Wednesday, 6 August 2003

Wednesday, 6 August 2003

Wednesday, 6 August 2003

Mr Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Visitors

Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council

Mr SPEAKER: I have much pleasure in informing honourable members that the Hon Mr Ahmed Qurie, Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council is within the precincts of this Chamber. I am sure that members would wish that he be welcomed and accorded a seat on the left of the Chair.

The Hon Mr Ahmed Qurie, accompanied by the Deputy Speaker, entered the Chamber and took a seat on the left of the Chair.

Points of Order

Presentation of Report of Privileges Committee

GERRY BROWNLEE (NZ National—Ilam): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Noting that the Privileges Committee report has now been tabled, and having had a look at it and being aware of its contents, and also being in possession of a fax transmission to you yesterday from Crown Law, in which the Solicitor-General has stated as point 15 that his conclusion—

Mr SPEAKER: I have not received any fax from anyone. I can tell the member that I have not received a fax.

GERRY BROWNLEE: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: The member is in a point of order.

GERRY BROWNLEE: It is a new point of order. Given your statement that you have not received the fax that was sent yesterday to the Clerk of the House, are you telling us that the Clerk has not passed it on?

Mr SPEAKER: It was sent to him on behalf of the Privileges Committee; it was not sent to me. So would the member please restate what he is saying.

GERRY BROWNLEE: The point is that there is now a Privileges Committee report on the Table. We know that in that report there is a reference to the Solicitor-General’s comment—point 15—that states the conclusion is that section 55(1)(c) of the Electoral Act is unambiguous, and that as a result of Mr Duynhoven filing his completed application on 11 June 2003 it meant that his seat became vacant. Section 129(1) of that Act states that the Speaker must declare the seat vacant as soon as he knows that that is the determination by the relevant authorities. It seems clear that that is what has happened here.

I have looked through Speakers’ Rulings and cannot see a time when any Speaker has ruled that although something is generally known to be a fact by the public, the Speaker himself or herself does not yet know it. We get into a rather difficult situation, particularly if we look at Parliamentary Practice in New Zealand, written by David McGee, which states that the House and its members are subject to the law of the land, as promulgated by Parliament, in the same way as everyone else in the State, and that they must comply with any statute that applies to the House’s proceedings, notwithstanding any Standing Order or practice of the House to the contrary.

I think that today we are straying dangerously into the territory of using the practice of the House to circumvent the law. That is a little bit of a concern. It would be unfortunate if the office of the Speaker were to be in any way drawn into the ambit of what a Government wants and prefers. We have seen the device of the Privileges Committee used for consideration of a matter that really, in many people’s view, should not have gone there in the first place, because it was so patently clear-cut that there had been a breach of the law and there was a vacancy in the seat concerned. Our question is this: when do you intend to declare the seat to be vacant, now that it must be obvious to all of New Zealand that you know that such advice has been tendered?

Mr SPEAKER: When I ruled on this matter on 23 July I said: “I will be guided in my actions under the Electoral Act by the committee’s report and the House’s conclusions on it.” Following the presentation of a report by the Privileges Committee, the report is set down for consideration as general business. This means that the report will be on the Order Paper for debate next sitting day, after questions and any urgent debate. I refer members to Standing Order 63. When that debate has been held, I will take any action that I consider needs to be taken in accordance with the Electoral Act.

RODNEY HIDE (ACT NZ): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Maybe you can help the House a bit further, in this regard. I read from the Privileges Committee report—thanks to Mr Brownlee, we know that this is the advice of the Solicitor-General—

Mr SPEAKER: We are starting to debate the privileges issue. The report has been tabled, but this has to be a point of order.

RODNEY HIDE: The report states that the Hon Harry Duynhoven’s seat became vacant on 11 June 2003, under section 55(1)(c) of the Electoral Act. It seems clear to me that the Privileges Committee has stated that the Hon Harry Duynhoven has gone. My question to you is this: why has he not gone?

Mr SPEAKER: I do not need any assistance, as I said before. I quote what I said on 23 July: “I will be guided in my actions under the Electoral Act by the committee’s report and the House’s conclusions on it.” Committees can make recommendations; the House makes decisions.

Dr WAYNE MAPP (NZ National—North Shore): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. You referred to Standing Order 63, which sets out an order for general business. I note Standing Order 63(1)(6) states “Consideration of reports of the Privileges Committee.”, and Standing Order 63(2) goes on to state “General business is held at 2 p.m. on each sitting day.” But this report was tabled earlier than 2 p.m. So it seems to me that going by Standing Order 63, you are required to deal with it at 2 p.m. today.

Mr SPEAKER: Well, the member does not know the Standing Orders. It is put down on the Order Paper for the following sitting day.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I think this matter should be cleared up. There seems to be some confusion as to what has happened in terms of the procedure. As I understand it, the matter was referred to the Privileges Committee to hear evidence as to whether the law affects Mr Duynhoven’s right to be here. That is very, very clear. The second thing is that the House has to decide what it makes of the evidence presented to it by the Privileges Committee. That process is yet to be entered into. That being the case, there is the fact that for a brief moment you will have to make a decision before the legislation is, presumably, passed to rectify this matter. I think the points of order thus far raised are erroneous.

Mr SPEAKER: The member is absolutely correct.

GERRY BROWNLEE (NZ National—Ilam): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Notwithstanding the contribution from Mr Peters, the first point I make is that the deliberations of the Privileges Committee on this matter are not particularly relevant. The Solicitor-General has made it clear that there was a breach of the Act on 11 June 2003 and the seat became vacant. Are we now saying that the Privileges Committee is a body that can determine whether or not a ruling from the Solicitor-General is reasonable, is fair, and should be acted upon? If we are, we would like you to reconsider a letter that you received from the Hon Nick Smith. Once again, I ask this question: since Parliamentary Practice in New Zealand, by David McGee, makes it very clear that we cannot use the Standing Orders or the practice of Parliament to reach a position that is contrary to the law, how can anyone who is watching this process conclude that we are doing anything other than just that?

Mr SPEAKER: Members will have a chance to debate that. The Solicitor-General, however eminent, does not rule Parliament; the Speaker does.

RODNEY HIDE (ACT NZ): I raise a point of order, Speaker. I thank you for that last point, and I thank my colleague the Rt Hon Winston Peters for his explication of the process, but you are quite right: it is you who decides that a vacancy exists. I am afraid—and I want to put this in as nice a way as I can—that it looks as though the Speaker is waiting for the Government legislation, before he decides whether a vacancy exists. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: I have had two interjections from one member. Yesterday I threw members out for doing precisely that. I warn members that there are to be no interjections during points of order, at all. I want to hear what Mr Hide has to say; he has a perfect right to be heard.

RODNEY HIDE: Thank you for that. The situation is that it has been your job—not that of the House—since 2002 to decide whether a vacancy exists. The Solicitor-General has advised that a vacancy has existed since 11 June. The Privileges Committee, to which you referred the matter, has confirmed that view by a majority. It seems to me that it is not the House’s job but yours to decide that, and it seems to us on the Opposition side of the House that you are awaiting legislation before you rule, in order to protect a member from the forces of the law. That has to be wrong, and I ask you when you will decide a vacancy exists, because that is not a matter for the House.

Mr SPEAKER: I am waiting for the House to debate the report of the Privileges Committee, which is a perfectly reasonable step and one which I announced on 23 July. When the House comes to a decision, I will then most certainly act.

Hon ROGER SOWRY (Deputy Leader—NZ National): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I want to raise the issue as to why you would wait for the House to decide that. It is clear from the report that was tabled today that the majority of the members of the Privileges Committee believe that a vacancy has occurred. There could be two reasons to wait for the House to discuss that. One would be that the Government may well scrape up the numbers to overturn the Privileges Committee’s determination. If that is the case, are you telling us that you would be guided by that vote, rather than by the determination of the Privileges Committee? The other reason to wait would be that you—like everybody else here—know the Government will introduce retrospective legislation, so that by the time Privileges Committee’s report comes to be discussed, it will be redundant. If it is the second reason, it starts to look dangerously as though the Speaker is being drawn into the political manoeuvrings of the Cabinet. I think that it is a very bad place for the Speaker, and for this Parliament, to be. You were not required to refer this case to the Privileges Committee. Having done so, and having received its report and made it public, it is beyond comprehension that you would wait and risk being seen to be complicit in Government manoeuvrings.

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Leader of the House): It is worthwhile to remind ourselves how this issue actually arose. It arose because the Hon Harry Duynhoven wrote to you, Mr Speaker, raising a matter of privilege, and you ruled that a matter of privilege was involved. This House, drawing upon a very long tradition, has always been involved when matters of that sort are raised. That dates back at least to the Wilkes cases of the early 1760s, in terms of Parliament having a right to have a say in its own membership. That is clear. You stated at the time that a matter of privilege was involved, and that you would listen to the advice from the committee and from the House. The committee, of course, is not determinative of the House’s position; only the House can be determinative of that. You have determined that you will wait for that advice, but then the decision is yours and yours alone.

I also recall that I was asked by the Hon Richard Prebble whether the Government would give a guarantee that it would not introduce any legislation until after the Privileges Committee had considered this matter, and I gave that undertaking. I can conclude from that only that Mr Prebble was seeking an assurance that the Government would not legislate until the Privileges Committee had considered the matter, and that it was therefore perfectly appropriate for the Government to do so once the committee had considered the matter, even if one opposed the legislation. I make it quite clear that, had that not been the case, the Government would have legislated last week.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): The problem with Mr Prebble’s request to the Government was that he did not ask the Government to give an assurance that it would not legislate before the House had considered the report. I am afraid that that was an omission on his part. But the real issue that concerns me, Mr Speaker, is the suggestion that you should make up your mind according to the Solicitor-General’s legal opinion. I want to give you two reasons that you should not consider that as a final arbiter of the correct course to take. I will give you references to the cases. They are the wine-box case and the Quality Inn affair, in which the Solicitor-General—though he might sit in the Court of Appeal today—was demonstrably wrong.

Mr SPEAKER: We have got to the point where I think we are going over the same ground again. The Speaker will always give every leeway to a member before taking the drastic step of declaring a seat to be vacant—no matter who the member is. In a doubtful case, that will involve consideration by the Privileges Committee and by the House. That is what I did on 23 July.

JOHN CARTER (Senior Whip—NZ National): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I have listened to the comments made by a number of members with regard to this issue, and, in particular, to the concern that was expressed by the Hon Roger Sowry and others in respect of the interpretation that may be put upon the fact that we are to debate the report on the next sitting day, and that you will delay your decision in the meantime, until that debate has taken place. Therefore, the possible interpretation by some is that you may be waiting until the Government seeks time to pass legislation to suspend the Electoral Act, in order to change the law in whatever way the Government wishes to in the bill that it will bring in. We have not seen that bill yet. I wonder whether it is appropriate for us, therefore—so that we do not put you in a position where it could be seen that you are perhaps at risk in that regard—to have the debate pretty much immediately, so that the House can debate the report—

Mr SPEAKER: You can seek leave to do that.

JOHN CARTER: I am just about to do so, but I wanted to explain why that is. If we debate the report, that would therefore enable you to make your decision without any bias, and without the complication of any pending legislation. Accordingly, I seek leave for the debate on the Privileges Committee’s report to be held immediately after question time has concluded.

Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought. Is there any objection? There is. I am getting to the point now where I want to move on. The points of order are becoming repetitious. However, to be fair to Dr Smith, I note that he has not had a point of order. I will allow him one.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (NZ National—Nelson): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek an explanation, in the light of your comments and ruling on this matter that you will treat all members on the same basis.

Mr SPEAKER: Absolutely.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I wrote to you in respect of a question about whether I had broken the law, and asked for a Privileges Committee hearing with regard to the actions of the Solicitor-General. You advised that the Privileges Committee could not hear the matter, because the issue of whether or not I had broken the law was nothing to do with the Privileges Committee. I seek an explanation of why, when it comes to Mr Duynhoven and a suggestion that he has broken the law, suddenly there is a Privileges Committee hearing and we are going down a very different course of action. It seems that there are two different standards for members in this House when it comes to the deliberations of the Privileges Committee and to your rulings.

Mr SPEAKER: No, there are not. Mr Duynhoven has not broken any law.

STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT NZ): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek your indication of exactly what your role will be, following the debate that you wish to have. The indication is that you want to have the benefit of, and be guided by, the report of the committee—

Mr SPEAKER: And the House.

STEPHEN FRANKS: The House debate is hardly likely to add anything more than a series of opinions based on the political interests of those in this House. The Privileges Committee is the most neutral body we have, and even it is not neutral. It has the advice of the highest law officer. I think the House deserves to know whether, if the House did decide one way or another after a debate, you would take the House’s decision as binding; if so, in what way would that relate to the breach of the law that I believe has been established? It is only sophistry that says there is no breach. How can the standing of the Chair as an apolitical figure be maintained in the face of your apparent indication that you want to wait until the House directs by majority?

Mr SPEAKER: I have said that I will be guided by what the House says, but in the end I will determine, based on the law, whether a seat has become vacant.

GERRY BROWNLEE (NZ National—Ilam): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The House heard you very emphatically state that Mr Duynhoven has not broken the law. The question that arises immediately is why, then, the matter he brought to you was referred to the Privileges Committee, if in fact you are telling us that you are not at the moment moved by its decision, and yet you are so emphatic that he has not broken the law. It seems incongruous that you would think he had not broken the law, but would still send the matter to the Privileges Committee. Secondly, do we take it from that that you have determined that Dr Nick Smith has broken the law, and is therefore not allowed to have his case heard by the Privileges Committee?

Mr SPEAKER: No. I said that privilege matters do not necessarily involve a breach of the law.

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Leader of the House): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. That point clearly shows why it is important to have some time between the report being tabled and people attempting to debate it, because if people had actually read the report and read the evidence that was given, from both the Solicitor-General and, indeed—talking to their colleagues the members of the committee—the Clerk of the House, they would know that the situation is whether a vacancy has occurred through an action. The taking of the action itself is not an illegal action. There is no breach of the law if a vacancy occurs, and the member should understand that, if he bothers to read the report properly.

Mr SPEAKER: The member is perfectly correct.

RODNEY HIDE (ACT NZ): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I will be brief, and I assure you that this will be my last point of order.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Hallelujah!

RODNEY HIDE: I remember when I got thrown out for doing that to Mr Peters.

Mr SPEAKER: I want Mr Peters to stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I apologise to Mr Hide. I am very sorry for doing that.

Mr SPEAKER: This is an important issue, and I want to give everyone the opportunity to contribute.

RODNEY HIDE: The member is lucky I am not going to push it—he can stay.

Mr Mr SPEAKER: Do not push your luck. Carry on with the point of order.

RODNEY HIDE: The situation is this. I cannot say that I have read the whole report—we got it only at 1 o’clock—but I have read the conclusions and the Solicitor-General’s advice. Mr Duynhoven is in clear breach of the law. The seat became vacant on 11 June. So Mr Duynhoven is outside the law, and we understand that the Government is proposing legislation to put him back inside the law retrospectively. We also understand from the law that since 2002 you have had a statutory duty in such circumstances to declare the seat vacant. My question to you is whether you will not exercise that duty until some legislation has been prepared, and how come you yourself are not following the law in terms of the Electoral Act?

Mr SPEAKER: The point is that this is a matter for debate. Consideration of the report is set down for the next sitting day so that members can first read the report. I repeat what I said on 23 July: I will be guided in my actions by the committee’s report and the House’s conclusions on it.

Dr WAYNE MAPP (NZ National—North Shore): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: I want to move on now. We have been discussing this for 20 minutes, and I think that is a reasonable go. It must be some new point of order.

Dr WAYNE MAPP: It arises directly out of your statements. You said that Mr Duynhoven has not broken the law. The Privileges Committee has stated in a report, which has been tabled today, that, based on the advice of the Solicitor-General, there is a breach of section 55 of the Electoral Act. That is the breach of the law that engages you. The concern is this: your statement gives rise to the view that you do not think that there is a breach of the law—that is, a breach of the Electoral Act by Mr Duynhoven—and we on this side of the House then think that you therefore must have prejudged the situation. I would suggest, Mr Speaker, you need to reassure this side of the House that that has not occurred, given the clear finding of the Privileges Committee.

Mr SPEAKER: I want to give the members of this House an absolute assurance that every step I have taken has been after the fullest possible consideration with my adviser, whom I regard as the best of any in the world, and the most unbiased person whom I could ever get reports from. This reference to the Privileges Committee is not based on a breach of the law; it is about whether a seat is vacant. A seat can become vacant without any breach.

Questions for Oral Answer

Questions to Ministers

Rates—Auckland Regional Council

1. DEBORAH CODDINGTON (ACT NZ) to the Minister with responsibility for Auckland Issues: Following her advice yesterday that “Rates are one of the things that affect all of our choices about where we live” and that she regrets the choices that rate hikes have forced some Auckland ratepayers to make, what choices was she talking about for the Aucklanders who can’t afford to pay their rates that are due today?

Hon JUDITH TIZARD (Minister with responsibility for Auckland Issues): Aucklanders living in Rodney or North Shore City who believe they cannot afford to pay their rates should contact the Auckland Regional Council today. Their options include arranging to pay their rates in 10 instalments. The Auckland Regional Council also has provision for people in extreme financial hardship to have their rates payments postponed.

DEBORAH CODDINGTON: What advice does she have for Mrs Janie Farquharson, who is an 88-year-old widow with a blind 63-year-old son, now that the rates bill on her home of 64 years has hit $8,589 a year, up $1,400 from last year, and who has been told that if she cannot pay it she should move; and where exactly does the Minister think Mrs Farquharson should move to?

Hon JUDITH TIZARD: The regional council advised me that only 5 percent of Auckland residential ratepayers will pay more than $500 a year for regional council rates, including GST. I would suggest that anyone in a very highly priced property—and the estimate I have is that property with the rates quoted would probably be worth over $3 million—should ask family and financial and legal advisers how they can arrange their affairs so that they can pay the rates that are due.

David Parker: Did she suggest that Aucklanders should move out of Auckland?

Hon JUDITH TIZARD: No, I have never proposed that. As a passionate Aucklander, born and bred in Auckland, I truly believe that Auckland is the best place in the world to live. However, one of the things that is causing problems for Aucklanders, and for people who want to work there, to have businesses there, and to live there, is the lack of infrastructure, and that must be paid for.

Gerry Brownlee: Would she agree that even though there are no rail tracks to the North Shore, 88-year-old Mrs Farquharson and her 63-year-old blind son are subsidising, through their Auckland Regional Council rates, rail passengers at a rate of $9.30 per passenger movement; and does the Minister stand by her words yesterday that: “the rail network upgrade is affordable, sustainable, efficient, and user-friendly,”?

