Referendums Framework Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Referendums Framework Bill.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: I move, That the Referendums Framework Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill.

The bill provides a generic framework which focuses on the mechanics of a referendum. It largely reproduces the same legislative framework that applies to the conduct of the general election. The bill draws on the foundations of our electoral law and does not create, nor is it specific to, any referendum. The bill’s largely modelled on the temporary legislation put in place for the two referendums held alongside the 2020 general election.

In line with coalition agreements, a separate bill is being progressed that would enable the extension of the maximum term of Parliament, subject to a binding referendum. At this stage, there is a commitment for that bill to progress to the select committee but not necessarily any further. However, the Referendums Framework Bill provides the necessary legislative framework to govern the conduct of a referendum if required at the first or second election after commencement.

Ensuring the smooth and efficient conduct of a general election and any referendum held at the time is obviously important. Our Electoral Commission needs to be able to plan appropriately. This Referendums Framework Bill provides a single set of rules to govern the conduct of any referendum held alongside the general election. It ensures that the same rules apply both for the general election and referendum as far as practical. The bill ideally needs to be passed by October this year to allow the Electoral Commission sufficient lead-in time to prepare for a referendum if there was to be one held alongside the 2026 general election.

The bill focuses on the mechanical aspects of the conduct of any referendum held with a general election—for example, it enables the Electoral Commission to conduct the referendums using the same voting places and electoral staffers for the election, provides counting of the referendum votes and the release of the results either with or following the general election, and provides that the offence and penalty provisions of the Electoral Act apply to similar offences committed in relation to referendums. This bill does not include any specific referendum-related material, instead following the enactment of the relevant primary legislation for a referendum topic. An Order in Council will act as a trigger for holding a referendum alongside a particular general election.

Advertising is a key issue. To achieve an appropriate balance between freedom of expression and transparency, the bill regulates referendum advertising in much the same way as the Electoral Act regulates election advertising. These rules require promoters of referendum advertisements to place a promotive statement, to register if they intend to spend over a certain amount, and in addition, registered promoters will be required to submit a return of their expenses if they spend more than $100,000. There will be an overall limit on the amount that can be spent of just over $400,000. The bill also provides expenditure on dual advertising, covering the election and the referendum will count both to electoral and referendum advertising thresholds and limits.

The bill also addresses some minor areas of difference from some rules applying to the election, which reflects the nature of referendums. For example, there’ll be no preliminary count on any referendum vote on election day, to avoid delays for the preliminary count for the general election. Referendum results will be released with or following the official results for the general election.

The select committee process is very important. I encourage members and the public to have their say. On that basis, I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. This is another piece of—

Hon Paul Goldsmith: What have you got to say?

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Well, what I’ve got to say, Mr Goldsmith, is that this is another job that David Seymour has given Paul Goldsmith, because, yet again, the Government, which should be focused on things that are important to hard-working New Zealanders, has, in fact, been distracted by things like the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill and a four-year term with bizarre select committee rules by the ACT Party. Now, the Minister of Justice and the Justice Committee, which I sit on, are very busy with some interesting and important pieces of work, but this isn’t one of them.

Hon James Meager: God’s work.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Well, Minister Goldsmith is not quite God; in fact, he’s far from it. I think he’s at the other end of the spectrum.

Look, sure, this bill: if you’re going to run a referendum—[Interruption] Well, you asked for it. It’s late on a Thursday—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yeah, the members did ask for it, and the spectrum hasn’t been defined, so just carry on. Thank you.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Look, if you’re going to run a referendum, we accept you’ve got to get your rules right, and in some ways, I’m curious as to why we’re doing a kind of patch-up, rather than having a long-term look at how we run referenda. If you’re going to do it, you may as well do it right, and this bill is really only aimed at a referendum that’ll happen in one of the next two elections. Yes, all of those things, like the questions around interference and promoters, donations—all the things that the Minister referred to—are appropriate, and if there’s going to be a referendum, yes, we absolutely want to make sure that it’s done with integrity, because we know that integrity around our electoral system is critical.

It’s funny that the Minister was talking about the Electoral Commission and the work that it does, including in referenda, because, at the moment, it’s under siege. It’s had a walkout from its IT department, and there are deep problems with it. We saw at the last election not only did we have a miscounting problem, where boxes of votes went missing, but we had a problem about the independence of a marae. So, yes, let’s get it right, but the integrity of the process is important.

