Electoral (Strengthening Democracy) Amendment Bill

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I move, That the Electoral (Strengthening Democracy) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill.

Democracy is a human right. It is, in a lot of ways, the one right that underpins them all. I don’t just mean the “one vote per person, every few years” style of democracy—as crucial as that is—but the right to a fair, equal, and accessible say in decisions that impact all of our lives and our communities; a say, as it is increasingly, in the way Governments handle the great crises of our time, from COVID to climate. We need fair rules because we see, all over the globe right now, the worry about democracy—the worry about whether rules are pitched in favour of some; not everyone. We see, when the rules are out of balance, disenfranchisement of swaths of people; we see a system where democracy is up for grabs to the highest bidder on the free market. We see historic barriers created by histories of discrimination, colonisation, and alienation, undermine democracy.

This is a core value for the Green Party of Aotearoa, and I do want to shout out to our leaders past who fought for MMP, who fought for the rights of disabled candidates, for young people, and for Māori. I hold democracy particularly dear to my heart because I have seen the world without it. I’ve seen my parents fight for democracy, I’ve seen oppression, and I have been displaced, as were my people, by the erosion of rights for minorities and for women in a system that undermined not just human rights but democracy itself. Now, our system here is strong, but it requires update and it requires attention. We don’t want an American-style democracy, where two big parties fight it out to represent a few with the deepest pockets.

When I first entered Parliament, five years ago, universal suffrage was already fairly eroded and there was almost no protection against a rising tide of elite foreign interference. Recommendations to fix and rebalance our system had, by successive Governments, been left under cover. They had been ignored. People had been left out. And I want to note that, when I first introduced this bill in February 2019, I was told over and over again that electoral reform was not a priority; that things are OK. Then we heard from our communities, we heard from our courts, the Waitangi Tribunal, and three out of five of the parliamentary political parties in this House last term got in trouble for donations breaches.

So this bill got some big wins. Since we started pushing, since we made democracy the centre of our work, we got a ban on foreign political donations; we got the lowering of the threshold of secret big money to $5,000; a repeal of the National Party’s blanket ban on prisoner voting, so that people sentenced to three years or less can now vote, and the onus to actually re-enrol people when we release them; allowing Māori to switch rolls at any time rather than waiting the arbitrary five years; extending voting rights to overseas New Zealanders who were left overseas by the COVID border closures in the 2023 election; and, as you’ll hear a lot, I suspect, tonight, an independent electoral review with experts making recommendations to strengthen our democracy by the end of 2023.

So what’s left? That’s what’s left in this bill. There is a lot. There are the suite of changes recommended by the Electoral Commission after almost 4,000 New Zealanders submitted on the strengthening of MMP review in 2012. That was buried by then Justice Minister the Hon Judith Collins, and successive Governments ignored it. I want to note that we’ve taken the full suite of changes that were recommended, because MMP is about a diversity of views being in this House; not just strengthening things for us. Lifting the ban on prisoner voting altogether: New Zealand is an outlier in democracies that we compare ourselves to when it comes to this. There is no criminal justice purpose to disenfranchising people, to cutting them off and alienating them from their communities. In fact, we know that it undermines their ability to be rehabilitated. We are making ourselves less safe to make politicians look tough on crime. But, more than that, it is a slippery slope whenever we say that Governments can make a moral judgment in assigning basic human rights to people. We don’t have human rights because we are good, but because we are human.

Allowing overseas New Zealanders to vote beyond 2023—again, we are an outlier. People can’t afford to come home every three years if they’re students overseas, if they have young kids.

Ending discrimination against 16- and 17-year-olds and allowing them the fundamental right guaranteed in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act—found to be the case by the Court of Appeal—to vote.

💬 Simon Court: Why not six-year-olds?

The ACT Party thinks that six-year-olds are also in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act as having the right to vote. They are not, I assure you, but 16- and 17-year-olds are. They have a legal right to be free from discrimination. They work. They pay tax. They leave school. They rent homes. They can have sex. They can’t vote. We know that young people are engaged with the issues around them. We heard them by the tens of thousands outside this House fighting for climate crisis. We hear them in our select committees all the time on mental health care, on public transport, on education. Being young in New Zealand today is expertise; nobody knows but them what it’s like to try and access mental health care, to try and access the job market, to have homes, and to use public transport. And this is a movement not led by me, but by young people. So here’s a shout-out—also to Make It 16—to Ralph, to Kate. We owe you for so many things, but mostly for your passion for our democracy.

So what about those big money donations? We still don’t have a limit on political donations in New Zealand, and we’ve seen how that undermines democracy all over the world—in particular, hindering climate crisis. We know that, when politicians are beholden to particular interests with deep pockets, ordinary people don’t have a shot and that one-vote-per-person democracy is a bit of a joke. So we don’t know what influence this has had, but we do know that elsewhere in the world, cigarette companies, gun lobbies, and big oil does hinder change that would benefit ordinary people who do vote. That’s what we need here, and I think most New Zealanders would be shocked to know that we don’t have a limit on political donations.

Now, I want to address the Attorney-General’s report that said the $35,000 suggested by this bill may breach free-speech rights, although he does say that a different amount may work. We don’t have an ability as non-Government MPs to feed into that New Zealand Bill of Rights Act assessment process. So we could have engaged with that, and that’s a systemic thing that we can change. But the best result today would be for this bill to go to select committee so the amount can be thrashed out with experts, with communities. We know Canada’s limit is $1,700, New South Wales’ is $7,000, and most of Europe has limits below $35,000.

I also want to talk about why the seemingly disparate aspects of this bill were selected. They were selected because they’re issues on electoral reform that we’ve already had inquiries for. We’ve had inquiries by the Electoral Commission, the Justice Committee, the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal, and the Waitangi Tribunal on these issues. So it is time for action. Strong democracies need election laws that are frequently updated, that are reactive to the changing world, and that are reactive to expert, non-politicised recommendations.

So I would hope that the Government can take party politics out of its vote tonight; that it can react to those recommendations, the inquiries that already have been. And, whilst we welcome the new inquiry, it would be heartbreaking to have that be relied upon as a reason to delay what we already know we need to see go to committee. The explanatory note for this bill reads: “Government electoral bills over the last decade have largely tinkered with the Act, rather than making more substantive reforms to safeguard our democracy for the future. This Bill seeks to bring impetus to electoral reform”.

Whatever happens tonight, this bill would have been a success. It has had more provisions adopted by the Government than not, and we have brought democracy to the fore. But sending it to select committee would show courage to take party politics out of democracy reform, to actually hear from the public, and that would be due process, that would put democracy at the heart of our collective work as lawmakers and representatives of the people.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Debate interrupted.