Hon JUDITH TIZARD: My words were that that is what we are working towards. We are also working towards a transport system that is integrated. Ratepayers, residents, and people in business throughout New Zealand will benefit from good transport, including rail, roads, ferries, buses, and trains.

Peter Brown: Will the Minister tell the House how she sees herself as Minister with responsibility for Auckland Issues; does she see herself as the Minister who must advocate for imposing rate rises and what have you on Aucklanders, or does she see herself as I would see her, as the Minister who must fight for Aucklanders on the whole range of issues?

Hon JUDITH TIZARD: I take that compliment very sincerely. I do believe that Auckland has to have the infrastructure it needs to serve Auckland and New Zealand. The problems of infrastructure in Auckland are seen as a barrier to New Zealand’s present and future prosperity. We must find a way, with taxpayers, ratepayers, and users, so that we can afford the infrastructure that every New Zealander needs for the sort of future we are all working for.

Mike Ward: Is the Minister not concerned that the funding of the eminently sensible improvements to Auckland’s public transport system is to be done by the highly questionable shifting of the rates burden from the business sector and the rich to the poorer homeowners, via a uniform annual charge, and has the Minister got any measures up her sleeve to address that issue?

Hon JUDITH TIZARD: That is entirely a matter for political debate in Auckland. That is what the Local Government Act 2002 gives local authorities the power to debate. I understand that over 600 of the 420,000-odd ratepayers did make submissions to the Auckland Regional Council. I hope this is an indication that Aucklanders will get involved in what the real issues are. And it is a political debate.

Paul Adams: How can the Minister possibly reconcile her view expressed yesterday that Aucklanders and the rest of the country are now paying to meet the city’s transport needs through petrol tax, with the fact that only half of the tax collected actually goes towards roading? Given this, is she lobbying Cabinet for the percentage of funding allocated by Transfund for local roads to be increased from the present 27 percent maximum to 80 percent; if not, why not?

Hon JUDITH TIZARD: Any money taken out of the consolidated account that goes to things like health, education, and policing has to be made up some other way. Right now we are not actually paying for the roads and the transport services we need. It is not a matter of finding money out of thin air; New Zealanders, one way or another, are going to have to pay.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Does the Minister understand that one of the principal causes of infrastructural pressure in Auckland is that every year her Government is imposing upon it the population of Rotorua from abroad, hence driving up costs and rates; and what reports has she submitted to her Cabinet colleagues on that, if any report at all?

Hon JUDITH TIZARD: I understand that a significant proportion of the people coming to Auckland are in fact from the rest of New Zealand. If we do not provide good infrastructure across the whole of New Zealand, that pressure will go on. Excluding anyone is not the answer.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I pointed out to the Minister that she and her colleagues are imposing on Auckland the population of Rotorua every year from abroad, in addition to anyone from around the rest of the country. I am talking about immigration, which does not include somebody from Invercargill or Kaitaia. Would she please address my question.

Mr SPEAKER: I wonder whether the Minister could just touch on that point.

Hon JUDITH TIZARD: I think there are many reports, which Cabinet has seen, showing that immigration, at worst, has an equal effect economically, and, at best, brings prosperity to New Zealand.

Heather Roy: Does the Minister agree with her colleague the Hon Chris Carter that the new Local Government Act 2002 gave ratepayers like Mrs Farquharson and her son “more opportunity to have their say in what their local city, district or regional councils do”, and that the new Act will “make it harder for councils to increase rates without good reason.”; if so, why are Auckland ratepayers in revolt?

Hon JUDITH TIZARD: Yes, I do agree. I have rung the North Shore Citizens Advice Bureau, and it has told me that no one has complained of an inability to pay his or her rates. The bureau has had inquiries from people wanting to join the rates revolt. However, that is a matter for Auckland. In the end, this has been well advertised. The Auckland regional growth strategy stated that this infrastructure was necessary. The regional land transport strategy has been reviewed every 3 years and indicates that this transport infrastructure is necessary. Business has been calling for it, and Auckland has been calling for it. I am sorry that people are upset, but in the end this is a democratic decision that Auckland local authorities have made.

Gerry Brownlee: Given the Minister’s answer that business, the general population, and the whole of the Auckland community have been calling on the Government to do something, will she now admit that all that the Government has done is to invest in a rail system that is dilapidated and seriously lacking in its own infrastructure, and that the cost is simply being foisted on to ratepayers like Mrs Farquharson, and will be so for some years to come?

Hon JUDITH TIZARD: We have had some complaints from people around New Zealand who are paying more through petrol tax to maintain transport services around New Zealand and to help Auckland deliver better services. We have to invest in the dilapidated railway system because right now that is all we have got. If we want a better one, then we have to pay for it.

Mr SPEAKER: There are too many interjections. I do not want to forbid them all together as I am entitled to do.

Peter Brown: Will the Minister give us her opinion on whether she thinks it is fairer and more appropriate for Auckland ratepayers to pay for transport, rather than money being used that is collected in petrol tax and goes into the consolidated account?

Hon JUDITH TIZARD: The Government has made a vastly increased contribution to roads and to public transport in Auckland. For the first time we are making sure that Auckland gets its share of the Transfund capital funding. We are now putting nearly three times as much into public transport. We paid $80 million for rail access rights. The Government and the rest of New Zealand have made a huge contribution. Aucklanders have repeatedly said through their leaders that Auckland must help. I do not think it is fair that elderly people are forced to pay vastly more. I think it could have been stepped in, in a more progressive way, but the regional council democratically arrived at a decision. It is not for Parliament to start to attack that decision.

Rodney Hide: Has the Minister given any thought to improving her ability to listen to what Auckland ratepayers are saying, given that she has told this House that, on the basis of one phone call to the North Shore Citizens Advice Bureau, she has concluded that ratepayers do not have a problem with their rates; and has she also given thought to making rates fairer by capping the rate of increase that can occur in any one year?

Hon JUDITH TIZARD: The member could bring in a member’s bill to suggest that. I understand that Dr Brash ruled that out at a meeting on the North Shore last week, so I do not know how much support he would get. But, fundamentally, the level of rates determines the level of infrastructure. We are saying that that is a local decision that needs to be made democratically and locally. I suggest to the member, who was inquiring, that if he had been to the number of meetings that I have been to in Auckland and had talked to the number of people whom I have talked to, he would be aware—

Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith: We didn’t see you in Rodney.

Hon JUDITH TIZARD: No, because I was at a Ministers meeting in Australia.

Mr SPEAKER: The answer was far too long.

Dr Don Brash: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am concerned that I was quoted as ruling out last week any change to cap local authority rates. I did not suggest that I was opposed to that, at all.

Mr SPEAKER: The member’s word will be accepted.

Rodney Hide: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am following this up because the pattern has already been broken by a point of order. I think that was a bit unfortunate; the Minister’s hearing is very bad, from that meeting, Also, I would like to point out that I do have a member’s bill, and she will be given the opportunity to vote for some justice, for a change.

Mr SPEAKER: The member is just making a debating point.

Deborah Coddington: Does she have any sympathy for the plight of Mrs Farquharson, who told me this morning that the only way she would be leaving her family home of 64 years was feet first; and does this Minister stand by her advice, which despite her denials was given in this House yesterday, that people like Mrs Farquharson should pay up or move out?

Hon JUDITH TIZARD: That is not what I said yesterday. I have deep sympathy for Mrs Farquharson. I too have a passion for my garden. Everybody makes decisions about where they live in terms of what they can afford. I feel really sorry for her. I feel sorry for a lot of my elderly neighbours in Ponsonby who are in very, very highly priced properties. They need good advice and they need to act on it. I am sorry that there is nothing this Parliament or this Government can do, when we are addressing Auckland’s infrastructure needs, to deal with that.

Deborah Coddington: In the light of that answer, does she agree that one of the rate payment options that Mrs Farquharson has is to mortgage her house to the North Shore City Council, which Mrs Farquharson told me this morning the council has advised her to do, and what is it about her Government that it expects retired great-grandmothers to remortgage their homes to pay these rates?

Hon JUDITH TIZARD: The regional council advised me that anyone paying the rates that are being quoted would have a property worth in excess of $3 million. I think that Mrs Farquharson and others like her have many more choices than some other people who live in Auckland have.

Heather Roy: I seek leave of the House to table a media statement by the Hon Chris Carter on 30 June 2003, which states that the Local Government Act 2002 will make it harder for councils to increase rates without good reason.

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

Homeownership—Government Initiatives

2. GEORGINA BEYER (NZ Labour—Wairarapa) to the Minister of Housing: What pilot initiatives is the Government supporting to assist more families to achieve homeownership?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister of Housing): Last Friday the Government announced a 2-year trial initiative with Kiwibank to make homeownership easier for modest-income households. The $5.3 million trial will assist about 1,800 families into homeownership. This is a pilot, but it extends good opportunities to families to borrow outside the normal lending criteria. If it is successful, we will look at expanding the programme.

Georgina Beyer: Who will be assisted by the mortgage insurance trial?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: The programme should attract first-home buyers on a modest income with little or no deposit, multiple-income households, such as extended-family households, second-chance buyers, such as those who have suffered a relationship breakdown, and State-house tenants paying a market rent who wish to buy a home. Housing New Zealand Corporation will be writing to market-rent tenants next week to gauge their level of interest in the programme.

Dr Wayne Mapp: How does the Minister explain the inconsistency of his housing policy, which bans State-house tenants from buying their homes but allows families with $100,000 of income to be able to get a subsidised or mortgage-guaranteed loan, and why would the Minister not allow State tenants to buy their homes, recirculate that capital, and get the waiting list down?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: We do not have many houses left to sell after the National Party sold 13,000 of them. But we now want to offer some of those people who are at a market-rate level the opportunity to move out and buy a house, and then we can rent to somebody else.

Pita Paraone: Does he think that giving people low-deposit home loans will make much difference to those really in need of housing, when in many urban areas where work is likely to be available, repayments will be prohibitive because of the high cost of purchase?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: Yes, I do think it will make a difference. What we are doing here is offering the opportunity to buy a house up to $280,000. People who come into the programme will have to, of course, have the ability to repay the loan.

Georgina Beyer: What has been the reaction to the mortgage insurance trial?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: The reaction has been very, very good indeed. For example, the mortgage broker, Mike Pero, has said: “Good on them. It’s a positive move, and will certainly help those who couldn’t otherwise get a loan from the bank.” And perhaps another gauge is that 4,300 calls were made in one day to Kiwibank when this programme was announced.

Immigration—Adverse Impacts

3. Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) to the Minister of Immigration: What is the Government spending on managing any adverse impacts of immigration, and has she received any reports from the Minister of Police about the costs of immigration he has to contemplate?

Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Minister of Immigration): The 2003-04 component of Vote Immigration allocated to managing the adverse impacts of immigration is $21 million—around 15 percent of the total allocation. I have not received any specific reports from the Minister of Police on effects that adverse impacts of immigration may have on Vote Police expenditure, although given that we have budgeted for increased removal activity where these are not voluntary departures, it will result in the use of police resources, as immigration officers do not have the power of arrest; nor do they have the power of strip search as some of our media seem to think.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Given that the Minister has raised the issue of the media, why was the report in the Sunday Star-Times of 5 August reciting that $54 million a year is the figure she gave in respect of managing the adverse effects, not $21 million as she just said; and does she not read newspapers such as the New Zealand Herald “Weekend Herald”, which sets out a police suggestion of a migrant back-up force in Auckland because they cannot cope with migrant crime?

Hon LIANNE DALZIEL: I cannot understand why the Sunday Star-Times contained that particular figure, unless, and I assume, the reporter was referring to last year’s figures, which would then show it to be accurate. We have changed the way we allocate expenditure around managing adverse impacts of immigration, which would have been quite clear to an individual. However, I do note, given the rest of the article, that as the article was written before I was interviewed, I am not surprised.

Lynne Pillay: Can the Minister advise whether adverse consequences of immigration include the risk of people presenting false documentation, and whether the increased budget is intended to improve both verification and enforcement action?

Hon LIANNE DALZIEL: Yes, the total budget has been designed to improve the Immigration Service’s ability to verify documents, although that is now not in the adverse impact section of the vote, and also to make appropriate investigations to ensure enforcement where false documents have been presented. Criminal charges are, of course, laid by the police, and it is not just the Immigration Service that is susceptible to document fraud. An Assignment programme last year referred to a scam that related to false Inland Revenue Department certificates being obtained for education purposes. I am advised that the police investigation that was already under way has now resulted in four successful prosecutions of the people involved, two of whom have already been deported from New Zealand after serving prison sentences.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Is the Minister capable of doing some simple calculations: a report elicited under the Official Information Act from her department shows that 44 percent of the $124 million of the immigration budget is spent on the consequences of immigration flows on infrastructure, laws, and policies—and how does $21 million become 44 percent of $124 million, which is a global figure, which is all in her document; and, second, why is she paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to detain asylum seekers every week, by way of a weekly allowance, when poor old Joe Bloggs burglar from New Zealand does not get a cent?

Hon LIANNE DALZIEL: As I explained, 2002-03 was the first year of outcome-based accounting in Vote Immigration. When the service was allocating activities to sub-outcomes, all risk management activities such as application verification within the visa and permits management output class were counted in the activities undertaken to minimise adverse impacts of immigration. That no longer occurs, because risk management is now considered an integrated part of interaction with customers. As to the second question—and it was clear from the article that, obviously, I was interviewed after it was written—the $3 a day allowance is paid for toiletries and for the necessities of life. If that member thinks that we would keep somebody in detention without enabling him or her to buy toothpaste, toothbrush, and soap, for goodness’ sake, I do not think that anyone would accept that that was a fair and reasonable situation. That is not a new allowance paid. It was simply allocated from a different budget, as is clear from the article.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I seek leave of the House to table a simple supermarket account that shows that if one is buying a toothbrush, toothpaste, and soap, it will not cost one anything like $21 a week.

Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that. Is there any objection? There is.

Foreshore and Seabed—Public Access

4. METIRIA TUREI (Green) to the Minister for Land Information: What proportion of New Zealand’s foreshore is either in private hands or subject to other restrictions on public access?

Hon JOHN TAMIHERE (Minister for Land Information): Based on initial advice drawn from the work done by Land Information New Zealand so far, I can tell the member that there is public access as of right to approximately two-thirds of the New Zealand coast through roads and reserves. Public access over the remaining one-third is potentially restricted due to private ownership or other restrictions.

Metiria Turei: What proportion of the remaining one-third of land described by the Minister that is not open to public access, but suffers restricted access, is held in Māori customary title?

Hon JOHN TAMIHERE: I have not received any definitive advice on that issue, but I can tell the member that based on the information I have seen thus far, it is clear that less than 10 percent of the land in question is held by Māori.

Clayton Cosgrove: Has the Minister seen any reports suggesting solutions to that issue, and is he planning to adopt or incorporate those ideas into Government policy?

Hon JOHN TAMIHERE: Yes, I have seen a range of ideas and suggestions, including suggestions from the Hon Bill English to legislate for public ownership of private property, through to suggestions from Dr Wayne Mapp, who states that “Obviously pre-existing freehold title must be protected by law, like mine.”—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Both Mr Mapp and Mr English are clearly on the public record as saying that it is the public foreshore and seabed for which title should be confirmed by legislation. The member is deliberately misleading the House as to their statements, which are clearly on the public record. It is not for a Minister of the Government to say what might be the policy, but I would be happy to table the statements from both Mr English and Mr Mapp.

Mr SPEAKER: The member cannot say that anyone is deliberately misleading the House. He will stand and withdraw that comment.

Opposition Member: Why?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I stand and withdraw. I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: The member cannot say that anyone is deliberately misleading the House. That is a suggestion that a person is telling a lie and that has been ruled out as long as I have been in this House.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: I am still on my feet. Secondly, I want the Minister to answer the question that he was asked.

Hon JOHN TAMIHERE: The Government has indicated that it will more than likely follow the suggestion made by Dr Wayne Mapp, as opposed to the suggestion of his leader.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Does the Minister stand by his statement to the New Zealand Herald that: “significant chunks of the foreshore”—not the Queen’s chain, the foreshore—have private ownership title, and that we are talking thousands and not hundreds of kilometres of private title to the foreshore? If he does stand by that, when will he deliver the proof to back up that claim?

Hon JOHN TAMIHERE: Given the preliminary work done, and given the fact that it is a hugely complex issue, I stand by those statements.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Has the Minister received any reports from his Māori colleagues in the Labour Party caucus, namely the Māori colleagues who promised the Māori people the earth, before the election—and the seabed, and the foreshore—and they will now see themselves losing their riparian rights, which they have owned for a thousand years; and what sort of representation is that?

Hon JOHN TAMIHERE: No.

Gerrard Eckhoff: Given this Minister’s commitment to upholding the property rights of Māori, will he rule out being a member of any Cabinet that moves to legislate away the private property rights of all New Zealanders; if not, why not?

Hon JOHN TAMIHERE: The member can rest assured that if any Government can fix this one, we will.

Hon Peter Dunne: In the light of that last answer, can the Minister indicate what steps he is taking to ensure that all New Zealanders will continue to have access and freedom to go and use the facilities of the foreshore and seabed?

Hon JOHN TAMIHERE: This is an issue that is deeply felt by Kiwis, and we want to get it right. We have already said that the existing rights of Kiwis to take their babies down to have a barbie at the beach will be safeguarded.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: How does he reconcile his statement to the New Zealand Herald that Māori could get some type of title to the foreshore, with the statement made by Margaret Wilson and Helen Clark 4 weeks ago that the Government would legislate for Crown ownership of the foreshore? Which statement represents Government policy?

Hon JOHN TAMIHERE: As a Government and as a Cabinet we can reconcile these matters. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: I have just been reflecting on that, too. Could the Minister expand on that just a little, please?

Hon JOHN TAMIHERE: There are work plans and work streams under way, and the Government will make announcements in due course. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: The Minister was asked how statements could be reconciled. I presume that he addressed that question when he said there were plans under way to do so. That perfectly addressed that question.

Metiria Turei: Has the Minister seen any reports that suggest that the introduction of a concept of stewardship, which is similar to the Māori customary practice of kaitiakitanga, could assist with the active protection of the conservation values of the foreshore for the benefit of both the environment and the New Zealand public?

Hon JOHN TAMIHERE: No.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Could the Minister advise the House which statement is correct: his statement yesterday that Māori could get some type of title to the foreshore, or the statement made by Margaret Wilson and Helen Clark 4 weeks ago that the Government would legislate to ensure that title remained with the Crown?