Look, if the National Party wants to be distracted and this is the biggest thing that it wants to send to the Justice Committee, then go for it, but the fact of the matter is that this bill and the four-year term bill are not something which is going to change New Zealanders’ lives, and it’s the ACT Party wagging the dog, once again.

The four-year term bill itself is poorly drafted, but this really sits alongside of it, and we’ll take a good-faith look at both of them. We don’t have a closed mind on either of them, but it’s really just getting a bit tiresome when the legislative agenda—in justice, in particular—of the Government is run by the ACT Party.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. A standing framework for conducting referendums—and it does pain me to say that and not “referenda”, but each language has its own idiosyncratic adaptations—is much better than creating new legislation every time we want a referendum. It’s also appropriate, often, to have a referendum at the same time as a general election, but not necessarily. You would reduce costs and gain maximum participation, but sometimes holding a referendum at the same time as a general election could be much more polarising. This bill only applies to referendums at the next two elections, but why? If you’re not very sure about the legislation, perhaps a five-year review period would be more sensible. Why are referendums good for two rounds and not for longer?

There are bigger issues: when is a referendum appropriate rather than divisive, and when is it the best method of deciding an important question? The multiple costly local referendums on Māori wards this coalition Government is forcing on councils—costly? Yes, the dollars are dollars whether they’re ratepayers’ dollars or taxpayers’ dollars. Those aren’t designed to promote local engagement. They’re not designed to be deliberative democracy. They are a simplistic lever for rednecks deciding on rural wards, but large wards? They’re not appropriate for a referendum, and I say deciding on Māori representation is not appropriate in a referendum, either. Maybe we could look at whether being a republic or a colonial monarchy is appropriate, but you wouldn’t do that without a very serious conversation first.

That’s what I’m concerned about: going straight to a referendum. A referendum should be a full stop after a deep conversation, not the first binary yes/no, “let me go with my gut feel”, which is not a great way of doing democracy.

As the Minister said, the bill does allow for advertising for referenda, but, again, this Government has not listened to the Independent Electoral Review. Is the balance between free speech and undue influence correct? Why do we allow overseas promoters to influence democratic outcomes in our country? Do we want large corporates to influence referendum outcomes? And are the amounts for disclosure and for total spend correct?

I understand that the Taxpayers’ Union or Greenpeace or Forest & Bird could each spend up to $406,000 on their election campaigning, and a further $406,000 on referendum adverts. The report of the Independent Electoral Review, which some of you don’t seem to have read, recommended tighter controls both on total spend and on recording where donations came from. The Green Party would go further and say that only registered voters should be involved in donating to those causes. Those points about general elections should equally apply to referendums.

In conclusion, a referendum is at the very low end on the scale—or the spectrum, if Madam Speaker prefers—of participatory democracy. Citizens don’t define the question. They don’t even refine the question, and there’s no opportunity to come towards a consensus. However, if there are going to be referenda, we need a framework, so we will be supporting this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Haven’t we heard some colourful oratory this afternoon? I wrote it down, because I have a propensity to misquote people: “It’s simple levers for rednecks.” Try and reconcile that, everyone here today, this afternoon—“levers for rednecks”. Gracious me! The idea that we would have a discussion about framing up a four-year reality, whatever it looks like, in a piece of legislation; having a referendum, or a referenda—whichever way you want to frame it—and inviting New Zealand to have its say, and they’re “rednecks”—gracious me! Unbelievable.

Respectfully—and we are a House of privilege here—that is, for me, personally, a pretty dumb remark. Gracious me! This is involving democracy—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I would just pull back on that remark about calling a—I know you were speaking to the remark and not the member—

MARK CAMERON: No, I was certainly not addressing the member.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: —but it’s a freefall—yeah.

MARK CAMERON: Well, Madam Chair, I note your addition, and I appreciate it, but the remark is not a reflection of the person who made it. I am fascinated—I will reframe it.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you.

MARK CAMERON: Gracious me! We come into this House every day to debate ideas. This is a House of contest, and yet that member referenced those outside the House, who don’t have the luxury of privilege, as being a certain kind of people.

