Single commission of seven

Press, 29 May 1985, Page 43

Single commission of seven

In 1945 the two representation commissions were superseded by a single commission of seven members. Three were official members and the other four were appointed by the House of Representatives. Each unofficial member ceased to be a member on the date of the next census after the date of his appointment.

Another 1945 change was to provide for the population of New Zealand to be counted on the basis of adults only, rather than total population. The “country quota” was abolished and the tolerance was set at plus or minus 500.

The 1950 Electoral Amendment Act reinstated total population for determining electoral boundaries and replaced the tolerance of 500 with a tolerance of plus or minus 7Az per cent.

Between 1945 and 1956 the two main parties wrangled over the composition of and tolerance that should be available to the commission.

After the 1945 census the Labour Government confirmed the existing official/ unofficial members as members of the commission. In 1951 the first National Government took advantage of these provisions to appoint a completely new set of unofficial

members to the commission.

The disagreement between the two parties over this and other matters resulted in a compromise in the 1956 Electoral Act. The commission was restructured with four official members, two unofficial members, and an independent chairman. The tolerance was reduced to a maximum of plus or minus 5 per cent.

In 1975 the chairman of the Local Government Commission was added to the commission as an official member (without a vote) because of his knowledge of local authority boundaries. This amendment followed the recommendations of the 1975 Select Committee on the Electoral Act. The rules for the division of New Zealand into general electoral districts after each census are in Section 16 of the Electoral Act, 1956.

The South Island districts are set at 25 and the general electoral population divided by that figure for the South Island quota. The North Island general electoral population is divided by the South Island quota for the number of North Island districts.

A fraction is disregarded unless it exceeds one half, then the number of North Island districts is increased by one.

Each district has to con-

tain a population figure equal to its island quota, but “due consideration shall be given to the existing boundaries of electoral districts, to community of interest, to facilities of communications, and to topographical features.”

Section 17 allows adjustment of the quota when drawing electoral boundaries and says: “Where, in the opinion of the commission, districts cannot be formed consistently with the considerations hereinbefore provided for so as to contain exactly the quota, the commission may for any district make an allowance by way of an addition or subtraction of general electoral population to an extent not exceeding 5 per cent.

Sections 15, 16 and 17 are entrenched provisions, which means they cannot be changed unless 75 per cent of members of Parliament vote for the change. The act requires the Government Statistician to report the results of each census to the Surveyor-Gen-eral as soon as possible after that census. He then has to prepare maps showing the distribution of the population and provisional boundaries for the electoral districts and to call a meeting of the official and unofficial members of the com-

mission to appoint a chairman. The commission has six months from then to report the names and boundaries of the electoral districts to the Governor-General. Before the commission may report finally to the Governor-General it has to give notice in the Gazette of the proposed boundaries. Any person or organisation may object to the commission within one month and the commission is obliged to consider any objections before reaching a final decision. Once the commission has reported to the GovernorGeneral he has to proclaim the new boundaries in the Gazette. They take effect upon the dissolution or expiration of the existing Parliament and continue in force until the next report of the commission is proclaimed and similarly takes effect. While both Britain and Australia use the representation commission approach, their commissions are not independent as is New Zealand’s.

Britain has separate boundary commissions for England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. It is chaired by the Speaker of the House, with a judge as deputy chairman. Two members are appointed by

Ministers of the Crown and the remaining two are civil servants. The commissions are obliged to avoid as far as possible electoral boundaries crossing local authority boundaries.

The final responsibility for implementation of the commission’s recommendations rests with the Home Secretary. He may amend or reject some or all of the proposals before they are presented to Parliament for implementation. Similarly, the Australian Parliament has refused to surrender total responsibility for boundary setting to a neutral body. Redistributions are only undertaken at the direction of the Gover-nor-General. Each state has its own commission but the Commonwealth Parliament has power to reject, but not to modify their proposals. New Zealand’s Royal Commission will be considering the submissions it receives and will have to decide if there is enough argument in favour of change to this country’s present system in light of social, technological and other developments and, if so, in what form that change will take. The Royal Commission is due to make its recommendations by October next year.