Hon JOHN TAMIHERE: In all matters I would prefer the advice of the Prime Minister.

Metiria Turei: Has the Minister seen any reports that highlight the need to deal with public access to the foreshore, over both private land and Māori customary land at the same time and equally, rather than treating Māori ownership as a lesser right than the rights of private owners?

Hon JOHN TAMIHERE: I have not seen any reports that opine in that way.

Dr Wayne Mapp: I seek leave to table two documents, one by the leader of the National Party, Mr Bill English, and one by myself. Both those documents will show an identical position on the issue of Crown ownership—

Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table those two documents. Is there any objection? There is.

John Carter: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. That raises a very interesting situation. We have a statement made by a Minister, which is now on the record, that claims that two members of the National Party, the Hon Bill English and Dr Wayne Mapp, made a statement that appears, according to the documentation that Mr Mapp has, to be quite inaccurate. Mr Mapp sought leave to table the documents so that it could be corrected, and leave has been refused. How do we now get around the situation of correcting those statements? It is very clear that Mr Mapp was talking about exclusive ownership by the Crown.

Mr SPEAKER: Dr Mapp’s statement to this House must be accepted by every member, as must that of anybody else. Any member has the right to reject leave to table, but no one has the right to object to what any member said. I clearly heard what Dr Mapp said. He is entitled to say that, and I take his word on it.

Foreshore and Seabed—Māori Land Court Applications

5. Hon Dr NICK SMITH (NZ National—Nelson) to the Associate Minister for Courts: How many applications for title to the foreshore and seabed are before the Māori Land Court and what is the total length of coastline being sought?

Hon RICK BARKER (Minister for Courts), on behalf of the Associate Minister for Courts: I am advised that there are 35 applications for foreshore and seabed before the Māori Land Court. It has not been possible in the time available to determine the total length of the coastline that those applications relate to. I will provide that information to the member as soon as it becomes available.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Noting that the number of claims has increased from 19 to 34 in just 4 days, will this Minister give a categorical assurance to the House that those claims will not result in the issuing of exclusive title to the foreshore or seabed; if so, does he agree that the claimants are wasting their time by claiming such exclusive title?

Hon RICK BARKER: In response to the three questions, I firstly make the point that there is no mystery in the change, at all. The original question asked by Dr Nick Smith related to the number of claims that have been lodged by the registry since 19 June 2003. The subsequent question was about all claims, which includes claims that had been lodged before that. There is no spooking about this, at all. Secondly, I am not going to make any comment on the nature of the claims. People have a right to lodge a claim before any court in this country on any matter they deem fit. They do not have a right to get the decision they wish.

Tim Barnett: Is the Minister concerned at the number of applications for foreshore and seabed that are before the Māori Land Court?

Hon RICK BARKER: No, I do not have any concerns about the number of claims. This Government upholds the right of all New Zealanders to have access to justice and have their disputes resolved before the appropriate court.

Stephen Franks: In the light of the answer to the last question, when the Prime Minister bluntly told Māori that the Government would not satisfy claims upheld for oil and gas, and a month or so later said much the same thing on the seabed and foreshore issue, but has since started to fudge on the second issue only, why the difference; and will the Minister repeat the Attorney-General’s assurance that there will not be privilege created over seabed and foreshore based on ethnic inheritance?

Hon RICK BARKER: On the comments of the Prime Minister, I suggest that the member direct those questions to the Prime Minister. I repeat, for his information, that the Prime Minister answered yesterday that this is a complex issue and the Government’s views will be put out for consultation very shortly.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Can the Minister advise the House as to what there is to stop the Māori Land Court, in any one of those 34 claims, from issuing exclusive title; if he is not able to advise us as to there being anything to stop that, how can the Government continue to guarantee public access to all those areas?

Hon RICK BARKER: The answer to that is very clear. Yesterday the Prime Minister outlined to Parliament that the Government will be putting forward its proposals very shortly in a comprehensive document, and the proposals will be resolved. The member can rest assured about that. I suggest he takes a little time and waits. All will be revealed.

Employment—Jobs Jolt

6. GORDON COPELAND (United Future) to the Minister for Social Development and Employment: What advice, if any, has he received which led him to claim that the recently announced Jobs Jolt initiatives will help employers facing skill shortages?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister for Social Development and Employment): In late 2002 I requested advice from officials on proven initiatives to assist labour and skill shortages identified by employers and industry sectors. The initiatives chosen for Jobs Jolt result from that advice, and from information gained in our many discussions with employers, industry groups, and unions.

Gordon Copeland: Is the Minister therefore concerned that attempts by recruitment agencies in Wellington to find out the details and extent of skill shortages in this region, from Work and Income, the Department of Labour, and his own ministerial office, have been unsuccessful; if so, what does that mean for the success of the Jobs Jolt programme?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: If the member can tell me the name of the firm I will give it the World Wide Web address where it can get all that information.

Russell Fairbrother: How will Jobs Jolt assist with the national skills shortage?

Hon Member: The National skills shortage?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: Working with a lower-case “n”, I say that Jobs Jolt aims to increase the supply of labour, including skilled labour, and to provide opportunities for job seekers who now face the barriers of getting into the labour market. In the example of mature job seekers who are highly skilled and experienced, Jobs Jolt will enable those people to be matched with job opportunities and skill shortages. In addition that will be supported by information for employers to address the areas in which they know they have shortages, so they can get workers.

Katherine Rich: With regard to the Minister’s earlier comments about his Jobs Jolt programme, can he tell the House which section of his third-way manual contains references to removing a work-test exemption for those nearing retirement, and can he explain why, if he did want to talk tough on welfare, it would not have been more useful to concentrate on the group most worrying to people—the under-25s?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: The package does concentrate on the group of under-25s. We are work-testing people over 55 years of age, and not over 50 as the member claimed last night. She does not know that people are work-tested from the age of 50 to 55 years at present, so we are introducing a test here for those aged 55-plus, among a range of things. I think it is chapter 13 of the third-way manual.

Barbara Stewart: Can the Minister give any assurance to our highly skilled, experienced, and willing-to-work people in the 55 to 59-year age group that they will not be subject to any further discrimination and humiliation for having to move away from their communities and families because employers in their own areas are not prepared to hire them; and can he give them an assurance that work in other regions will not result in exploitation—like that experienced by the Ukrainian farm workers down south who were supposedly filling skill shortages?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: Yes.

Sue Bradford: What consultation, if any, took place with beneficiary groups or the Mayors Task Force for Jobs on the changes to the work-testing and sanctions regime announced in the Jobs Jolt programme?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: No specific consultation on those two matters has taken place, but, as I have said before, we have beneficiary advocates in twice a year, for example, to talk about every aspect of the benefit system, and no other Government has done that. We talk frequently with the Mayors Task Force for Jobs on all aspects of our policy.

Marc Alexander: Does the Minister agree with the view that the Jobs Jolt initiative comprises a “lurch to the right by the Government on welfare policy”; if so, is it not about time?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: I know that the member would be very encouraging if we were to move to the right, but on this occasion we are developing a well-balanced package.

Sue Bradford: Can the Minister inform the House of what no-go areas for beneficiaries have already been drawn up, so that people can make sensible decisions if they are thinking of shifting in the near future; and what impact does he think designating no-go areas will have on business and property prices in those districts?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: The Ministry of Social Development department Work and Income has what is called a remote area policy, which is what I think the member is referring to. I am obviously willing to give that to the member, or to any other member of the House who would like to have it. Members should remember that what we are talking about here is an attempt to ensure that people who shift from areas where there are jobs to areas where there are no jobs are encouraged to go to areas where they can get jobs.

Judy Turner: In the light of the focus in the Jobs Jolt package on discouraging unemployed people from moving into regions with few available jobs, what specific initiatives are being considered to make it easier for those already living in such areas to be made aware of jobs in other regions with labour shortages, and, if necessary, to provide more assistance for their relocation?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: Job seekers in that situation would simply need to ask their case managers to advise them of job opportunities elsewhere, and, if there were suitable job opportunities, money would be available to help them relocate.

Gordon Copeland: In the light of the fact that 43 percent of businesses are having difficulty in finding skilled staff, how, specifically, does the Government intend to engage and communicate with the business community to find out where its labour needs lie?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: We do a number of things. For example, on Friday I will be in Auckland talking at a skills and labour shortage forum. We are doing 13 of those large forums around the country. The Department of Labour has a range of survey techniques. The quarterly survey of business opinion is just out, with more information, and the Ministry of Social Development surveys around regions for skills shortages. I could go on, but the time is short.

Crime—Police Resourcing

7. RON MARK (NZ First) to the Minister of Police: Is he satisfied that sufficient front-line police staff are available to combat crime in New Zealand?

Hon GEORGE HAWKINS (Minister of Police): I am generally pleased, because we have provided so many more staff under a Labour-led Government. In fact, since September 1999 we have achieved a 10 percent increase in staff and we now have more police than ever before. We are paying police more than before, and we can contrast that with the fact that on 19 March 1998 police marched on Parliament for fairer pay, when the Treasurer was Winston Peters.

Mr SPEAKER: The last part of that answer is not acceptable.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I did not hear what he said, or the way he said it. Could he perhaps repeat it?

Mr SPEAKER: No, I heard what he said quite clearly. The last part of the answer was not necessary to render the answer acceptable.

Ron Mark: If the Minister is so confident, can he tell the House, if there are adequate police on the streets at night patrolling in order to deter and/or catch criminals, how is it then that a business situated a few metres from his own electorate office was recently ram-raided for the second time in 3 years, causing over $20,000 worth of damage; and is it simply, as the locals are saying, because there is no one out there to catch these people?

Hon GEORGE HAWKINS: The police use an intelligence-led theory now, whereby staff are placed where they think they are needed. Of course, crimes do happen, and police do investigate them.

Martin Gallagher: Could the Minister emphasise for the benefit of this House what strategies the police are developing to prioritise crime response?

Hon GEORGE HAWKINS: Police districts are implementing intelligence-driven police responses. Priorities are crimes in progress, crimes against the person, and crimes with wider public implications.

Nandor Tanczos: Can the Minister confirm that police currently spend around 300,000 hours a year on cannabis offences, which is the equivalent of about 150 sworn front-line officers, and if he cannot confirm that, how many hours do they spend on cannabis offences?

Hon GEORGE HAWKINS: I cannot give the member the exact number, but they are spending sufficient time to make sure that those who are breaking the law in using cannabis are caught.

Ron Mark: Given the priorities he has stated, and the work that he is doing, can the Minister tell the House how many of the 51 burglaries reported between 23 and 29 June in his own electorate have been cleared; if he cannot answer, is it simply because of his blatant disregard for the safety and security of the people who live in his own electorate, and who put him in this House to do the job he is meant to be doing?

Hon GEORGE HAWKINS: I can tell that member that the Counties-Manukau police are doing very well. They arrested a 33-year-old chap the other day who had committed several burglaries. I think the member will find that the police are now resolving more crime than ever before, which is better than the rate of 29 percent from a decade ago.

Dr Muriel Newman: How can New Zealanders have any confidence in him as Minister of Police when police officers up and down the country are saying that he is the worst Minister in living memory, and what is his response to suggestions that the best thing he could do for fighting crime in New Zealand is to resign?

Hon GEORGE HAWKINS: When people make up things like that, they are dissatisfied in the job, but I do not know many police like that, because they have just got a pay rise, which they will get for the next 3 years. This Government has given the police pay rises without the need for them to march on Parliament. They think I am a very good Minister.

Ron Mark: I seek the leave of the House to table a fax from Mr Craig Maxwell, a gentleman in Manurewa, in which he expresses his concerns about—

Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is.

Ron Mark: I seek the leave of the House to table an article that specifies the number of burglaries that have been committed in the Manurewa electorate between 23 and 29 June.

Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is.

Hon GEORGE HAWKINS: I seek leave to table an article from the Evening Post dated 19 March 1998, when police marched on Parliament because they were dissatisfied.

Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that article. Is there any objection? There is.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I seek leave to table the proof of the police training numbers from 1998, which were the biggest in this country’s history when we in New Zealand First were in Government, and when I was the Treasurer.

Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is.

School Curriculum—Initiatives

8. MARK PECK (NZ Labour—Invercargill) to the Minister of Education: Is he aware of any new initiatives to promote teamwork, leadership and hard work as part of the school curriculum; if so, what?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Minister of Education): Yes. Tomorrow I will be launching “The Hillary Challenge”, which is an interactive, online social studies programme for students in years 5 to 10. “The Hillary Challenge” retraces Sir Edmund’s quest to Mount Everest, and encourages students to learn the skills and values he has demonstrated throughout his life—teamwork, leadership, hard work, altruism, and his love of adventure.

Mark Peck: Why is it important to encourage the development of those skills within the school context?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Those skills are vital for unleashing the creative potential of tomorrow’s leaders.

Immigration Service—Minister's Involvement

9. Hon MURRAY McCULLY (NZ National—East Coast Bays) to the Minister of Immigration: Why did she tell the House, in relation to the New Zealand Immigration Service memorandum stating that there was an agreement to “lie in unison”, “I would have had to be a party to such an agreement”, and what steps are being taken to have an independent body fully investigate her involvement in this matter?

Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Minister of Immigration): I was simply referring to the fact that the commentary included in the media log stated that, “All the others caved in”. I was the only person who spoke publicly about the matter, so I made the assumption that I would have had to be included. I am awaiting the outcome of the investigations being undertaken by the Secretary of Labour—which will be publicly released—before considering whether any further steps should be taken.

Hon Murray McCully: Given that the “we agreed to lie in unison” memo was apparently circulated to the entire senior management team at the Immigration Service, apparently without challenge, what does the Minister think that tells us about the culture in that organisation, and can she tell us whether any member of her staff received, or was aware of, that memorandum?

Hon LIANNE DALZIEL: I would say it suggests that not many people in the Immigration Service read the media log, and, no, I am not aware of anyone in my office being on the receiving end of the media log.

Hon Murray McCully: Has it crossed the Minister’s mind that a department whose spokesperson tells the Ombudsman that a memorandum he wrote does not exist, and his general manager could not remember a memo asserting an agreement to “lie in unison”, and now cannot remember when he briefed the Minister about giving details of the Tampa refugees to the police, who in turn cannot now remember when she was briefed on the matter, would seem to be a department that is prone to outbreaks of amnesia in unison, and could the Minister tell us how she explains this sad state of affairs?

Hon LIANNE DALZIEL: I am sure that not everybody who received the media log actually read it. Having read the commentary that Mr Ian Smith sent out on 20 December, it would suggest to him that not many people in the Immigration Service were interested in reading his throwaway lines.

Conservation Week—Government Initiatives

10. DAVID BENSON-POPE (NZ Labour—Dunedin South) to the Minister of Conservation: What initiatives has the Government taken to mark Conservation Week?

Hon CHRIS CARTER (Minister of Conservation): On Sunday I opened the latest major addition to our public conservation lands—4,000 hectares of north Canterbury high country, described in the Christchurch Press as “a slice of heaven”. The purchase of this area has protected the habitat of threatened native wildlife and opened up this exciting area for public recreation.

David Benson-Pope: What priority, if any, has been given during this week to the protection of New Zealand’s historic heritage?

Hon CHRIS CARTER: Historic heritage is a theme of this year’s Conservation Week. My department and the Historic Places Trust are holding over 170 public events celebrating our historic heritage. The Department of Conservation is the custodian of more than 12,000 heritage sites, half of which are Māori archaeological sites. Extra funding in this year’s Budget will enable it to protect our heritage better, and some of the key sites are being showcased this week.

Shane Ardern: As it is Conservation Week, is the Minister celebrating our continual growth in biosecurity by giving New Zealand residency to yet another alien invader, such as the scoliid wasp—as was announced by his department today? If the Minister is concerned about that new intrusion, what is he going to do about it; if he is not, why not?

Hon CHRIS CARTER: I can assure that member that as Minister of Conservation I am very concerned about biosecurity. The Department of Conservation works actively with the Ministry for the Environment, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, and other agencies, to address that question.

Indonesia—Defence Force Assistance

11. SIMON POWER (NZ National—Rangitikei) to the Minister of Defence: Does the composition of the New Zealand Defence Force and their current commitment to deployments allow them to offer assistance to Indonesia in the aftermath of yesterday’s bombing in Jakarta; if not, why not?

Hon MARK BURTON (Minister of Defence): Yes.

Simon Power: In light of the bombing yesterday in Jakarta, does he agree with the statement made by the Prime Minister that New Zealand exists in “an exceptionally benign strategic environment”; if so, why?

Hon MARK BURTON: The environment in which we exist is clearly one that is ever-changing. That is why this Government has a constant rolling response to that environment. That is why we have committed many millions of dollars to the security of New Zealand.

Darren Hughes: On the issue of deployments by the New Zealand Defence Force, what recent reports has he seen?

Hon MARK BURTON: Although our Defence Force is currently engaged at the highest operational tempo for two generations, it continues to receive international accolades, such as the Australian Meritorious Unit Citation, recently received by the RNZAF’s No. 3 Squadron, which was also named Helicopter Squadron of the Year for its outstanding achievements in East Timor. It is unfortunate that Opposition members cannot share in celebrating those successes and congratulating our people on a job well done.

Gordon Copeland: Has the Minister received, or does he expect to receive, any request for assistance from the Indonesian Government; if so, what kind of assistance would he expect that to include?

Hon MARK BURTON: No and no.

Simon Power: Is the Minister currently taking any action to ensure that New Zealand’s defence forces are up to scratch for deployment in the event of such threats to the safety of New Zealanders in the Asia-Pacific region, or will he simply continue with the Government’s existing policy, described by the former Chief of Defence Force, Air Marshal Carey Adamson, as “penny-pinching” and “conducted on the run”?

Hon MARK BURTON: Time does not permit me to give a fulsome answer, but I may do so later. Let me say that unlike that member’s party, which was in Government for 9 years, this Government has a defence policy framework, a force structure framework, and a long-term development plan to put in place the acquisitions that for 9 long years—as that member’s own colleague said—it did not do when in Government.

Television New Zealand—Commercial Sponsorship of News

12. SUE KEDGLEY (Green) to the Minister of Broadcasting: Does he have any concerns about Television New Zealand Limited considering commercial sponsorship of One News, especially in light of Television New Zealand Limited’s charter obligation to provide independent, impartial, and in-depth news and current affairs?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister of Broadcasting): No. By law I am prevented from having any involvement in TVNZ’s gathering or presentation of news and current affairs. TVNZ has advised me that there are no plans for commercial sponsorship of One News.