Duncan Webb, or, if I may, “Negative Nelly” over there—“It’s all doom and gloom.” I actually think this is a great piece of legislation. How many referendums would New Zealand and New Zealanders want to be engaged with? Look, our mates on the left, who wanted a conversation about cannabis—did they instantly forget that part of our history, and anything else that might have come up. It could be something to do with alcohol, which is often a controversial thing. We take New Zealanders on a journey and we represent their interests, and we certainly share the ideas from outside the four walls of this building.

Incidentally, the Treaty principles bill—that’s come up in the House, so I’ll reference it. Having a bill where we can have a framework that acknowledges New Zealand in a referendum process, this cyclical reality where we have two election cycles and we loop it all in for when we have a general election so New Zealand can have a say—and this obviously ties into the previous bill, the four-year term bill. Why would we not want to engage with New Zealand in this instance?

I think, tying off in this first reading—and I don’t want to over-litigate the complexities of the bill, because it’s not overly complex; you can all read it—the wider point is that we’re taking New Zealanders outside of this building on the journey so that they can have a say on very salient issues to them. Whether it’s cannabis or it could be abortion reform, or it could be all manner of things, there’s nothing wrong with having a four-year rolling maul, you might say, that allows us to have referendums. And, by the way, I’d just remind that member that most New Zealanders are not negative; they’re positive, and they’re certainly not rednecks.

Thanks, Madam Speaker. Look, it was a bit of a struggle to think of what to say about this bill, because it’s actually a relatively mechanistic bill and it really just allows for the design, the management, and the running of referenda in the next two elections alongside the elections themselves, using the same personnel, using the same procedures, the same eligibility for election, and so on.

That’s not particularly exciting in itself, but what we’ve heard in the debate from the Opposition—or at least from one part of the Opposition—does get a little bit exciting, it does open up a debate, because what they have said is that they, essentially, do not believe that there’s much value in the public as a whole engaging in a referendum question. I find that quite remarkable. Some of the most successful—and I’m going to pick one particular country because I often talk about them, the Swiss; they use referenda all the time, and, actually, it doesn’t seem to have done them a whole lot of harm and they seem to manage that really, really well.

To call referenda the lowest form or the low end of participatory democracy; just assuming that there’ll be nothing, there’ll be no lead-in in conversation, no lead-in debate, no lead-in information going into people having to say, “Yes, we support this.” or “No, we don’t.” That never happens. You look at the debates around all the issues that have been before our country in terms of referenda and there has been extensive debate—extensive debate. People care about those things very deeply, particularly where they’re citizens initiated referenda. They care about those things. They care about those very deeply.

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: Which one? Name one!

ANDY FOSTER: Well, all of them.

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: But which one? Name one!

ANDY FOSTER: I’m not going to name one of them.

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: You can’t name one!

ANDY FOSTER: I can pick dozens. I can pick dozens of them.

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: You can’t name one.

ANDY FOSTER: Oh, I could. Honestly, I could pick dozens of them, but that’s not the point. The point is that people debate these things with passion. At least we’ve got Duncan Webb sort of—now he’s getting himself up and vaguely interested.

The point is that people do get engaged with these things. Take the cannabis referendum, take the firefighters referendum, take the number of MPs—there are a whole range of them. People get engaged with these things and we have extensive debate, extensive information about those, and the people of New Zealand come to a decision about them. Actually, rather than being, as the Green Party said, the low end of the spectrum in terms of participatory democracy, I think that is very much the high end of it because that means that we all—we all—get to have a say about something. We don’t say to the Parliament, “It’s your call.”; we say, “It’s our call.”

Sometimes they’re binding: MMP. Well, it wasn’t a citizens initiated one, but MMP was a response to the public of New Zealand saying they had concerns about the unbridled power—in fact, I mentioned unbridled power yesterday—being exercised by this place or by the executive within this place, and they wanted to respond to that, and they did, and they’ve changed the way in which our Government is elected and run. That is very, very important. There was a huge debate about that. We can all remember the huge debate that was around that, and that was significant, so I could not disagree more with the Green Party. Effectively, I would say that the Green Party here is being anti-democratic. This is a party which tries to pride itself on its own democratic processes within its own party, and yet here they are saying that the public of New Zealand being able to vote on something is in a way anti-democratic. I think that is appalling. I think it’s very, very sad.

