and benefit from it.

To me, the compliance cost argument does not carry much weight. We live in a computer society, and all that is needed is a little bit of software that can run the vote count. An initial cost might be incurred in getting the software into those schools that want to take up this system, but once that software is installed the vote counting will be as easy as in any other system. Alternatively, an agency may come in under contract to do the vote counting. As my colleague Rod Donald said, such agencies have the software in their computers, so there is no significant compliance cost there.

This procedure will give minorities in schools better representation, be they ethnic minorities or people with minority views about where their school should go. Some of the other speeches have reinforced that point, in some ways. Deborah Coddington commented that only a few parents turn up to meet-the-candidates meetings. Often, particularly in big schools, parents who are confronted with having to vote for a certain number of candidates know only a couple of them—whom they will vote for—and wonder who else to vote for. They often end up exercising a less-informed vote in that they just tick the names of people who sound good, in order to make up the number on their list. It is unfortunately true, if we go by the evidence of the Auckland local body results—and I am not saying those elections are entirely identical to school boards of trustees elections—that people with “foreign-sounding” names miss out when that less-informed category of voting is exercised by people who are just filling up their lists. It has been indicated here that there is a lower level of Asian and other minority representation on school boards of trustees. There are fewer people from these groups on them than their presence in the population indicates there should be. So there can be a certain cultural conservatism in the voting that puts candidates of minority nationalities out of the picture.

Other members have said that people vote just for the person. Well, we can see from the situation at Cambridge High School recently that disputes can occur over the direction a school should take. We therefore want different views, in terms of the direction the school should take, to be represented on the board, as well. Once again, using the parallel of local body elections, STV allows not only for broader representation but also for more positive voting. The reality is that in elections, be they local body or school boards of trustees elections, a number of similar candidates can be competing for the same spot—for example, a number of candidates of a particular ethnicity. In the case of the Auckland mayoralty contest that is going on at the moment—which I am familiar with as an MP from Auckland—the incumbent had two challengers, Christine Fletcher and Bruce Hucker, then Dick Hubbard came into the ring, making three challengers with overlapping constituencies, one could say. Bruce Hucker thought it was wise for him to pull out at that point. Under an STV system he could have stayed in the race, because, even if he lost, his preference votes would have tended to go to the dominant challenger to Mr Banks.

I think an STV system benefits us all. One of the things about STV that has not been talked about enough is that through the preference system one gets to the quota. If there is a multi-member situation, the quota can be relatively low, so people from a minority ethnic group in a school can get representation, and a block of the dominant ethnic group cannot out-vote all the minority candidates. The system is much fairer in that respect.

I have listened with interest to this debate, and I would have to say that it is one of those times in Parliament when it is quite refreshing to listen to a debate where every contribution is measured and where a considered response is given to what I acknowledge to Mr Donald is a genuine and sincere attempt to introduce a measure that is consistent with what he has long pursued in terms of electoral reform. But I have to say that I and members on this side of the House—and, indeed, as we have heard, members from around the House—are not convinced that this is the right tool for the job in question. In the end, with all legislation, we have to ask ourselves what the ill is that we are trying to remedy. Frankly, as members have systematically said around the House, we are not convinced that there is an ill to remedy with this legislation. So I commend the member for his intent and for his attempt. It is always good to have a go and pursue those things that one comes here to pursue, but I think on this occasion it is fair to say the Government remains firm in its view that this measure is not required and would not assist the good governance of our schools.

School boards of trustees elections are the largest democratic event in this country. All 2,580 New Zealand schools are involved. More than 13,000 people are needed to become trustees. These trustees make important decisions on behalf of the pupils, parents, and communities they represent. They have overall responsibility for the governance of their school. They are responsible for the school’s vision and the planning required to achieve that vision. They must ensure the school complies with the law and is a responsible employer, and they are expected to ensure that students are achieving.

The Government gives enormous discretion to boards of trustees to choose how they want their schools to develop, but this Government will not let boards of trustees choose the electoral system they believe will encourage participation in the election process, and will ensure that the make-up of the board reflects the diversity of the school community. This is Mr Mallard’s chance to let schools make one of the most crucial decisions they should be allowed to make—that is, how to recruit and elect trustees who have a mix of skills and experience, talents, and backgrounds to ensure that schools function well.

Minister Maharey said that this bill is not supported by the School Trustees Association. I have a letter from that association that states: “The association’s view is that the association has no view.” So the Minister’s comment is not true. The Minister asked whether we would get different outcomes. I would say that almost certainly we would and, what is more, they would be better outcomes. The Minister claimed that schools hand count votes now. I am afraid he is desperately out of touch. The reality is that most schools contract out their elections. They already use the likes of Canterbury Education Services and elections.com to run their elections and count their votes. The latter already runs 19 of the 21 district health board single transferable vote (STV) elections in most of the 10 STV council elections. It has assured me that it can run STV elections for schools just as well as the first-past-the-post elections it already runs for schools, and for very little more cost.

Marian Hobbs and Deborah Coddington implied that STV was inappropriate for schools because it is a political electoral system. That view could not be further from the truth. The fact is that STV is used more by non-political bodies in New Zealand, such as Fonterra, the Victoria University of Wellington Council, the Anglican Church, trade unions, and even kennel clubs. In Britain and Ireland, STV is widely used by a vast range of organisations that simply want to elect their committees by a system that is clearly superior and fairer than first past the post.

As former associate professor of political studies at Auckland University, Graham Bush, said: “If there’s one voting system worse than single member first past the post, it is multi-member first past the post.” He concluded the article I am quoting from: “There is no better time than now to ground our modernised local government system on a democratised method of voting.” He wrote that article in 1994, and it has taken a decade to bring about the necessary changes to the way we elect our councils.

I hope that it will not take a decade to make STV an option for school board elections. I hope that the Government will belatedly appreciate the merits of STV, and recognise that schools such as Wellington College, Auckland Grammar, Onslow College, Burnside High School, and Shirley Boys High School should have the option of using STV if they want to. However, after today’s debate I fully appreciate that there is limited understanding of the flaws of first past the post, so I will table some of the results from the last election shortly.

Over the next year, or maybe decade, in Parliament, I will endeavour to encourage members, parents, and existing trustees of the merits of a change. I hope it will not take as long as it took Sir John Hall to get STV introduced for elections in New Zealand as it may take to get STV an option for school board elections. He first promoted STV for parliamentary elections in 1877, and never succeeded. Meanwhile, STV was in use in 1917 when Christchurch City elected Ada Wells, its first woman councillor. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of councillor Elizabeth McCombs, who later became New Zealand’s first woman member of Parliament, STV disappeared from local elections in 1933.

In conclusion, I celebrate STV’s restoration 71 years later for this year’s local body elections, and I look forward to my colleagues in this House allowing school boards to be able to choose it for their elections, as well.

I seek leave to table a sample of results from the 2004 school board elections that highlight the levels of wasted votes and effective votes.

Document, by leave, laid on the Table of the House.

Sitting suspended from 5.56 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.