Sue Kedgley: Is he aware of any stories critical of Mitsubishi Motors that have aired on the Holmes show since Mitsubishi Motors began to sponsor it, and does he agree that conflict of interest issues that call into question the independence and impartiality of news and current affairs programmes are inevitable when corporates sponsor them; if not, why not?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: No, I am not, though I would have to confess that I do not watch the Holmes show every single night of the week, and, yes, I do agree that corporate sponsorship is inappropriate in news.

H V Ross Robertson: Is Television New Zealand using any charter funding for news and current affairs programmes?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: I am aware that Television New Zealand uses no charter money for news and current affairs. That is something that it fully agrees with itself—it wants to maintain complete impartiality.

Sue Kedgley: Given the Minister’s statement that he agrees that there are conflict of interest issues and that it is inappropriate for corporates to sponsor news programmes, does he agree that that also pertains to current affairs, which the charter states must be equally independent and impartial, and will he be calling for a review of all sponsorships of current affairs programmes in TVNZ?

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: I am not aware of any sponsorships in those areas. I am aware people advertise during that period of time, but that is quite different.

General Debates

General Debates

Hon ROGER SOWRY (Deputy Leader—NZ National): I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. What a mess this Government is in. What an absolute shambles! [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: I will start the member’s speech again. I do not want to have that sort of noise from interjections, and I urge members to control themselves.

Hon ROGER SOWRY: What a mess this Government is in. What an absolute shambles! This Government is spinning out of control, as it tries to combat the mess that it is making in a wide range of portfolios and tries to cover that up. Let me just run through a few of the issues today.

I will start with the issue of the Māori claims before the Māori Land Court for ownership of the seabed and foreshore. The Prime Minister on day one came out and promised New Zealanders that she would be a leader of action, and that Labour would legislate to ensure that ownership remained with the Crown. What has happened is that every hour of every day since the Prime Minister made that announcement, there has been a little shuffle backwards. Every hour the Government has taken another little step backwards, and New Zealanders do not trust this Government on the seabed and foreshore issue. That is why in the last 10 days over 63,000 New Zealanders—63,000—have signed National’s petition that opposes this Government giving away the ownership rights to the seabed. Sixty-three thousand New Zealanders have gone online and signed that petition, because they can see this Government shuffling backwards on that particular issue.

We have seen the Minister with responsibility for Auckland Issues in the House today. What a shambles she has created up in Auckland! There she is—she is the person who the Government said would fix Auckland’s problems, and there she is today saying that because she made a call to the citizens advice bureau in Auckland and it reported that it had had no complaints about Auckland’s rates issue, that issue was therefore not a problem. Does she not read the New Zealand Herald? This is reminiscent of the leaky homes issue, which the Government said was a New Zealand Herald beat-up. Now we have the Minister with responsibility for Auckland Issues claiming that the Auckland rates issue is just another New Zealand Herald beat-up.

And then there is the Minister of Immigration—well, we have gone from a collective decision to lie in unison to a bit of collective amnesia in the Immigration Service, with the Minister involved in that same programme. That Minister said one day in the House that for there to have been an agreement to “lie in unison” she would have had to be a party to it, and then said we should not worry, because she had organised an investigation into it by the very same officials who would have been involved in it, if it had occurred. That just does not stack up. This Government will have to come clean and get the State Services Commissioner in to look at that issue.

What was the best that the Government could come up with, to try to distract attention from those issues? It wheeled out the Minister for Social Development and Employment, who on Friday announced a new scheme: no deposit on home purchases of $100,000 and under for people on low incomes. Beneficiaries can buy a house with no deposit, so long as the house does not cost more than $100,000. He made that announcement on Friday, and all over the country unemployed people, beneficiaries, and people on low incomes were searching for houses under $100,000 in the far-flung rural reaches of the country. Then, on Monday, he came out with a scheme that means that if people go and live in an out-of-the-way area in rural New Zealand where there are no jobs, the Government will say that they cannot receive a benefit and they have to get back to the cities.

So if people take up the Minister’s offer and buy a house for under $100,000 in somewhere like Shannon—there are no jobs in Shannon; there is no bus service and no other public transport out of there—he will then trundle into those people and say that they cannot receive a benefit if they live there, so they had better hightail it back to the city. How duplicitous is that sort of nonsense?

Hon JIM SUTTON (Minister for Rural Affairs): The historian Tom Brooking has written a biography of John McKenzie, one of my predecessors as MP for Waitaki and the Minister of Lands when the 1892 Land Act was passed—the legislation that put into effect the instruction by Queen Victoria on the public access strips originally given when New Zealand was still part of the colony of New South Wales. Mr Brooking gave his view that: “One of the great misfortunes of New Zealand is that it has been settled by two peoples who are romantic, and even sentimental, about land, and imbue it with magical properties that push past logic into the realms of the supernatural and transcendental. This idealisation and mystification of land raised to quite unrealistic levels expectations concerning its productivity and ability to solve social problems. New Zealand is still wrestling with the consequences of those unfulfilled hopes.”

That attitude towards land continues today, but, as our population creeps past the 4 million mark and the pressure on our environment grows, it is becoming more difficult to access the outdoor recreation that many New Zealanders consider to be their birthright. The legal situation around the Queen’s Chain is often confusing, public understanding of it is incomplete, and access over such land is sometimes discouraged. People have the impression that the Queen’s Chain applies to all beaches and rivers, but that is simply not true. In significant parts of Banks Peninsula and the Marlborough Sounds, for example, there is no right of access to the beaches, in law. So “beaches for all” is a meaningless phrase. Even in 1892, when the Queen’s Chain was enacted, it applied only to Crown land. It did not apply to private land, land owned by Māori, and land sold to European settlers prior to the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi.

So in January this year the Government set up the Land Access Reference Group to look at that issue. Chaired by the former Meat Producers Board Chairman John Acland, the reference group has reviewed access to the foreshore of lakes and the sea, access along rivers, access to public land across private land, and access into private rural land, in order to better facilitate public access to, and enjoyment of, New Zealand’s natural environment. The reference group has focused on whether there are sufficient certainty, information mechanisms, and awareness of expected conduct to ensure responsible public access to waterways and rural land, while still providing for private land use both now and in the future. That group of 11 wise people, drawn from throughout the country and from different walks of life, but all with experience in different aspects of land access, reported to me on Monday night. The report should be printed and made available for the public next week, following consideration by Cabinet. It is an important report, and I will need approval for money to take the matter further.

When the reference group was set up in January, it was pooh-poohed by many people. Some people said there was no problem with regard to access; I am quoting from the ACT member Gerrard Eckhoff. Recent times have proved that to be not true. Other members of the Opposition are tying themselves in knots, demanding that the Government legislate to extinguish any Māori rights to beaches, even while some of their fellow Opposition members demand that there be no disturbance whatever of any Pākehā property rights.

During my parliamentary career since 1984 one thing I have noted is that too often people leap to entrenched positions on issues, without sitting down and listening to what other people have to say. This group’s report is important, but it is not the final word on the matter. Rather, it is the first step in a long process. There will be consultation every step of the way.

DAIL JONES (NZ First): I am reminded of a bill that was introduced into this House between 1972 and 1975 by Mike Moore—the coastal moratorium bill. That socialist Labour Government was going to seize the coastline from all New Zealanders, regardless of who they were. I gather from the Hon Mr Sutton that this Labour Government is to do that again. In a rather dull speech, I could not work out precisely what he would say. However, he told us about a report—and we all appreciate a report—and, from what I can gather, there is to be a report on that report before anything further is to be done. His speech typified for us this Government’s evasion of the main issues that face New Zealand today. The previous National Party speaker raised some of those issues.

New Zealand First wants to raise the very important and immediate issue of the problem that is being experienced on the North Shore of Auckland, in the Rodney District Council area, and in Auckland City, Manukau City, and Franklin District with regard to rates. I had the privilege of being at a meeting with the North Shore City Council on Friday, where I made it quite clear to the meeting that it is the view of New Zealand First, in so far as road taxes and suchlike are concerned, that we intend to phase them down and out—especially the excise tax that goes into the consolidated account—and to provide for more financial resources for roading and other transport areas. That is the firm policy of New Zealand First.

At the moment, for the year ended June 2002 the Government has collected $1.642 billion from roading charges. It spends $940 million. That is a sheer profit of $700 million. In addition, the Government has been collecting a figure of $220 million in the tax for roading improvements in Auckland. Do members remember that tax? It was to be on for 12 months, but the Government has now extended it again. Where is that money? It is sitting in the bank. The Government has now told us that that money will go into the consolidated account, to be used for other purposes. That money should be used immediately for the $27 million—yes, only $27 million—that is needed to help out all those workers, pensioners, domestic purposes beneficiaries, and other people in Auckland, including the people who rent homes, who find that their outgoings will go up as a result of the Auckland Regional Council’s levy.

We heard the so-called Minister with responsibility for Auckland Issues say that improvements to the road transport system, to bus transport, and to the rail transport system are necessary. If that is necessary, what will this Government do about it? New Zealand First is very clear in saying we would make that $27 million available from the roading account. The situation is that the rates to be collected are going up from $75 million to $102 million. That is $27 million more. Next year they will go up by another $18 million, on top of that $27 million. Next year pensioners and the like in Auckland will have to find not an additional $27 million, but $45 million. Where will that money come from? This Government does not care in the slightest.

The National Party told us at that meeting with the North Shore City Council that it had no intention of drawing money from the consolidated account. The Labour Party said the same. New Zealand First is here to fix this problem; we intend to fix it. There is only one way it can be fixed immediately. The Government should back up the Minister with responsibility for Auckland Issues, although she seems to think that the answer to this problem is for people to get out of Auckland and go somewhere else, even though the Minister for Social Development and Employment tells us that they must not go anywhere else, because they will not be assisted by the Government with benefits and suchlike if they do go elsewhere.

Aucklanders are in a cleft stick. Everyone says we should have the bus and rail transport system, but who will pay for it? Will it be the elderly, the sick, the people who have children whom they are bringing up on benefits, the workers, and suchlike? This Labour Government does not give a darn about workers any more—the workers of Auckland, in west Auckland, in Waitakere City, and all those Māori people. John Tamihere is laughing now. He is laughing at the Māori people in west Auckland and at all west Auckland people, whoever they may be, who are struggling to find an extra $200 to $300 a year for rates. They cannot pay the school fees to send their children to the local schools. This minority Labour Government, with John Tamihere, Lynne Pillay, and the like, is not prepared to help the workers of west Auckland, North Shore, or anywhere else.

New Zealand First would do that immediately. It has been our policy for years and years. It is not something that we have just dreamt up; we have always said that we would do that. It is the only way to solve the problem. There is no point in talking about amending the rating legislation, looking at infrastructures, and looking at this and that. It needs dollars and cents—cash. The money is there. The Government has a $1 billion surplus. We want some answers from John Tamihere.

Hon JOHN TAMIHERE (Minister of Youth Affairs): It is always a joy to stand up after one of Dad’s Army’s boys who has been prattling on and having a say. The wonderful thing about his leader, of course, is that he has the ability to go out into mainstream Kiwidom and tell Kiwis how to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to joining the New Zealand First Party. He is a great guided-tour expert!

I want to take up the challenge issued by the little fella from Levin, the member of no fixed abode—the shoe salesman—about rorts and people stepping back from things. Over there we have one of the biggest bunches of bankrupt bozos—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): The member will stand, withdraw, and apologise. I refer him to Standing Order 117, “Personal reflections”.

Hon JOHN TAMIHERE: I withdraw and apologise. To get back to the well-paid beneficiaries over there, they are the best-paid beneficiaries—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): The member will apologise. That was a personal reflection again on other members.

Hon JOHN TAMIHERE: I withdraw and apologise.

Hon Roger Sowry: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I wonder how much leeway there is. There have been times in the past when this Minister’s speeches have been terminated because he has continually strayed outside the Standing Orders. I wonder how much leniency you will give him this time before you take that action.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Under Speaker’s ruling 38/1 leeway is given to respond to the previous speaker. The Minister has had the opportunity to do that now, and I ask him to come to the point.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Minister made so many unparliamentary remarks. I ask that he withdraw and apologise also in respect of the unparliamentary remark be made about Mr Dail Jones when he opened his speech.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): The member cannot ask on behalf of someone else.

Hon JOHN TAMIHERE: The National Party, which stands on being the party of great integrity, says things on its billboards like: “National will see that the coastline and the beaches of New Zealand remain in the hands of all New Zealanders.” It will expropriate, nationalise, and socialise. How can a National Party of the great, old free-enterprise model stand on that? How can a caucus of National Party members sign off on that and give that mandate to their leader? The National Party leader said in the debate on the Queen’s Chain Protection Bill that “landowners are starting to get interested in the controversy because they are not that impressed by the public access lobbyists who assert to them that members of the public have the right to go anywhere they like within 20 metres of the waterway.” That is simply not the case.

The leader of that party knew 7 years ago when he made that speech, recorded in Hansard, Volume 358, at page 18023, that when he went out to tell Kiwis—mislead them—he was going to socialise, nationalise, and confiscate private property rights it would be OK, but: “But only if you’re a Māori. We’ll take Māori rights, but not my Pākehā mate’s.” This is where the debate is, fair and square. How crass and how low! How can a National Party caucus with any backbone—unlike those jellyfish over there—sign off on that? They cannot possibly. They did, though. How dare Mr Simon Powers and Mr John Key, the new breed, sign up to such a shameful policy. These are the politics of divide and rule, the politics of envy. How dare they divide a nation! They have a greed and a lust for the Treasury benches and they will do anything to destroy the fabric of a nation going forward. There is only one party, one Government, that will sort this and fix it, and it is the Labour Party in Government. Even the honourable Dr Wayne Mapp has opined absolutely differently and in contradistinction—he is one of the few honest ones—to the so-called leader, for no other reason than he actually owns some foreshore. He will own up to that, as well. It is all about vested interest when it comes to the National Party boys. It has nothing to do with rights and nothing to do with due process.

Māori have used the courts. Māori have not stormed over everybody else’s rights. These rights need to be explored, and we will uphold the rule of law. We are not going to walk over other people’s land, just storming it and taking it. What sort of a leadership is that? It merely cooks up the people in Nelson, for all the wrong reasons. We know how to build a nation; they know how to destroy it. They know how to wreck it, all for the lust of the Treasury benches, all for greed and vested interest. It is absolutely disgraceful politics. We need to continue to bang on about it. We need to continue to point it out, because, as a nation going forward, we have so much potential to unleash, and we do not need it stymied and suppressed by those members putting out ugly, envious gutter politics.

This is the worst, the lowest, that a Tory party has ever stooped to. It is using a race card. The National Party used to talk about rights; it now talks about race. Over on this side of the House we talk about rights. We are the true face of New Zealand. Members opposite are ageing, over 50-somethings. We hear about rorts. A good example of a rort in the National Party is the “member for the Casablanca Night Clubs”, the “member for the Camel Jockeys”, and the “member for Monaco”. The “very part-time member for Remuera” sits over there. What a rort—yet another one! It just goes on and on with those people. It is all about desperate little men and vested interest and greed. We have had enough. Those members need to be identified for their politics of prejudice and race. It has nothing to do with rights. We need to explore it.

STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT NZ): About a year ago—in fact, on 22 July 2002—a judge sentenced a man who had seized a women from the road, taken her in his car to a public car park, raped her, and tipped her out of his car bound and naked. The judge was troubled because he was having to look at the new sentencing law and work out whether this odious crime was so odious that it was out of the ordinary enough for him to set a non-parole period. As the judge said, rape is odious per se.

The circumstances of this case were not out of the ordinary for rape, but the judge had to deal with section 86 of Phil Goff’s new Sentencing Act, which told him he could set a non-parole period only if the offence was “out of the ordinary range of offending of the particular kind.” The judge was obviously anguished that if he did try to set a non-parole period, he would simply set up a situation for the rapist to appeal. If the rapist could successfully appeal, if he was not seen as a clear recidivist—in other words, as long as he was not a clear reoffender—he would be out of prison after serving one-third of his sentence, and, given the normal rape sentence, that would mean this fellow would be out of prison in 2 years 8 months. That was repulsive to the judge’s idea of justice.

The judge told us what was happening, on that date in July last year. He said: “I can only apply the legislation which Parliament passes. I hope that once the political rhetoric dies down”—there was an election on at the time—“and a new Parliament convenes, urgent consideration will be given to answering the questions I have posed, with greater clarity.”

A year later, on 19 July 2003, the Court of Appeal gave a decision in two more rape cases. The Court of Appeal was also struggling with this notion that it could set a non-parole period only when the offence was “outside the ordinary range of offending of the particular kind”. The judges’ view, expressed by Justice Tipping, puzzled over what “the ordinary range of offending” might be. As the judges said, it involved substantial difficulties of interpretation and application. What is an ordinary rape? They are all horrific—or horrific to someone. They cited the Hon Phil Goff in his greasy introduction of the Supplementary Order Paper to the legislation, and set out in about 10 lines the language in which he had introduced the intended effect of section 86. They concluded: “The problem is that section 86 as enacted is not, either in its language or in its structure, fairly susceptible of that interpretation.” That is the delicate language of the court saying: “Minister, you were talking crap.”

There are two more pages. I will read the judges’ statement: “We end this section of our judgment with a respectful plea to Parliament to revisit section 86 of the Sentencing Act and express itself with greater clarity. We have done our best to discern Parliament’s meaning on the point at issue from the language it has used, in the light of the section’s purpose as we perceive it. Major problems still remain with the section, in particular with the concept of ordinary range of offending when used with the qualifier ‘of the particular kind’. We can foresee this subject being a fertile source of difficulty for some time to come, both for sentencing judges and on appeal.”

What was the reaction of the Hon Phil Goff? First, I shall tell members what he said a year ago. He said that the Act was a huge improvement, that the judges’ comments showed that the new law would lead to longer sentences, that he believed that a review to clarify was not necessary, but that if changes became necessary he would not hesitate to make any necessary changes to the legislation. What did he say a year later—many cases later—when faced with the Court of Appeal’s absolutely clear statement? Phil Goff preferred to pour scorn on me for raising the issue. I first raised this issue with him in a letter. He in effect told me that I did not know the law and that I should read the precedents. He then came back and said: “The legislation, like any major piece of legislation, will be subject to review. We need time to see it settle in.”

Hon RUTH DYSON (Minister for ACC): The last time I had an opportunity to contribute to the general debate, I did as I am going to do now—dedicate my contribution to the dead wood “Blues Brother”, Maurice Williamson. My support of Maurice Williamson’s integrity and honesty clearly did not have an impact on the National Party, although I have noticed some wavering on behalf of its future leader, Simon Power. In fact, I hold out some hope for that young man now. I think he has got a future ahead of him. There is a clear vacancy. I think Simon Power should put aside his natural modesty and humility and say as the previous Governor of the Reserve Bank, Don Brash, has said: “Move aside, Bill; it is time to go.”