Look, the other thing I would like to mention is just to say that this, to me, is a response. It sits alongside the four-year term bill. I think Duncan Webb said that a four-year term is a distraction—I think it was the word that he used. Well, look, I don’t agree. I think, over time—and we had a good debate about this yesterday—just about every person in the leadership role in this country has said that a four-year term makes a lot more sense than a three-year term. It is something which we should be putting in front of the public. It is something that we have two slightly different coalition agreement components to and said that we would do that. We’ve got support pretty much around the House, and that is something which we should be going to the public to decide on. The way in which people get elected is the decision for the public, not the decision for parliamentarians, and I commend this bill to the House to support the other bill.

Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Tēnā tātou. E tū ana au ki te tuku i ngā whakaaro o Te Pāti Māori mō te pire e whai ake nei.

[Greetings to the Speaker. Greetings to us all. I stand to deliver Te Pāti Māori’s thoughts about the following bill.]

Te Pāti Māori supports the essence of this bill, because we support giving power to the people to decide on our laws in some situations. What we do not support is allowing the majority to decide the rights of minorities and dismissing the constitutional rights of te iwi Māori through Te Tiriti o Waitangi along the way. We do not support the tyranny of the majority, as described by Sir Geoffrey Palmer in his submission as part of the King’s Counsel submission against the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill. That tyranny of the majority has been weaponised against te iwi Māori over and over and over again.

Last year, the Government passed a law that would force almost all of our Māori wards to be put to a referendum. These seats are necessary to promote unapologetic and unrestrained voices of tangata whenua, those people, as Te Tiriti partners in local government. Their existence should not be subject to a referendum where the majority of voters are not Māori. The ACT Party wants to put the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi to a referendum. They’ve made up their own meaning for the Treaty, a novel one at that, a meaning that suits their desire to open up Aotearoa to corporate exploitation, and they want to ask the public whether or not they agree with the principles—principles which have no basis. These are the dangers of a referendum.

They’ve made up principles out of thin air, and asking the voting public to tick “Yes” or “No” without providing any information—these are the dangers of a referendum. Āe, those are the dangers of a referendum. Referendums can be used to take away our voices and take away our rights at the whim of the public, the ignorance or otherwise of the public, and if there are no cautions put in place to raise the skill of the public to make a good decision, then referendums are very dangerous things.

These are the dangers of referendums for tangata whenua. These are the dangers that referendums pose to the rights imparted to the Government through Te Tiriti o Waitangi and every other citizen in the country. We cannot have referendums that victimise minorities or rewrite history and, sadly, recent history has shown us that these are the only reasons that the Government will use a referendum.

We cannot support the bill in the context of where we are today. Referendums have not been on our side since the establishment of Parliament in 1845 and, unfortunately, despite the apologies of the Crown to te iwi Māori, as we listened to, all just graciously politely listened to, this morning, agreed to this morning—despite those apologies to te iwi Māori, we continue to see the promotion of ideas and bills that run straight over the top of Māori constitutional rights, constitutional rights in our own country.

These are the dangers of referendums in 2025, referendums of the ignorant. These are the dangers of those things.

Hon Member: So you don’t support referendums, but you support this bill?

TĀKUTA FERRIS: Well, you obviously haven’t been following the whole speech, bro. These are the dangers of referendums, and this is our position.

We agreed to share this country in 1840. Our tīpuna committed to sharing it and, unfortunately, we’re still here waiting for the Crown to come around to honouring their commitments. Kia ora tātou.

Thanks, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to speak on this bill. I think that the detail of the bill is pretty straightforward, and it’s laid out for the Justice Committee to do its good work and ensure that we get it through and bring it back to the House.

What concerns me, though, is some of the speeches that we’ve heard in this House already in this first reading. It was surprising—had to follow along somehow—the Greens’ contribution around the idea of referendums and that we should only have them after we have had a big discussion about the thing we’re going to take to referendum. It was surprising to me when I looked at Morning Report on 25 February and it says, “The Green Party says it backs the idea of a four-year parliamentary term, but with caveats.” Had they decided that after a big kōrero with the whole of New Zealand before they put the full stop on their policy, or were they going to take it to a referendum? I’m confused.

Then we had a conversation that sounds like Te Pāti Māori will only agree with New Zealanders that vote for them. I’m not sure about you, Madam Speaker, or the rest of the House—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: You can’t bring me into the debate, Mr Bates.