What makes me more convinced than ever that it is time for Bill English to go is the absolute desperation that he has shown in resorting to something that I never thought he would do. I had always thought of Bill English as a “Kiwi Keith” type of person, until recently. He is clearly not. Mr English has behaved in a gutter politics way, and that is a very civil description of his behaviour; he has behaved in a way that I think totally discredits him and totally discredits the once-great National Party. He will now be remembered, if anyone does ever try to remember him, as one of the most irresponsible politicians New Zealand has ever had. There is never an excuse to resort to divisive, gutter politics, in my view. Too many people in New Zealand know politicians for them to be able to get away with that. Even in a large country one should not do it, but in New Zealand not only should one not do it but one cannot get away with it.

When Mr English said that the country should not trust Māori, I want to know how Georgina te Heuheu felt about it. How did Georgina te Heuheu feel about being referred to in that way by her current leader? This is an issue that we have to get right. If National members do not want to be part of the solution—and, frankly, I recommend that they have another bit of a think about that—then the least they can do is not contribute to the problem. This is a grown-up, serious, big issue, and I think some of those members, particularly those who played a part in a previous Government, should understand that, and should give themselves a bit of thinking time so that they can come up with a proper answer that maybe will not fit on a billboard but will fit in New Zealanders’ hearts and minds.

Bill English has been just extraordinary. Trying to get a fix on his position is like trying to pick up mercury with chopsticks. Every time one gets it in the corner of the bowl, it flicks right over the other side. Mr English started off by saying on the website: “The Government must legislate to confirm Crown ownership of beaches foreshore and seabed. This is what National would do.” That was a strong, confident statement from the current leader of the National Party. Then, in a press release not very long after, he said that National was working to ensure that the remaining foreshore and seabed were safeguarded for all, regardless of race, by means of legislation to preserve exclusive Crown title What is the difference? Quite a lot, as my colleague John Tamihere very strongly explained during his contribution to this debate. So it is one standard of citizenship for some, not for all, and not even for National Party members.

Simon Power, whom I referred to earlier as—I am confident of it now—the future leader of the National Party, has been having a bit of a tussle with Mr David Carter. Simon Power said, and I think it certainly reflected the views of his constituents from Feilding: “We must all be allowed full and free access to our beaches and lakefronts and to the seabed.” His constituents want to be able to go down to Foxton Beach, Himatangi Beach, or the Manawatu River, and get on to the beach and the river. Whereas David Carter said that our public access group, which does exactly what Mr Power referred to, was just a “stalking horse for this Government to nationalise private land for public access”. Well, I think Mr Power should talk to Mr Carter because he is on a different planet from him, and I think the oxygen is of better quality on the planet where Mr Power resides.

Not only did Mr Power disagree with Mr Carter but then Bill English started contradicting himself again. He said that he wanted all the coastline to remain with the Crown, then said “as long as it didn’t disturb private landowners’ rights”.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (NZ National—Nelson): In recent days a number of media have covered the story of Marc and Ivy Powell, a wealthy American couple who gained New Zealand residency and purchased the large Waitai Station on D’Urville Island in 1999 with Overseas Investment Commission approval. The way this couple have used and abused our country’s immigration, foreign ownership, and commercial laws is a disgrace. This case raises questions about how effectively residency and overseas investment conditions are enforced.

I make no apologies for using the privileges of this House to expose this matter. Those who worked for the Powells were required to sign horrendous confidentiality agreements with $100,000 penalty clauses for mentioning any aspect of this couple or their development on D’Urville Island. There is an air of fear about this couple, reinforced by writs served against those who dare question them. This secrecy, fear, and litigiousness are not the New Zealand way.

My interest in this matter arises from constituents in Nelson having fallen victim to the deep-pocket litigation employed by this couple. There are over one dozen creditors—small, honest Kiwi business people—who have been done over by this couple. Let me tell a few of their sad stories.

Fraemohs Industries, a well-known South Island building firm, did major building work on D’Urville Island. The firm lost over $320,000 in its dealings with the Powells. The company has gone from employing 40 people to fewer than 10. The dispute wrecked the health of the managing director, who has had to sell that business. Tilley’s, a well-respected plumbing and drainage firm from Nelson, has been done for $120,000. This is a crippling debt for a small family firm. When the firm attempted legal action to recover the money it was hit by a $300,000 counterclaim. A Nelson barging firm, Tyco Marine, transported materials out to D’Urville Island for the couple’s luxury mansion. It sought payment for just $1,300 in the disputes tribunal, and was hit with a spurious counterclaim of $30,000 from the Powell’s lawyers—no surprise. The firm simply walked away unpaid. The firm of architects and designers involved in the project is trying to recover $45,000, but it too has been hit with huge counterclaims totalling over $600,000. The consulting engineers involved sought payment of $23,000, and got a counterclaim and suit for $200,000 for its claims.

These sums would bankrupt any of these individuals and businesses, and they hang over them as dark, intimidating clouds. The stories are repeated over and over again. The claims for payment are first diverted off to consultants or other companies. Spurious claims are made about the standard of work. The Fair Trading Act, the Consumer Guarantees Act, and the confidentiality agreements are quoted at length. Huge counterclaims are lodged as intimidation, and most creditors have just walked away.

What irritates me further is the way our residency requirements have been so blatantly abused. This couple told the Immigration Service that they would reside permanently here. There is strong evidence that they never intended to do so. The facts are that they have spent negligible time in New Zealand, and have breached their commitments to the Immigration Service, and today I am formally writing to the Minister of Immigration to have their residency revoked.

Nor have the couple carried out their business plans as stated to the Overseas Investment Commission. This too requires inquiry. I cannot see any benefit for New Zealand in allowing very wealthy absentee landowners to own some of our most precious coastal farmland. We cannot allow our country to be prostituted in this way. I do not care how many millions or billions of dollars people have; we should not put up with this sort of abuse of New Zealand’s sovereign territory. This case highlights how we need to rethink our approach to business migration and overseas land sales, to ensure that New Zealand is able to benefit.

I seek the leave of the House to table a series of documents obtained under the Official Information Act from the Overseas Investment Commission, on the matters I have raised.

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

I seek the leave of the House to table public documents filed in the courts against the many creditors who have sought payment for their work done on D’Urville Island.

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

Hon RICK BARKER (Minister for Courts): That was another typical Nick Smith speech—wild, reckless allegations under the privilege of this House. It shows one thing: Nick Smith has learnt a lesson about speaking out outside this House. He spoke about the abuse of foreign ownership rules. The House ought to know that the people he referred to applied for ownership of that land in 1999 and—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I said that.

Hon RICK BARKER: No, the member did not say that. It was signed off by the Hon Bill Birch; it was signed off under a National Government. That member was a member of the Cabinet in that Government that signed it off.

The second reckless allegation made by Mr Nick Smith was that there were problems with immigration and immigration issues. The House ought to know, because that member will not tell it, that permanent residence was granted to the people concerned in May 1999 under a National Party Government.

Darren Hughes: That’s two down.

Hon RICK BARKER: That was another reckless allegation. I am gobsmacked that the people of Nelson would ever go to Nick Smith with any concerns about the judicial system, given that that member puts in court cases then does not turn up. Why would people ever trust his opinion on anything?

That brings us to the parlous state of the National Party and its leadership. Murray McCully has proposed that a new axis be formed after the next Government of National, ACT, and no doubt New Zealand First because they would not make up the numbers without it. A few friends and I sat around the other night and thought about who would get what jobs. Of course, Mr Power jumps up and down and says all these things. Ruth Dyson is right: Simon Power will become Prime Minister one day, but the children who will see that happen—

Hon Trevor Mallard: Oh no, he won’t.

Hon RICK BARKER: Oh yes, he will, but the children who will watch that happen have not got to primary school yet. We figured Nick Smith would not get anything, but we did figure some things. We thought Mr Gerry Eckhoff would make a very good Minister of Conservation, given that he wants to commercialise kiwis, wants to have kiwi farming so that we can buy kiwi thighs in the supermarket.

Hon Ruth Dyson: Kiwi roast dinners.

Hon RICK BARKER: Yes. We thought Rodney Hide could have cultural affairs. He has been past a theatre once and he has been hamming it up ever since. I remember Mr Moore saying one time, when Rodney was in his presence, that Rodney Hide was the perfect example of why an ugly actor should become a politician. In terms of finance, Don Brash and Richard Prebble would be the new finance people. One time, when Richard Prebble was away from the Labour caucus, he sent a telegram from China. Before the text could be read out, someone in caucus said: “Dear colleagues, I’m in China; so much to sell, so little time. Richard.” The public needs to know that Richard would sell the lot.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): The member must use a member’s full name or his title.

Hon RICK BARKER: Mr Richard Prebble would sell the lot. Obviously, Peter Brown would get senior citizens, Craig McNair would get youth affairs, and Winston Peters would get ethnic affairs. He has great rapport with the Somalian community.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Urban affairs.

Hon RICK BARKER: He could get urban affairs. Obviously, social welfare would go to Muriel Newman. She has written a book on how to get by on the smell of an oily rag in which she has advocated stealing and prostitution, so she is well equipped to dismantle the social welfare State and bring in the law of the jungle. We thought that senior whip would be a very good position for Maurice Williamson, and we thought Richard Worth could be the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, given his relationship with Monaco. He is now a consul for another country.

Hon Ruth Dyson: And camels.

Hon RICK BARKER: The member interjects about camels; that is very good. Given Richard Worth’s trip to El Alamein and the advice he got from camel drivers, we thought that would bring an interesting twist—

Hon Trevor Mallard: It’s unfair on camels.

Hon RICK BARKER: Someone says it is unfair on camels. It would bring an interesting twist to the sort of advice that would be given. We spent lots of hilarious time contemplating the very, very unlikely prospect of a National - ACT - New Zealand First Government. It is very unlikely because those parties are trying to scare New Zealanders into changing their alliance and changing their votes. Those parties should see that wonderful commentary Bowling for Columbine, where it is quite clear that one of the tactics of some people is to frighten the community into doing other things. Those parties will not frighten the public into changing their opinion.

SUE BRADFORD (Green): I have one question to ask members of the Labour caucus and the Labour Party today: “Whose side are you on?”. After nearly 4 years of Government boasting about its achievements for ordinary workers and low-income people, such as income-related rents, the Employment Relations Act, and the rest of it, it all seems to have come to a screeching halt with Steve Maharey’s “Jobs Jolt” programme announced on Monday.

Without warning, we now find out that 55 to 59-year-olds will be subject to the same sanctions regime as unemployed 20-year-olds, and that the “remote areas” conditions abolished in the mid-1980s by a Labour Government—theoretically, more right wing than this one—will be reinstated. The Minister justifies the extension of work testing to 55 to 59-year-olds on the grounds that that is the only way they can be provided with the full employment services of Work and Income New Zealand. What a fallacious line of reasoning. If the Minister had chosen, he could easily have directed that those workers be proffered the full assistance of the department, without their having the psychological pressure of sanctions being heaped upon their unsuspecting heads.

Mature-aged people are one of the most highly motivated, and at the same time, one of the most disadvantaged groups of unemployed workers in the country. It is often very difficult to get into the regular workforce, both because we still have high unemployment, and because of employer prejudice against anyone from around age 40 and up, much less age 55 and up. I would go out of my way to commend any Government that increased job placement, support, and training for mature unemployed. However, to extend the whole blaming and sanctioning apparatus of the State on to that age group is callous beyond belief. I do not think that the Minister can begin to comprehend the humiliation involved, nor the anxiety of people who are plunged into despair at that attack on their dignity and self-esteem, at a stage of their lives when society owes them a lot more than sanctions and punishment for daring to be out of work through no fault of their own.

I turn to the question of booting people out of so-called “remote areas”. I see in this morning’s Dominion Post that the Employment Service is already drawing up a list of no-go areas for the unemployed. Does the Minister not realise that one reason so many beneficiaries live in rural and provincial areas, where there are fewer jobs, is that it is a lot cheaper to raise a family well in such districts than in a big city like Auckland or Wellington? Does he not comprehend that another reason people live in those areas is that people who are unemployed in the big city often choose to move to their papakāinga, or home rohe, because they can survive better with whānau support, and in an area where the land and sea can be a source of food?

Unemployed and beneficiary groups around Aotearoa fought a long hard battle in the early to mid-1980s to get recognition of the injustice shown, particularly to Māori people returning to their home districts and being denied the benefit. After a long struggle, which included, memorably, the first occupation of the Kaitaia social welfare department in 1985, the “remote areas” clause was overturned. It is now pitiful that a Labour Minister in a Government supposedly more sympathetic than its 1980s predecessors sees fit to turn back that particular clock.

I am beginning to ask myself whether Steve Maharey and Darren Hughes are driving Labour’s welfare reforms, or whether the real drivers are the ghosts of Jenny Shipley and Christine Rankin, as personified in 2003 by Katherine Rich, Don Brash, and Muriel Newman. It appears that Labour has taken National and ACT’s momentum on welfare reform to heart and is now making a bid to capture all those voters who love anything that beats up on beneficiaries. Does Labour not realise that after all this time we still have literally hundreds of thousands of people out of work and that it is not unemployed people’s fault that the system has failed them?

There is a further ugly twist in all this. Since Labour has come to power, it has made a justifiably big deal about its willingness to consult community groups about the issues that affect them and the people they serve. After 4 years of a non-governmental organisation Government consultation process, and regular meetings between the Ministry of Social Development and beneficiary groups, and between the Mayors Task Force for Jobs and public officials, all that nice talk has been rendered meaningless by Maharey’s latest effort. Ask any of the task force mayors or any of the advocacy group representatives whether they have been consulted about this latest attack on beneficiaries, and I am pretty sure that the answer will be that no such consultation took place. In fact, the Minister confirmed that in the House this afternoon. I do not know whether all Labour MPs realise it, but they are now moving on a fast track, back to the era where Government trampled wholesale on its erstwhile allies in the community sector and local government, and on unemployed people and beneficiaries. I ask again: “Labour, whose side are you on?”.

DAVID BENSON-POPE (NZ Labour—Dunedin South): I am pleased to have the opportunity to make some brief comments today. Initially, I would like to take members’ minds back to the general debate last week. I cannot for a moment imagine a more telling example of the real difficulty the National Party in Opposition faces than the extraordinary performance of its leader, discredited and failing as he is, taking a speaking opportunity with its first call—namely, the fourth call—in the general debate last week. Aside from his sad and pathetic performance in that debate, the most telling comment was that five members of his caucus came down to support their leader in a major speech in this Chamber. That is how much support Mr English has in the National Party. Perhaps it is rather a poignant and telling comment to observe that today the largely invisible and certainly ineffective and ineffectual deputy leader, Mr Roger Sowry, managed to double the leader’s support by having the princely sum of almost one-third of the National Party caucus, 10 members, in this Chamber to support him.

Hon Roger Sowry: Point of order, Mr Speaker—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I know what the member will say. I just bring members’ attention to Speaker’s ruling 5/2 (Supplement), under which he cannot refer to the absence of members from the Chamber.

Hon Roger Sowry: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The member is sort of skating around the rules, because he is not referring to the absence of members. However, I ask you to rule that it is out of order to refer to the numbers of people; otherwise we would be saying that there are only five Labour people here to listen to this pathetic speech.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): The debate in the Chamber is robust. It always has been and always will be, and it is good that we have passionate and intelligent debate. But in the immortal words of Tana Umaga: “This isn’t tiddlywinks, Ref!” However, members should be careful and temperate in their language, and not bring the House into disrepute, impugn members, or behave in a way that will incite disorder.

DAVID BENSON-POPE: Clearly the one standard of membership that is supposed to apply in our community does not apply to the National Party’s own members, including Mr English himself, that rather benighted Mr Williamson, and now Mr McCully. The only message that voters in this country are getting from National is that a party that struggles to manage its own problems and its own affairs would do more than struggle to manage the country. The community in this country certainly will not be supporting them.

Also, I go back to the extraordinary performance of the National Party last week in relation to the great post-conference suspension, where the National Party caucus met behind the normal half-closed door that it has, and, in 10 seconds, suspended Maurice Williamson. He was suspended for saying what people throughout New Zealand have been saying, and saying out loud. What happened as a result of that suspension is telling. For 2 days in this Chamber the National Party voted 26 votes, one vote down. But by Thursday it was voting 27 again, because Maurice Williamson, just like others before him, had passed a proxy over to the party so it could vote its full vote again—the Clayton’s proxy; the imaginary suspension! Beside that behaviour, ACT’s behaviour over Donna Awatere Huata looks almost principled.

After that little shambles along came Murray McCully, saying the same sorts of things about ineffectual performance from the so-called leadership of that party—comments not approved by its leadership. What happened to Mr McCully? Nothing happened. Why did he do it? Was it about the great new National-Act coalition, the grand coalition of the right? No, it was not. Like everything in the National Party, it was about self-interest. We have to take only the briefest look at the electoral results to see why Murray McCully wants no ACT candidate to stand against him.

Government member: Why?

DAVID BENSON-POPE: The reason is that Murray McCully is on the slides. Unless he has ACT standing down in his electorate, then there will be no Murray McCully in this House. Let me talk about another vulnerability, in the form of Richard Worth, who is sitting at the back of the Chamber. We know that Richard Worth is extremely worried about this grand new coalition. Richard Worth is the one who will be the sacrificial camel rider for Rodney Hide. Rodney Hide is the one who will be nominated by this great new deal of the right to stand in Epsom. How happy is he?

I would now like to spend a little bit of time building on what my colleague Rick Barker said about the quality of the membership of this great new “Cabinet” that we have. Clearly, we know about the leadership; the leader is Bill English. What portfolio would be given to the poor benighted Bill English? We think it would be Auckland issues. He has put up billboards in the cities while closing offices in his own electorate. Bill English, the spokesperson on Auckland issues, believes that if Aucklanders want more roading projects, then Aucklanders should pay for them. What about Māori Affairs? I think John Carter, the party’s current senior whip with a Māori name he is proud of, clearly will be the member in charge of Māori Affairs—the one who rings up talkbacks.