CARL BATES: Fair call, Madam Speaker, I won’t bring you into the debate. All members of this House, I’m sure, got votes from Māori voters across New Zealand, so I’m looking forward to the day that they recognise that there are other views than their own. I think this referendum process, should it be utilised, will give us the opportunity to see the view of wider New Zealand. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. On this side of the House, in the Labour benches, we’re supporting this bill today to select committee. The reason is that it’s very clear that this is a companion bill to the four-year term bill. If that is, in fact, going to happen, it’s an extremely important constitutional event and it’s really incumbent on this House to make sure that if there is going to be a referendum on that issue, it has to be done properly and we have to give the people of New Zealand every opportunity to engage properly and be part of that decision-making process.

I do want to say at the same time that this is a Government led by a Prime Minister who wants to say yes all the time. The problem for his party is that the things he’s mostly saying yes to are ACT’s policy proposals. Increasingly, this House and the legislative agenda in this Parliament is dominated by ACT’s political programme. We saw the Treaty principles bill really suck up the oxygen in this place for weeks and weeks on end. We had tens of thousands of people marching in the street for a bauble of the coalition negotiations which was to take the Treaty principles bill to select committee. Really, we’re debating this bill today only because it is the companion piece to the four-year term bill that we’ll be discussing shortly. This is really part of ACT’s programme, but it is important, nevertheless, that if referenda are going to be used for things like the four-year term, they have to be done properly.

What does the bill do? It provides a legal framework to make sure that referenda are carried out in a way that is transparent, well-organised, and fair. The bill, which I think, really, at first reading, gets the tick, deals with the really important elements of holding a referendum: ensuring broad public participation, making sure the results are binding and are respected, clear and neutral questions in the referendum that avoid ambiguity and bias, public education campaigns to support the referendum, and financial transparency.

There’s significant debate to be had about the role of referenda in our political system. Colleagues across the House have raised some of those questions. Personally, I’m not a fan of too many referenda. I think that our representative democracy should, if working well, be able to deliberate, build consensus, and make good decisions for the future of the country. But there are things from time to time, like some of the great conscience issues that this House has dealt with in recent years, and constitutional issues, where it can actually be reduced to a clear binary choice: yes or no. It’s very important when those things happen to make sure that the public have a say about the rules of engagement in our democracy. I think the four-year term is one of those things.

I will add as a post-script that there are some eyebrow-raising elements of the four-year term bill, and we’ll have a chance to get into those in detail, but the idea that you would give future Governments the responsibility to have to choose between the three-year or a four-year term and some consequent adjustments to the select committee process every time the Government changes, every time there’s a new parliamentary term, is gaga in my view. I cannot imagine who thought it was a good idea to draft a bill that did that. Having said that, I think there is a lot of support around this Parliament and around the country for the idea of a four-year term. I hope that, through that legislative process, we’ll at least get a chance to think about it, debate it in this House, and hopefully come up with something that’s a bit more grounded and a bit more sensible.

Labour supports this bill because we believe it is essential that, if there is going to be a referendum on the four-year term, it has to be done properly to do justice to our democracy and to the people of New Zealand.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Just a reminder for those listening from home and really struggling to cope with what they’re hearing, we’re on the first reading of the Referendums Framework Bill. It’s a bill that the National Party and this side of the House supports. Welcome, Mr Speaker, to the Chair.

It’s very interesting. The feeling that I’ve been getting listening to some of our colleagues across the House is that there seems to be a problem with us multitasking, but on this side of the House, the Government, we have no problem multitasking. Someone made the comment on the other side of the House that we on the Justice Committee, which I’m so proud and privileged to be part of, should be focusing on things that matter—I’m paraphrasing here. Look, the fact is, to us here on this side of the House, the Gangs Act is a law that really mattered, and we focused on that and we got that done, much to the happiness of people in South Auckland that are feeling a lot safer. The Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill—that’s something that we passed into law through the Justice Committee while we were multitasking, and something that I’m very proud of because it means that people committing crimes no longer have a “get out of jail free” card, an endless one that keeps going and going. Currently, we are working on the Sentencing (Reform) Amendment Bill. This is multitasking, and this is what people that are used to multitasking can do.