RON MARK (NZ First): I will start by saying that if there exists today a reason for this Government to pause and rethink its deployment priorities with regard to security risks that face New Zealand, its friends, and its allies, it has to be page 1 of the New Zealand Herald today. If there exists and if this Government needs anything more than the briefing papers it has already received from senior defence officials as to the appalling state of the staffing and the problems created by overreach and overstretch, then I think possibly the front page of the New Zealand Herald might help persuade it that we do have some problems in our defence force that need to be considered, and not dismissed, as they have been. I ask the Government to rethink its priorities in its deployments, the size of our defence force, and its initiatives to encourage people to rejoin our defence force and help us meet our security needs.

I want to talk now about an appalling state of affairs that exists internally, in terms of security for private citizens. Have members heard this statement before? “It is a sad day for New Zealand when the police lack the resources to catch a burglar who has knocked off the same six houses in a fortnight.” So said George Hawkins in January 1997. “I am well aware that the police are overworked and understaffed, and as of 1 December, 1996 the Waitakere police were operating with 13.5 fewer police than they were entitled to.” It is interesting, is it not, because today nothing really has changed. “A fiend is given a ‘Get out of jail free’ card’ ”—Mr Hawkins once again, complaining in April 1997 about offenders getting away scot-free because police neither have the time nor the resources to apprehend them.

What has changed since that man became the Minister? What has changed since he was making these press releases about the safety and the policing in our streets, given that he has had 4 years in the job, a big limousine, a ministerial house, and all the trappings of power? What has changed? Nothing has changed. This is worse than the “Maharey principle”, which is saying things during an election that are not said when in Government. This is about things that were said in 9 years of Opposition that were going to be corrected and dealt with, and nothing has changed. I had to laugh—but it is quite sad really—when I got a fax from a person in the Minister’s own electorate that stated: “Could you please today in Parliament congratulate the Labour Party, in particular George Hawkins, our esteemed police Minister, for completely failing to provide a safe and secure country to bring up a family and operate a business.” That was from one of his constituents. I sought leave of the House today to table this fax and the Labour Party denied it.

This man has gone on to describe how for the second time in 3 years a pharmacy has been ram raided only metres down the road from George Hawkins’ own electorate office.

Hon Dr Michael Cullen: Ramrodded or railroaded.

RON MARK: Ram raided. The question people are asking is that if the man cannot provide security to a pharmaceutical business in his own patch, then how the heck can he hope to provide security for other people around New Zealand? Then we read an article in his electorate, Manurewa—printed 8 July—that thieves had been busy in Manurewa. Between 23 June and 29 June a whopping 51 burglaries were reported. That is 51 burglaries in 6 days. The real ripper is that we have already had information provided to the Government and presented to a select committee that shows clearly that about one-third of actual crimes are being reported.

This is reported crime. Therefore, there is no motivation for all those low-income families and people who cannot afford to have household and contents insurance and who have no hope at all of getting any compensation to report those crimes to the police. They know what the police will do. The police will turn up 24 hours, or 17 hours, or 7 hours later, and simply issue them a little ticket that enables them to go and make an insurance claim, because both they and the police officers concerned know that these guys will never be caught.

CLAYTON COSGROVE (NZ Labour—Waimakariri): Before I get to the main part of my speech, I acknowledge the comments of Mr Mark in respect of the tragedy in Indonesia, but I remind him of one small fact, which is that while he was in a coalition Government with the National Party, it enacted the most savage and the deepest cut in the history of this nation in respect of the defence budget. Since we came in, we have increased the defence budget by hundreds of millions of dollars. I acknowledge the intent of his speech and I respect his views, but I say to Simon Power, the defence spokesperson, that it was his Government that cut the defence vote in a huge way.

I want to reflect for a moment on Mr Sowry’s speech. Mr Sowry talked about a mess. It just shows, since Mr Sowry was bowled, demolished, and wiped out from his seat in Otaki, just how out of touch that deputy leader is, and how lazy he and his party are. I am told that it is said of Roger Sowry that he is so lazy that he does not walk in his sleep, but that he hitch-hikes. That is how lazy he is. That party on the opposite side of the House is coming apart at the seams.

Stephen Franks: Oh!

CLAYTON COSGROVE: Do we have a doctor in the House? I think somebody in the ACT party is in pain. The National Party is coming apart at the seams. They are a lazy pack of whingers, and they have no base or constituency.

Members should look at the fiasco over Maurice Williamson. There are, as colleagues have said, two standards of citizenship in the National Party. Maurice Williamson tells the truth. For instance, he stated in the Sunday Star-Times on 13 July: “‘I haven’t criticised Bill ... I’ve talked about the fact that we need to deliver a performance that the public sees as credible.” That is a fair comment, yet he gets bowled for telling the truth.

And now we have Mr McCully, whom I would have thought, if I were a member of the National Party, had committed the ultimate sin by suggesting that the best Opposition performer was not his leader, his deputy leader, or anybody on that side, but Richard Prebble, and that the best “demolition expert”—or however the New Zealand Herald put it—was not one of the National Party members, but old Rodney Hide. That shows the division within that particular party.

Hon John Tamihere: Pathetic!

CLAYTON COSGROVE: They are pathetic, as my colleague said. They are totally pathetic.

Then we have the great idea of a grand coalition between ACT and National, but the geniuses over there have not realised that if one takes the total centre-right vote and does a deal between ACT and National, it does not get any bigger. If the ACT vote is combined with the National vote, the total centre-right vote does not get any bigger. We have the “brains trust” opposite.

Then we have the debacle with Nick Smith. I am told that Nick Smith will go down in history as the most sued member of Parliament.

Simon Power: Careful.

CLAYTON COSGROVE: The member should wait for this. I am told that Nick Smith is currently defending five to six lawsuits against him. I am told that by a member of his own party. He is the most sued member of Parliament in history.

Hon John Tamihere: Big mouth.

CLAYTON COSGROVE: He has a big mouth, but he cannot back it up, as my colleague Mr Tamihere says. Then we come to the seabed and foreshore issue. Here was a chance for the National Party to show some leadership and some consistency.

Dr Wayne Mapp: And that’s the point. We have done precisely that.

CLAYTON COSGROVE: The member for Bayswater, Mr Mapp, who has a flash pad, an estate—he is a member of the landed gentry—on the foreshore of Auckland, has a vested interest, so I invite him to keep very, very quiet. Members should look at the inconsistency in the National Party. Wayne Mapp says one thing, and Bill English says another. There was a chance in that whole debate to show some leadership for Kiwis. This is a tough and complex issue. It is one that is very worrying for New Zealanders, but it will be sorted, and it will be sorted only by this Government. It will not be sorted by race-based remarks and policies, or by members of this Parliament acting in a gross and irresponsible way by scratching at every ugly scab that may exist in a very, very small proportion of red-necked New Zealanders.

Those members of Parliament opposite do this place no service at all. They provide nothing by being in this place when they act in the manner that they do. What New Zealanders want is some leadership. They want this issue sorted. It will take time and negotiation, but as John Tamihere has said, every New Zealander knows that, under this Government, all New Zealanders will be able to take their kids to the beach.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

Bills

Imprest Supply (Second for 2003/04) Bill

First Reading

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Minister of Finance): I move, That the Imprest Supply (Second for 2003/04) Bill be now read a first time.

Bill read a first time.

Bills

Appropriation (2003/04 Estimates) Bill

Third Reading

Imprest Supply Debate

Imprest Supply Debate

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Minister of Finance): I move, That the Appropriation (2003/04 Estimates) Bill be now read a third time and the Imprest Supply (Second for 2003/04) Bill be now read a second time. This marks the final stage of the Budget process for 2003-04 in terms of the first round of the Budget—that is, the Budget itself—and, of course, the standard Imprest Supply Bill presented at this stage of the year. At the time when the Budget was presented, in the middle to the latter part of May, the fiscal position outlook was strong. We were expecting for the year just ended a fiscal surplus on an operating balance excluding revaluations and accounting changes basis of just over $4 billion per year and a final operating balance of roughly $1.4 billion per year. We were also expecting a forecast operating surplus for the year that we are now in of roughly $3.7 billion. We were expecting both gross debt and net debt figures to be falling as a percentage of gross domestic product.

The economic outlook at the time of the Budget was for a slow-down in the economy, with economic growth slowing to round about 2 percent per annum, or just over, for the 2003-04 March year—

Dr Wayne Mapp: What about next year?

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: Dr Mapp should never lead me a straight line like that, when the next line is a good one: growth should be picking up in 2004-05, but with very significant downside risks. At that stage we were still terribly uncertain about the outcome of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) epidemic. We were still facing the prospect of a very dry winter and the impact that the electricity shortages were going to have, the outlook for the American economy was still extremely uncertain, and so on and so forth.

A number of things have changed since then. The main change is that the downside risks in the economy have abated. The Sars epidemic is now, by and large, under control, and we have seen a rather more limited impact on tourist numbers in New Zealand than was perhaps first feared. The numbers have already started to pick up from the point to which they had dropped by April and May, when they bottomed out.

Secondly, in one of those little examples of fate that are a lesson to all of us, about the point at which the Government finalised its plans for reserve capacity, it started raining, which, perhaps, is God’s commentary upon our political processes in New Zealand and elsewhere. We are now back on track for an average year in terms of lake storage—thanks, very largely, to the savings made voluntarily by New Zealanders, otherwise we would still be below the average lake level. Rain has continued to come at reasonably frequent intervals in the key catchment areas in the South Island and the central North Island, and we will now certainly get through winter with no disruption at all, but there are still long-term questions surrounding security of supply and the necessity of ensuring a greater margin than the market has left us with by the middle of this year.

That has not affected the central economic forecast at all. Of course, Treasury would not, at this stage, be updating economic forecasts unless there had been signs of some very dramatic changes, which have not occurred. Certainly, the advice I have is that there is no reason at this point for those central forecasts to be changed, in any case. So we are still expecting the slow-down, which obviously we have been seeing over the last few months—that is bottoming out at about the 2 percent or so level—but with the downside risk now very, very much less. So it is not the central pattern that has changed; it is the risk that we might have been coming out well below that 2 percent level.

The key feature that has emerged more clearly, although it was already emerging by May, is the contrast between the domestic and external sectors. The domestic economy is remaining very strong. In May, it looked as though the number of dwelling approvals was starting to fall away in a reasonably significant and classic cyclical pattern. Since then, the numbers have tended to flatten out again at a high level. The construction sector and the building sector remain very strong. The domestic economy in general remains very strong, but, because of the appreciation of the New Zealand dollar, or more accurately the depreciation of the United States dollar, the tradable sector and exporting sector are under significant pressure at the present time. We are seeing that reflected in the closures of some firms, and also in the generally reduced returns in New Zealand dollars to the New Zealand exporting sector. That is reflected in the figures today when, in New Zealand dollar terms, exports have continued to fall as a reflection of the rising New Zealand dollar.

The reality is that New Zealand cannot do much to affect the level of the United States dollar. However effective monetary policy may be in New Zealand, it has absolutely no impact in Washington, at all. A United States dollar fall is a product of the US current account deficit and the ongoing US federal deficits. The present United States Government, which is following policies very similar to those advocated by the National Party, has seen a turnaround in the operating surplus since it took office of $1.2 trillion New Zealand dollars a year—moving from a substantial surplus to a substantial deficit. It also believed in this strange theory that if taxes are cut, the economy will grow fast and become self-funding. What used to be called the Laffer curve is now more commonly known as the “laughable curve” amongst most sensible economists, and results in exactly the same product that President Reagan produced by following exactly the same policies of very substantial deficits that are forecast to continue into the long-distance future. It is likely to place continued downwards pressure on the US dollar. Equally it is clear that the US economy is probably starting to recover, but the numbers continue to be somewhat contradictory, almost from day to day, and certainly from week to week.

The likely fiscal out-turn for the year just finished will not be very far different from the Budget forecast. I do not have the final numbers yet—only a preliminary estimate. The figure for the operating balance excluding revaluations and accounting charges is likely to be somewhat higher than the $4 billion forecast on Budget night; it will probably be more in the region of $4.5 billion. But the final operating balance is likely to be about the $1.4 billion mark. It could be somewhat lower because further reductions in interest rates have led to significant further revaluations on the Government Superannuation Fund and the Accident Compensation Corporation, which are offset by gains on the equity markets in bodies such as the Government Superannuation Fund. So, in general terms, the final operating balance will be the same order of size as that forecast at Budget-time.

The problem that the Government faces in this respect is explained to people by saying that a surplus of $4 billion - plus in the operating balance excluding revaluations and accounting charges is not a cash surplus, at all. It does not reflect cash in the pocket, which can be spent on other items of Government spending. Out of that come the contributions to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund and a great deal of Government capital spending in a whole range of areas. So if we look at it in terms of the Government’s cash surplus, it is modest but by no means large for the 2002-03 year.

Moreover, Government revenue continues to run well ahead of Government receipts. What that means, to people who do not understand accruals accounting, is that what we think we ought to be getting in is running well ahead of what we are actually getting in, in terms of cash, which means there is some reason for caution. [Interruption] No, receipts—actual cash—are lower than revenue. So that means we need some degree of caution about what will actually happen to actual receipts as we move on through, over the next year. As I have said many times in the House over the last 6 months or so, because receipts ran ahead of forecasts for much of the last 2 years, there is a desirability of being somewhat cautious. What may happen is that the economy will slow down and there is a possibility that Government receipts will run under forecast during that period. It is a bit late if the money has been spent already.

Finally, it is worth noting that the Government has a strong record in a range of areas. In health, for example, the district health board deficits will come in under plan, and the number of people in primary health organisations is running at some six times the level forecast when the programme was first set up. We are seeing a strong fiscal position and an economy that is going through a small downturn by international standards. If we manage a 2 percent growth rate in the current year, that will be much better than that of the great majority of our trading partners, who are looking at rates of between 0 and 1 percent or so growth in the great majority of cases. Only Australia is likely to outstrip us to any significant margin at all in the current year, and its forecasts have kept coming back, in fact, over recent times.

Against this, we have policies that simply give the tired old message of: “Cut taxes for the rich, flog off the State enterprises, cut pensions, cut health spending, and hope that, somehow or other, this will result in a golden age for the New Zealand economy.” Well the last time we tried all of that, I think it is fair to say that it rogered the New Zealand economy to a fairly substantial extent, and many people are still taking a long time to recover from the pain that that inflicted. We do not need to go through another cycle of self-inflicted pain for no real purpose. The task now in front of us is to decide how to build upon the success so far, particularly in the area of skills, in the areas of investment, in the areas of infrastructure, and in a number of related areas that the Government is addressing at great speed, with great intelligence and great vigour. Opposite us we see a party that is lacking in vigour, almost entirely. Indeed, it is a party in which its key strategist, Mr Murray McCully, now describes a member of another party as “the most effective Opposition parliamentarian”, and another member of another party as “the most effective member of the Opposition”. With friends like that, who needs enemies?

Dr DON BRASH (NZ National): We have heard a recital from the Minister suggesting that everything in the garden is rosy and going fine, but I want to put the situation in some context. Let me quote a few numbers. Over the last 30 years, the New Zealand economy has delivered an increase in per capita income of three-quarters of 1 percent. In the last decade, growth has been three times that, at 2¼ percent per capita—three times the trend rate of the last 30 years. Why have we achieved that? It is basically because of the reforms that—yes—the previous Labour Government of the 1980s put in place, and of those that the National Government of the early 1990s put in place. That delivered a growth rate of three times the trend growth-rate of the last 30 years.

Now, let us look ahead. Two Treasury economists have calculated that for New Zealand to achieve a place in the top half of the OECD in living standards within 10 years, it would require a per capita income growth of between 4½ and 7½ percent per annum, depending on what assumption one makes about other countries’ growth rates. In other words, it will take at least double the growth rate we achieved in the last decade, and six times the growth rate we achieved on average over the last 30 years. Even to get to the top half of the OECD in 20 years would require per capita incomes to rise by more than 3 percent—again, that is a lot faster than we achieved in the last decade.

What do we have? We have Treasury projecting that productivity per person will go up at roughly 1½ percent per annum for the next decade. That would deliver an increase in living standards at a significantly slower rate than we had over the last decade, and nothing remotely like enough to achieve a place in the top half of the OECD in 10 years, 20 years, or 30 years. Is it any wonder that this Government has abandoned its objective of getting us into the top half of the OECD in 10 years? It simply cannot be done, and, on present projections, it will not be done in 20 or 30 years either.

So how does the Government respond to that situation? Let me quote a few things that this Government has done in recent times. First of all, it has sanctioned a rather extraordinary attack on high net-worth individuals, asking them to supply answers to an extraordinary list of questions about what they have earned, what they have given, what they have done, and what companies they have set up—no matter that many of those have recently been through a clean tax audit. The Government has just sanctioned this extraordinary inquisition into some of our most successful entrepreneurs.

There has been almost no media attention given to that, except in the business press. Can members imagine the outcry that would have occurred if the Inland Revenue Department had sent a similar request to all those earning below $10,000 because it had a suspicion that some of those people might have been evading tax? If the Inland Revenue Department had done that, there would have been an absolute outcry; yet when the Government sanctions the Inland Revenue Department doing that to the most successful business people in the country, there is not a squeak. How does that measure encourage this country to grow faster? How does it encourage people who can invest to do so?

Secondly, the Government has totally failed to fix Auckland’s traffic problems. The Government has itself acknowledged that traffic congestion in Auckland is costing the economy something like a billion dollars a year. So what has the Government done? Well, first of all, it has encouraged Auckland to invest in a dopey rail project. At the moment, rail carries 0.2 percent of the passenger trips in the Auckland metropolitan area per year. If we spend a billion and a half dollars on upgrading the rail system, and provide a hundred million dollars of subsidy annually—

Dr Wayne Mapp: At least.

Dr DON BRASH: —at least, we might get that figure to between 2 and 3 percent of total passenger trips in the Auckland region. There is no way that that project can be remotely economically viable. The Government has failed to fix the Resource Management Act problems. The last National Government tried to do that just before the 1999 election, and its bill was gutted. We have seen that bill go through the House in the last month or two. What happens? The North Shore busway has taken almost a decade to get the required approvals through, and just as the approval process was finished, the Government said: “Any project involving the transport sector involving more than $20 million must be subject to central Government review.”

So not only do we force Auckland into a dopey rail project, but we also fail to fix the obstacles that might enable things like the North Shore busway to get on its way. The Government has a Land Transport Management Bill in the works, which looks likely to be totally inadequate in dealing with the road problems in Auckland, so we will have more obstacles to the economy’s growth. We are not just failing to fix the obstacles that are there; we are erecting more obstacles at almost every turn.