What this bill will do, Mr Speaker, as you may know, is, essentially, strengthen consequences for when those people are going out to the shops, smashing up the dairies, smashing up other shops in South Auckland, in Takanini. They’re not going to get away with an 80 percent discount anymore when we pass this law. We have no problem multitasking on this side of the House. We commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. And, gosh, talk about multitasking! The member who has just resumed her seat, Rima Nakhle, managed to talk mostly about something that was completely irrelevant. I congratulate her for sneaking that one in. Unfortunately, what we’re here to do, in a proper sense, however, is talk about this particular bill, the Referendums Framework Bill.

As has been said by my colleague the Hon Phil Twyford, we will be supporting the bill, because we have to, essentially. It is important, if you’re going to do something, that the framework and the scaffolding is there to support that so it can be done well. What’s at stake is our democracy, our reputation for being a good democracy, and all of the mechanisms by which our citizens, including ourselves, need to be able to trust those processes. As we have heard today, when we think about referendums, it does conjure up some deeply held thoughts on the rightness or the wrongness, so to speak, of using this within our democracy, but it is simply a tool, and, like all tools, it is a good tool for not depending on the scaffolding around it and depending on the good faith of the actors involved in utilising such a tool.

In this particular example, we find ourselves introducing this bill as a means by which to support the piece of legislation that the ACT Party has brought to this House regarding the four-year term, the Term of Parliament (Enabling 4-year Term) Legislation Amendment Bill. It does strike me that, yet again, here we are in this House talking about another piece of ACT legislation, and it does conjure up the visuals of the tail wagging the dog. If you create a vacuum, as the National Party have, if you create a vacuum and there’s a little bit of a lull in legislative ideas, all of a sudden you’ve got to plug that with the old ACT Party suggestions. But that’s all right—that’s all right. We just don’t think it’s a priority, but it’s here before us now, so this is what we’re dealing with—of all the things we could be talking about, when the Government talks about its priorities and the things that are important to New Zealanders. Never mind!

As has already been discussed as well, we do have some concerns about the larger bill that this particular bill supports, in so far as the messiness of the four-year term. Again, my colleague the Hon Phil Twyford talked about some of the examples of how the three- versus four-year term—which, on the surface, when I heard it in the media, I kind of thought, “Well, that’s relatively novel.” Then, as more details came out about the Government being able to opt in or opt out, we looked at the fiasco and the debacle in terms of this Government being able to form a Government after the last election and the sheer amount of time that that took—and you add another level of complexity about taking that coalition and then being able to choose whether they would have a three- or a four-year term and the ramifications of how the select committees would work post that decision—and all together that’s quite a substantial amount of time. We hear, time and time again, not just in this House but throughout our engagement with people from all walks of life, that certainty is such an important part of being able to function properly. This bill certainly doesn’t create that.

What it does do, though, is it governs the basic conduct of referenda, and that is necessary if we’re going to go down this pathway. It allows the legislative framework and the regulatory rules governing the electoral process to be, essentially, consistent, efficient, and there is some precedent from 2020, when a similar bill was passed to regulate the referendum associated with the 2020 general election. Obviously, that Act was then automatically repealed in 2022. Given the potential for a new referendum, this bill is necessary. With regard to parliamentary time-management, however, it is, as I said, frustrating that Parliament’s time is being consumed by yet another ACT Party pet project when some more pressing things should be done. I think, when all is said and done, that is quite illustrative of this current Government, and it’s no wonder that the tail continues to wag the dog.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It seems that the debate has been taken offtrack, and I’m keen to bring it back on track. Members have talked about a variety of different subjects, but this is a really generic bill. There have been complaints made from the other side about priorities and bringing legislation to the House, and things like that, yet they’re supporting the legislation, so you can see the hypocrisy there.

The bill is very, very generic, and it says, “The bill provides the legislative framework to hold a referendum on the term length of Parliament.” That’s it. That’s all it’s doing. We in the National Party are supporting this bill to the select committee, just like we have done already for the four-year term legislation.

As a member of the Justice Committee, I eagerly—eagerly—await consultation on this bill, and the four-year term bill as well, and seeing what the feedback is from the general public in New Zealand, whether they are happy with the legislation as it is or whether they would like changes made to it in engaging and consulting on it through the legislative process at the select committee. I commend the bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

The question is, That the Referendums Framework Bill be considered by the Justice Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Justice Committee.