Let me also talk about the review of the Employment Relations Act that is under way. We have a giant leap backwards in industrial relations law coming down the pike. In the last few months there have been two independent studies done—one by the OECD in Paris, and one by the International Monetary Fund in Washington—relating the level of unemployment in an economy to the state of labour market legislation. What did those studies discover? Surprise, surprise, they discovered that the more rigid and inflexible the labour market laws affecting an economy are, the higher the level of unemployment will be. That is totally consistent with the textbooks, with our views, and with New Zealand’s own experience.

Those two studies found that labour market reform can drop unemployment by about three percentage points of the workforce—a huge improvement. Is it any wonder that after the Employment Contracts Act was passed in 1991 New Zealand had the highest growth rate of employment in any developed country in the world? What we have now is a steady retreat from that. In the 1990s we saw the Employment Court moving gradually backwards, and imposing its own interpretation of the law, making it more and more difficult for employers to deal with employment situations. Then in 2000 we had the Employment Relations Act, and now we see the prospect of further major changes, which employers and employees—and, I suspect, everybody in this House—know will make it more difficult for employees and potential employees to get, or stay in, employment.

We know that, because we know that if one makes it more difficult for an employer to dismiss a staff member who is not working, an employer simply will not hire anybody whom he or she perceives as risky—which could be anybody whose English is not too good, who has a criminal record, who is a bit too young, or a bit too old. That is what we face if we retreat further from the kind of Employment Relations Act we have got.

Thanks to the reforms of the late 1980s and early 1990s, we have had better growth in the last 10 years than we have had for the previous two or three decades. The sad thing is that what we are looking at now is a gradual slowing-down of that growth to New Zealand’s huge cost, and we will all pay for that.

PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First): A few moments ago Dr Cullen laughed at the theory that cutting taxes would advance the economy. I do not subscribe to that theory, but I can recall the day when Dr Cullen did, and I can recall the day when the Labour Party sitting over there committed everything to reducing taxation, to advance the economy. Dr Cullen now thinks it is a joke, and says that it is laughable. There is some merit in reduced taxation. For a start, I will go on record as saying that I would like to see taxation reduced for the low paid, in particular. [Interruption] I did not catch the Minister’s point. I will go on record as saying I believe that we should encourage exporters by giving them a favourable tax regime.

Dr Cullen went on to say that he now realises that the asset sales problems were nothing more than a failure. When Labour was in Government between 1984 and 1990 it sold just about everything it could get its hands on. Labour members point across to Richard Prebble, but Richard Prebble was not alone there. He cannot take total responsibility. He was in there, up to his neck, selling whatever he could, but the Labour Party was the Government and it wanted to sell everything. As I recall, it sold $11 billion worth of assets, and now Dr Cullen can make a joke of it. We have had to buy back Air New Zealand, and we are now in the throes of trying to solve the Tranz Rail problems.

This country is now getting by on its immigration policy. We are living on the backs of immigrants. The time will come—if it has not come already—when members will realise that that policy is just as flawed as the asset sales programme that Labour embarked on a few years back. [Interruption] I travel on a New Zealand passport.

Hon Richard Prebble: I am very pleased to hear it.

PETER BROWN: I am very pleased and very proud to travel on it, and I have absolutely no intention of getting anything else.

Immigration policy is basically population policy. [Interruption] Who is meant to be giving this speech? That member over there who never speaks, or me?

Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member is entitled to a fair go. There is too much cross-interjection.

PETER BROWN: Immigration policy is population policy. I understand that United Future is on record as saying that it wants to see 5 million people in this country within the next 10 years. That is a net gain of 100,000 per year. If United Future is the common-sense party, then that is the equivalent of 2½ Rotorua’s every year, in terms of poll population. If United Future is the common-sense party, then I have to say that its members should start thinking a bit more sensibly.

We should be addressing the immigration question ourselves. I think the Minister of Immigration—and I want to be a little bit charitable here—has somewhat suddenly got the message, probably under the influence of my leader, the Rt Hon Winston Peters. She has probably taken something on board of some of the statements he has been making. We should be talking about how many people to allow into this country, when we want to achieve this level of population—and not ridiculously so, as United Future apparently is advocating—where they should live, and whether the population should be more evenly distributed. They are reasonable questions. Who should we allow in? Should we be selective; if so, whom should we restrict? They are reasonable questions. [Interruption] It is too late for me.

Clayton Cosgrove: Never too late.

PETER BROWN: I got through the net, but the net was pretty darn tight when I came here.

Let me be quite clear. New Zealand First advocates that we should reduce the annual number of immigrants into this country, and keep it at a controllable, reasonable level. We should be careful about who we allow in. [Interruption] I think the member is making references to myself, but I want to be honest. There would be no great advantage to this country if 100,000 of me came in at one time. Over a prolonged period there might be some merit, but I would not want to see 100,000 of me, in one input, coming into this country.

Clayton Cosgrove: I agree with the member on that.

PETER BROWN: I am trying to be a little bit charitable here, but the member over there keeps heckling.

I believe that the Minister of Immigration has suddenly taken things on board. We believe that everybody coming here should have a job. She has moved from a points-based system to a job skills-based system. That is in the immigration legislation that is coming in right now, and there is merit in it. We believe that everybody coming here should be able to speak English. That seems to be common sense. English is the language of this country—

Hon Richard Prebble: What sort of accent?

PETER BROWN: We are quite relaxed about the accent, but we want people to be able to string words together. My accent is no worse than the member’s. We believe that everybody coming into this country should have good health. Let the member tell me that he does not believe in that. We believe that everybody coming in here should have a clean criminal record. We believe that we should have an incentive for immigrants to live outside of Auckland.

The Minister has recognised many of those points in her bill, and she is moving in the right direction, but she has no control whatsoever over the numbers. In fact, I think she is advocating 45,000-plus, and we think that is far too many. We believe that there should be a probationary period for anybody coming into this country on a permanent basis. If they offend or are involved in crime within that stipulated time frame, then out they go. We must never allow immigration to remove us from the responsibility to train and educate our own people.

We must also remember that mass immigration, as we have been experiencing in the past few years, leads to inflation and can put a drain on our health, education, and welfare, and our physical infrastructure, such as the roads, as it has in places like Auckland. We cannot afford to live on the backs of immigrants for ever. We must recognise that this country does benefit from a positive immigration policy, but the one we have right now is too wide—it opens the door far too wide.

In my last few moments I would like to talk about tax for exporters. If we do not start recognising shortly that exporters are the key to a sound economy, it might well be too late. We should be using our tax system to encourage exporters to export more. We should be using our tax system to encourage exporters and manufacturers to set up residence in regional areas, rather than all congregating in Auckland. This country will be faced with some tough questions in the not too distant future. We should think about them long and hard, in order to do the best for all New Zealanders.

Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call the Hon Richard Prebble

ROD DONALD (Musterer—Green): I raise a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. A decision was made yesterday at the Business Committee about the speaking order for this debate. A roster was tabled by the senior Government whip at the Business Committee meeting, specifically because of the problems we had in the last time-limited debate. In that debate the ACT party took an extra call and took up an extra 9 minutes of speaking time that it was not allocated, plus a lot of points of order, which cost our party and other parties dearly. We lost 12 minutes of debating time in that debate. So yesterday a roster was tabled, and an agreement was reached by the Business Committee. We expect that agreement to be honoured, which means that this call should be a Green Party call. We reinforce that request on the basis that we consistently cast nine votes in this House and the ACT party casts eight votes, and therefore we should be speaking before the ACT party.

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (Leader—ACT NZ): I realise that Mr Donald is still riled about the fact that the Green Party did very badly in the last election, did not meet any of his predictions, and got fewer votes than the ACT party. I realise also that his party is about to vote for a measure to have Parliament decide who gets elected, but we have not yet done that. We are now required to follow Standing Orders. Standing Order 103, which Mr Donald no doubt has not got around to reading, states that in deciding the order of debate: “(b) overall participation in a debate should be approximately proportional to party membership in the House:”. I say to Mr Donald that the ACT party had more MPs elected; it had a greater vote at the last election than the Green Party. The member can do little silly deals with the Government whip as much as he likes, but those are the Standing Orders.

I also strongly object to any suggestion from that member that I have not kept to the correct speaking time. I most certainly have, and the remarks made by him I find grossly offensive. The other matter I draw attention to is that once the call has been made it cannot be challenged, so the member is wasting the time of the House, as usual.

DAVID BENSON-POPE (Senior Whip—NZ Labour): If I could address the last point first. The reference was not to Mr Prebble, the leader of the ACT party, but to the member of the party who broke the agreement made on the previous occasion, his deputy, Ken Shirley.

If I could speak about the particulars of this matter. What is relevant is the fact that after the dispute and the behaviour of the ACT member on the previous occasion, which my colleague Mr Donald referred to, there was a request made at the Business Committee 2 weeks ago for me to bring to the committee a proposed roster for the speeches in this debate. I prepared this roster using the normal proportional allocation, and distributed it at the committee meeting yesterday. With one change made, at the request of the ACT party, that roster is the one you see before you. The request made at that meeting by the ACT representative, Dr Newman, was to move speech No. 20, which you will see is a Labour 5-minute call, into that position and shift the other call so that the ACT member, who had previously been in the No. 20 position, got call No. 17 of 5-minutes duration and was, therefore, in no danger of losing speaking time, because of exactly the slippage that is now occurring. There was no disagreement about any other matter of the roster. It was agreed unanimously by all whips present, and others furthermore, so that we would not have the sort of dispute that has now occurred for the second consecutive time on a matter like this. I find it totally unacceptable. The consequences are quite obvious. If we cannot have an agreement that is made unanimously—where ACT has indeed been accommodated at the Business Committee the day before—held to, then that is an entirely unacceptable position.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): In ruling on the point of order I can only go by the Standing Orders. I know that the Business Committee did discuss the matter, and I know that there was an agreement between parties. However, the Standing Orders do stand.

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (Leader—ACT NZ): We have just listened to the New Zealand First MP—

David Benson-Pope: What a dishonest party!

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. The chief Government whip, who put up a silly list to put through the Business Committee to try to make some silly point with the Greens, is now calling out “dishonest”. He says the ACT party is delaying this House, but that is exactly what he is doing. He is trying to cut out other members from speaking—with the help of Rod Donald. A couple of junior MPs are holding up the House. I ask that he be asked to withdraw and apologise for his claim against me in that way.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): I ask the member to stand, withdraw, and apologise please for the remark of “dishonest”.

David Benson-Pope: I did not refer to any member as being dishonest. I said the party was dishonest.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): I am sorry, it is the same thing. Please stand, withdraw, and apologise.

David Benson-Pope: I withdraw and apologise.

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE: Before the interruptions, I was rising to speak to the Appropriation (2003/04 Estimates) Bill. But, after listening to Mr Peter Brown speaking—and I do not know whether his accent is a north of England accent—about immigration, I have to comment that I always find it extraordinary. The gall of that party is just simply amazing, though perhaps he regards himself as a personal example of the fact that immigration is a bit of a mixed blessing.

I want to debate the matter in front of us—and I know that is not usual in these debates. I want to discuss the Appropriation (2003/04 Estimates) Bill, and to look at the very interesting question of exactly how much money the Government is receiving and how much it is spending. At the time of the Budget, the Government said it was going to have a $4 billion surplus. That is a huge surplus. A surplus of $4 billion dollars is not, as the ACT party has commented, a matter for praise. It means we are being overtaxed $4 billion. There are approximately 1.6 million workers in New Zealand, and that works out at $2,500 too much tax each. Well, the situation has got worse. In the latest figures I have from Treasury for the year ending 31 May, Treasury now estimates, from the operating balance before revaluations and accounting changes, that the surplus has now become $5.6 billion. For those MPs who have done the mental arithmetic, that is $3,500 of overtaxation per worker in New Zealand.

Dr Muriel Newman: Dreadful!

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE: It is dreadful. Three thousand, five hundred dollars is a lot of money, and every worker in New Zealand, on average, is paying $3,500 too much tax so that Dr Cullen can put together a huge fund. And what does he want to do that for? Well, this is not election year, is it. He will wait until election year, then spray it around in order to win votes.

Deborah Coddington: Tax and bribe.

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE: Yes—tax and bribe. The ACT party says that what we need to do is have a tax cut, and $5.6 billion is enough to actually go to a flat rate of tax immediately. We could cut the rate of income tax for every worker in New Zealand substantially.

I would like to hear from members opposite: do they not believe that if the average New Zealand family was getting another $3,500—and if both parents are working, it would be $7,000—it could do something with that money? Imagine what people could do for their children if they had another $7,000 a year of their own money coming back, instead of having the Government boasting that it has money to spend on Māori television, on sponsoring the America’s Cup, on the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, on Kiwibank, and on all the other nonsense that a Labour Government engages in and still has a massive surplus.

I say to the Government that it should send back the money. There is also another reason that it should do so. It might enable ordinary New Zealanders to be able to pay their rates. The solution of this Government and of the Minister with responsibility for Auckland Issues, Judith Tizard, to the rates problem is to say: “Let them eat cake; let them move house.” That is the Labour Party solution to the rates problem. If people’s rates are too great, they should just shift house, or mortgage themselves to the council. I want the next Government speaker to tell us why the Government should not express some concern about the fact that the survey the ACT party has done shows that although inflation last year was 1.5 percent—so if councils were just moving rates in line with inflation they should have been 1.5 percent—the average increase is 4.5 percent. The Auckland Regional Council rates increase is 34 percent, and the increase for Banks Peninsula is 16.64 percent. I do not know why that is. Did it not just win a case against one of its employees? But, despite that, the increase is 16.64 percent. The Franklin District Council increase is 16 percent. The Marlborough District Council increase is 11 percent. Ashburton’s increase is 10 percent—no doubt that is the effect of Jenny Shipley moving away and not keeping a supervisory note on it.

When we look at those councils, we can see that they are putting in huge rates rises. That is a matter of concern, especially when the councils say, with a great deal of truth, that the reason they are putting up rates is that a Labour Government has increased the responsibilities that they must go through. We now have a nonsense at local body level, whereby there is consultation upon consultation—paralysis by analysis. We have planners to burn, all of whom cost money and push up the cost of rates to the ordinary New Zealander. But, of course, the Labour Government’s solution to rates rises is to say that people should move. Judith Tizard said that she had contacted the local citizens advice bureau and it had not had anyone complain to it! I did not realise that people paid their rates to the citizens advice bureau, but, then, the sort of world that Judith Tizard lives in is a very strange one. She of course, lives in a State house, and the taxpayer pays all the charges for her. She has no real idea of the sorts of costs being met by ordinary New Zealanders. The ACT party has a solution to that. I would like to think that this House will support Rodney Hide’s bill. Let us put in a provision whereby if a council wants to increase rates greater than the rate of inflation, a poll is held. We used to have polls if councils wanted to borrow money. If the regional council carried out a poll of ratepayers in Auckland, who believes that the ratepayers of Auckland would vote for a 34 percent increase?

Dr Wayne Mapp: That’s right. No way.

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE: Especially those on the North Shore, as the member for North Shore is calling out. Of course, people on the North Shore are paying extra rates for a rail system. I do not think that the Minister with responsibility for Auckland Issues actually knows that the rail does not go over to the North Shore. I do not think she ever visits the North Shore.

Shane Ardern: She’s never been over there.

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE: She has never been over and would not have a clue. She has never been on the train, of course. She has an LTD.

Paul Adams: We’ll get rail soon.

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE: Well, it will cost hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, and it will be paid for by ratepayers, the vast majority of whom will not be using it. This Labour Government says that it is a matter for the local people—and we agree with that. Therefore a Labour Government should support our bill, which states that any council that wants to increase rates greater than the rate of inflation must hold a poll. Let the local people decide. There are massive rates increases in the central Hawke’s Bay, in central New Zealand, and in the South Island. The average is 4.5 percent—that is, four times the rate of inflation. So far in this debate the only party to speak out on that matter has been the ACT party. That is consistent. We have always been the party in favour of lower taxes and less costs. We say that the things councils are being asked to do are things that the local people would never have asked for. One of them is to do extensive consultation with iwi. Why do iwi need to be consulted more than any other ratepayer? It is just this Government’s political correctness.

I come back to the point I made earlier, and I ask the House this: how can we support giving the Government $5.6 billion more than it says it needs? As I have said, and I say it again, that is enough money to give $3,500 back to every working person in New Zealand, and if both partners in a family work, that is $7,000. I want to know from the Labour Government why we should not give back $7,000 to ordinary working people. The ACT party thinks that ordinary working people will spend that $7,000 far better than this Cullen-Clark Government, with its proposed Māori television and all the other nonsense, like the foreshore claims, and all the other things that the Government intends to spend people’s money on. Let us have some faith in ordinary New Zealanders. Let us realise that it is morally wrong for this Parliament to take more taxes than it needs.

GORDON COPELAND (Whip—United Future): I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I do not ask you to rule here and now on this matter, but I would like you to consider it and come back to the House with a ruling. I refer to the decision that has been made to alter the speaking order in the House today. My point is that it is quite clear that at yesterday’s Business Committee the designated representative of the ACT party entered into an agreement—and I stress it was an agreement—with all the other parties in this House. If it is acceptable for the leader of that party to come here today and set that agreement aside, then it seems to me it is an inevitable conclusion that that will affect the orderly conduct of this House. I would like you to reflect on that and give us a ruling in due course.

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (Leader—ACT NZ): I ask you not to reflect on that request, because it is grossly out of order. A member should raise a point of order at the time, and not later. However, since the member has raised a point of order, he should set the facts out correctly. Sure, a form was put around, whereby the chief Government whip thought it would be a funny trick to change the speaking order without drawing it to the attention of the people at the committee. He thinks that it is a sort of agreement when the order is changed from how it normally is, and regards that as binding. When the ACT member Muriel Newman realised the silly game that the Labour chief whip was getting into with the Greens, and now I understand with the help of United Future—which came to Parliament to lift the standards—she immediately went to see the Speaker, Jonathan Hunt. He immediately agreed that of course the speaking order ought to be as it is set out in the Standing Orders. I say to United Future that that sort of silly game is one of the reasons that it is at 0.8 percent in the polls.

Hon MARK BURTON (Deputy Leader of the House): I agree with Mr Prebble on one thing: if he is to set out the facts, they should be correct. Certainly, what he just said is not correct. An agreement—no silly games or tricks—was made at the Business Committee meeting, which Mr Prebble seldom, if ever, attends. He is not the member who does that, and I do not criticise him. He was not at the committee yesterday, so it is difficult for him to speak with such great confidence about the events that took place there. The fact is that a sensible agreement was reached, in the manner that is required constantly for this House to work in an MMP environment. It is very, very difficult for the House to function on a day-to-day basis if members do not stick to good-faith agreements. That is the beginning and end of it.

Finally, Mr Copeland raised the matter at the first opportunity he had—that is, straight after Mr Prebble had taken a call. This is a matter of some serious concern to those of us from all parties who are involved in the day-to-day management of the House. I say to Mr Prebble that it is absolutely essential for every party to be prepared to stick to good-faith agreements when they are made.

ROD DONALD (Musterer—Green): I start by saying that we are a party that does not usually take points of order, but our level of frustration has reached the point where we feel obliged to make an issue of this. We invite you to take Gordon Copeland’s advice and reflect on this matter. In particular, you need to look at the minutes of the Business Committee meeting, which clearly state that the speaking order would be as agreed at that committee. It is in writing. No stunt was pulled by anybody. There was quite some debate at the Business Committee about the order of speaking today, as a result of the chaos that was created by ACT in the 8-hour estimates debate. I request that you reflect on the minutes of that meeting. Otherwise, the whole integrity of any decision taken at the Business Committee is undermined if we are to relitigate every decision in this House that the committee has made.

Hon MURRAY McCULLY (NZ National—East Coast Bays): Madam Speaker, I suggest that you do not waste your time by doing any of the things that have been suggested to you by the members who have contributed to this discussion. This seems to me to be a very simple matter. The Standing Order is the Standing Order. Your role, Madam Speaker, along with the other presiding officers, is to apply the Standing Order, and I suggest you do that on this occasion. What the Business Committee does is its business, but it is a relatively informal arrangement. I am frequently surprised by some of the outcomes that come from that committee, but the Standing Orders are there for presiding officers to interpret and apply. It seems to me that the requests that are being made by some of those who have spoken to this point of order are quite superfluous, and you should ignore them.

Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Business Committee can discuss the matter again, but the situation is exactly as the Hon Murray McCully has said. It is a matter that is in the Standing Orders now. If the Standing Orders are to change, then that is another decision that needs to be taken.

JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green): It is with considerable sadness that the Green Party cannot support the third reading of this legislation. Contrary to the views of National, ACT, and New Zealand First, we do not see this Budget as being all bad. It contains some good initiatives, and it continues some Green Party initiatives from previous years that have now become baselined. However, that is all overridden by this Government’s refusal to listen to the people in their demand that we maintain the opportunity to grow and eat food that is free of genetically engineered (GE) organisms, that we protect our environment from the unpredictable harm they could cause, and that we protect our economic advantage in producing clean, green, healthy produce.

We made it very clear at the last election that genetic engineering was an issue of confidence for us, and it remains so. The 35 percent increase in our vote at that election, despite the untruths that were told about us at the time, was an endorsement of our position, and we will keep our promise. That is why I move an amendment to the motion—namely: “to omit all the words after the word ‘That’ and substitute the following words: ‘this House cannot express confidence in this Labour-Progressive Government and their United supporters because they are determined to promote the release into our farms, fields, and environment of unpredictable genetically engineered organisms, despite strong opposition from consumers, growers, food manufacturers, exporters, economists, environmentalists, health workers, local authorities, churches, and ordinary people with common sense.’ ”

It is a pity things have come to this pass, because as I said, there are some good initiatives in this Budget. This Government is the first to have grasped the nettle of climate change and put in place at least some measures to help us to observe the Kyoto Protocol. Energy efficiency and renewable sources of energy now have a statutory role under the national strategy. Research is under way on agricultural emissions. Two wind electricity projects are planned, with the help of Kyoto credits, and although that is little and late, it is far more than any previous Government has done.

Sales of public assets have stopped, and there is a commitment to returning the rail track to public ownership, investing in it, and restoring it to a useful state. The Government, even though we are not supporting it on confidence and supply, has listened to the Greens’ proposals, repeated for 2 years now, to regain the tracks, and it is taking our advice. We have a new land transport strategy that prepares for the 21st century, by recognising sustainability as a vital goal and widening the vision to include all modes of land transport. Under our cooperation agreement with the Government, we have contributed to that strategy and to the legislation that flows from it.

We have supported legislation to improve health and safety in the workplace, fairer employment rights, and the comprehensive re-write of the Local Government Act. With Nandor Tanczos’ Clean Slate Bill we prompted the Government to introduce its own bill on that topic, and we have worked with the Government to incorporate much of our position. We welcomed the decision to stay out of the United States’ invasion of Iraq and to support the UN, though we are less happy with the decision to send army engineers into a war zone where they are not particularly welcome by the locals.

There have been negatives too. The global assault on civil liberties that followed September 11 has been one of the more disturbing aspects of the last couple of years. Unfortunately, the New Zealand Government has not been immune to the international hysteria, and has joined in on the war against freedom. No fewer than four bills have been introduced or passed in the last year that undermine our rights as citizens to speak our minds, and to carry out our lives free from the secret intervention of the State security services. The Greens were the only party to oppose those restrictions and to stand up for freedom. Then there was this week’s slap in the face for beneficiaries, which seems to have been driven more by focus groups than by any attempt at economic justice.

My co-leader, Rod Donald, said in the first reading debate: “The Budget surplus is a fraud. It is built on the backs of Kiwi kids living in poverty, hardworking low-income families who need a tax break, and young people who are shut out of affordable tertiary education.” I endorse those comments. We are disappointed at the continued refusal to recognise the poverty that restricts opportunity for so many of our people, especially when Dr Cullen crows about his Budget surplus.

But the defining point for us is the intransigence of the Government on genetic engineering, and that is why we cannot vote for this Budget. As the only nine parliamentary representatives of the hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who do not want GE released into their food or their environment, we promised those people our vote would be conditional on preserving New Zealand’s GE-free status, except for the many beneficial uses of GE in a contained laboratory. Let us remember that the polls tell us we are not representing a minority here. The most recent poll asked about preserving GE-free food production in New Zealand, at least until our markets will accept it, and an overwhelming 80 percent of New Zealanders supported that policy. Once one gets outside this building, with its blinkered views, its half-baked science, and its political slogans, and one engages with the real world of common sense, one finds that ours is the majority view.

Since the Government made its decision to promote the release of GE, a lot of evidence has accumulated. There would be no loss of face if the Government were to engage with that evidence and change its mind. There is no shame in allowing the new facts to get in the way of old prejudices. The GE-free movement would congratulate the Government, not scoff at it. Let us look at some of what has happened since the royal commission reported and the Government rejected its advice of caution, and accepted its advice to proceed—things that no one could have known at the time.

According to the panel of independent scientists, which includes a number of household names, GE crops have failed to deliver their promised benefits. They have not significantly increased yields, or reduced herbicide or pesticide use. The scientists call to put this technology on hold until we know a lot more is based on the finding that there can be no co-existence of GE and non-GE crops, and that contamination is unavoidable. The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry report recommended by the royal commission found that co-existence can occur only if all non-GE crops accept a contamination level of 1 percent, which growers, consumers, and overseas markets do not want. That independent panel of scientists points to growing problems on the farm, with herbicide-resistant weeds and safety concerns that have never been investigated.

The European Union has adopted labelling rules that will require all New Zealand’s food exports to the European Union to be labelled as containing GE material, if we adopt that 1 percent threshold for allowable contamination, and the supermarkets there have said that they simply will not buy anything labelled as GE, because their consumers do not want it. Although the gene technology regulator in Australia has approved GE canola for growing there, none will be grown because all the states where it could be grown have imposed their own bans of one kind or another. They see a market advantage in doing that, and if we persist in the foolish plan to release GE food crops we will be at a marketing disadvantage, compared with Australia.

The science has also moved on. Two years ago, scientists thought there were some 150,000 genes in the human genome; now they have reduced that to just 30,000. The point of that is not just that we know so little, or we keep finding out we were wrong, but rather that the whole basis of genetic engineering, the belief that genes alone control inheritance and that each gene codes for only one characteristic, is wrong. Thirty thousand genes are not enough to control human inheritance, and other factors must be involved. When we transfer genes what else are we transferring, without having any idea of its function?

The Government is not even pretending to implement many of the recommendations of the royal commission, such as not using food animals or plants to produce pharmaceuticals, allowing councils to establish, after consultation with their communities, GE-exclusion zones to protect local production, and having a strategy to protect bees. The only strategy to protect bees, announced by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry after months of research, is that beekeepers will be responsible for finding out on the Internet where the GE crops are grown, and for moving their hives 6 kilometres away from them—great! The period of constraint, as the Government likes to call it, is supposed to allow research to be done on a key concern of the royal commission, the “significant gaps in our knowledge about the effects on soils, on native species, and on horizontal gene transfer”. A contract has been let to examine those things. When will they be reported on? The report will be years away. What does the Government plan to do if that report comes back with a list of dos and don’ts to prevent the horizontal gene transfer of dangerous genetic material, and pollen from GE corn is already blowing all over our farms?

GORDON COPELAND (United Future): During my contribution to an earlier of Appropriation and Imprest Supply bills for 2003-04, I was subject to an unrelenting stream of interjections and interruptions from the honourable member Rodney Hide. As far as I could work out, his concern was that when I pointed out a number of ways in which I believed this year’s Budget could have been improved, he was quizzing me continually about why, in those circumstances, I and United Future would be voting in favour of the bills. I think I owe him an answer to that, and it is simply this: we have signed a confidence and supply agreement with the Labour-Progressive Government.

Should Rodney Hide then ask me why we entered into such agreement, again my answer is very straightforward: that is precisely the mandate we sought and received from the voters of this country. During the election campaign we clearly signalled that we would be prepared to work with the largest party elected by the voters, in the interests of creating certainty and stability for New Zealand society and the economy. Let me tell members that United Future has no intention of welshing either on the mandate it has been given by the voters of New Zealand or on our confidence and supply agreement with the Government. Accordingly, we will continue to support the Government on those issues right through until the 2005 election. It is about time that MMP was made to work properly.

The honourable Rodney Hide’s barrage of comment and interjection while I was speaking brought to mind the picture of a bull terrier that, when confronted with 119 large trees, decided to dedicate 3 years of its life to barking up every single one of them, in the hope that somewhere up amongst the branches there may be a Dr Michael Cullen, a Clayton Cosgrove, a David Parker, or a Janet Mackey who could become unnerved enough to lose his or her grip and fall out of the tree. Well, I tell Mr Hide that I have not seen anyone fall out yet, nor do I expect that to happen before 2005. But far be it from me to discourage him.

Dr Muriel Newman: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I think that the member in his speech is being extremely unparliamentary with regard to one of our colleagues, and I think he should be asked to withdraw and apologise.

Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: There was nothing unparliamentary there.

GORDON COPELAND: I hope that spurious point of order does not reduce my speaking time. I really do not want to discourage, or to pour scorn on, Mr Hide’s hopes in that regard.

I want now to go back to the appropriations and imprest supply bills. I have already signalled that I believe Dr Cullen would have been wise to adjust the tax brackets for inflation. That would have moved the upper limit for the 19.5 percent rate of taxation from $38,000 to $42,000, and the threshold for the start of the 39 percent rate from $60,000 to $65,000. It would have yielded all taxpayers a gain in take-home pay of between $1.16 and $16.50 a week. It would have given the economy a $400 million fiscal stimulus at precisely the point where growth is on the way down, having fallen significantly from last year’s 4.4 percent to a forecast of just 2.2 percent for this year.

In the absence of any fiscal stimulus, we are left to rely solely on monetary policy for growth. I do not believe that on its own it will get the job done. Daily now in our newspapers we see people from many sectors of the economy, from manufacturers to farmers, asking the Reserve Bank governor to fix the dramatic slow-down in value resulting from the high exchange rate of the Kiwi dollar, via monetary policy. But the reality is that monetary policy on its own cannot do that. For that reason, in my opinion, we need both monetary and fiscal policy to kick in at this time, and to work in tandem so as to stimulate the New Zealand economy, in the interests of both minimising the downturn and turning the growth curve upwards again as quickly as possible. Once again, I remind Dr Cullen that it is not too late to take that action. Were he to bring a short bill to the House to increase the tax brackets in the way that has been proposed by United Future, I am sure he would have the immediate support of all parties, and enormous support from New Zealand taxpayers.

United Future would also like to see the company taxation rate reduced to 30c in the dollar. By my calculations, that would cost about $500 million. Again, it would give a much-needed boost to the business sector, stimulate the economy, and increase economic growth.

I would like to say, too, that I agree with Peter Brown when he talks about doing something to boost our exports. I have in mind here, particularly, exports that add value—for example, processed wood, as compared with exported logs. I have already put a suggestion to Dr Cullen that he looks, for example, at maybe making exported logs subject to GST and processed timber not subject to GST, as it is at the moment, in order to put us on to the path towards adding the value that we so desperately need to have if we are to see our economy grow.

I would like to comment a little on some of the items that are included in the imprest supply bill. I note that it seeks authority, in relation to Air New Zealand’s equity, for $150 million—although, perhaps, a decision in that regard will be delayed until the Commerce Commission has made its final ruling in relation to the Air New Zealand - Qantas alliance. I think, though, that the Government should also give careful consideration to whether it may be a better strategy to reduce its shareholding stake in Air New Zealand, via a rights issue available to members of the New Zealand public. Mum and dad investors would, I am sure, appreciate the opportunity to take up a stake in our national airline. As far as I know there is no good reason, in terms of international or bilateral agreements, or otherwise, for the Government itself to maintain an 82.5 percent shareholding in the airline. Why not reduce that in tranches, if necessary, to, say, 51 percent?

I would also like to refer to the question of investment in what the new No. 2 bill describes as a capital allowance—an injection of capital for rail. When the first imprest supply bill was in the House we were talking about a deal with Tranz Rail. Of course, since that has happened the deal has now shifted to one between the Government and Toll Holdings. That, in turn, is now somewhat up in the air, and it is unclear whether Toll Holdings will be successful in gaining control of Tranz Rail. In any event, one way or another the Government looks set to re-acquire ownership of the rail track throughout New Zealand, and is accepting responsibility for its ongoing maintenance.

My information is that the rail track has a long tail of deferred and expensive maintenance. I think it is clear that from the date of its privatisation—and probably before then—until now, little has been put back into the maintenance of both the track itself and the associated infrastructure, in terms of bridges, tunnels, stations, and the like. It has all been pitifully run down, pretty much to Third World standards, by a group of shareholders who were intent on stripping every available cent out of the company, to put into their own pockets. I spent the earlier part of my career working for large corporations, and I support wholeheartedly private enterprise in every way. However, it must be admitted that asset stripping represents the ugly, and in my view the unethical, face of capitalism.

In any event, I urge the Government now to proceed with caution. If I were in the shoes of the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Transport, before committing the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to replace bridges, rail tracks, etc., I would do my sums carefully, so as to establish whether rail will remain a cost-effective means of transportation on a line by line, and on an area by area, basis. I suspect that in a number of areas of both the North and South Islands rail may not be the best and most economical mode of transport, over the medium and longer term. If that is the case, I believe the Government needs to discipline itself, and, if necessary, to make the hard decisions that would be involved in closing down uneconomic or redundant railway lines. I think that work must be done. I believe that the Government has to rely on much more than simply the ideology of Jeanette Fitzsimons and the Green Party, in basically saying that rail is a good thing. The situation is not as simple as that. We should not invest any taxpayers’ money without competent analysis and a commercial justification.

I want also to touch on another important area that I believe needs to be addressed during this debate. I refer here to the question of skilled labour shortages in the New Zealand labour force, which are now a major restraint on our growth. Many of those shortages appear to relate to what may be called the manually skilled section of the workforce. The Government needs immediately, through the Department of Labour, to undertake an in-depth study of New Zealand firms, to establish precisely the extent of those skill shortages, by category and by the ages of the people who are needed to undertake the work. I mention age because the chief executive officer of Positively Business Wellington tells me that shortages in a number of areas are occurring as people retire, and there is no one available to take their place. A comprehensive, well-researched database would therefore assist the Government, both in terms of retaining older workers, and the like, and also of endeavouring to fill those shortages, and to fill them quickly, through immigration.

Diesel mechanics are a case in point. Apparently we are short of them, but there is a cohort of South African diesel mechanics who would be very keen to migrate to New Zealand. In that regard the Government’s new immigration bill is a welcome step forward. As Minister Lianne Dalziel has said, it is a step away from bringing people with academic qualifications into the country simply to drive taxis in Auckland. It is much better to bring in suitably qualified immigrants to plug the gaps in Wellington, Southland, Taranaki, etc.

Hon MATT ROBSON (Deputy Leader—Progressive): It is very good to follow a speaker from a responsible party in this Parliament that differs often with the Government, but supports the Government on matters of confidence and supply. It is in stark contrast to the raggedy old National Party and the right-wing upstart on the block, ACT, to whom Mr McCully has recently had to go, as a Greek bearing gifts. He should beware, see the end of that tale, and see what happens. But that is OK, because in this Parliament we have a working relationship around principle and issues, and United Future should be commended. It is also good to commend it for standing up to the silly taunts of the permanent Opposition, who want to make sure that the Government does not have the support of the parties in this House who actually want to get things done.

When we campaign for votes, we do so with a commitment that, if we are elected, we will do our best to deliver the policies and programmes we campaigned on to improve lives and to make our community safer, more prosperous, and more harmonious. That is why the Progressive party supports this bill. The Labour-Progressive coalition, a minority in this House, regularly comes to Parliament to seek approval to raise the money it needs in order to invest in New Zealand’s future. Non-Government parties have to consider carefully whether to approve, or not to approve, that request for the funds we need to invest in our communities. At various times in the past 4 years we have relied on the support and cooperation, alternatively, of United Future, New Zealand First, and the Greens on matters of confidence and supply. A key political challenge to our centre-left coalition is to continue to hold the confidence of parliamentary majorities for many years to come.

I believe that we have experienced the confidence of Parliament in these past 4 years not only because we have a coalition that is not afraid to tackle challenging issues head-on but because we put those particularly challenging issues to the test of what is the best for the people of New Zealand. We have a coalition that is tackling the social and capital investment deficit of the past 15 years or so. That is a deficit that ACT by its selfish policies wants to continue with, and to go back to—in particular, by pushing programmes that say, if one is rich, one does not have to pay for any of the social investment in New Zealand.

In recent days we have heard of Kiwibank’s pilot programme to offer a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for low and modest-income earners to have their own homes. The response to Kiwibank’s initiative has been overwhelmingly positive. Also in recent days, the coalition has unveiled a $105 million jobs package to assist more New Zealanders into employment. The coalition has showed that it is prepared to face up to its responsibilities to address household and business concerns about the lack of security of supply in electricity provision.

I believe that a political factor that will assist the Labour-Progressive coalition to continue to maintain the support of a majority in Parliament for many years to come, is the decision by the National Party earlier this year to adopt all of ACT’s key values and policies. For that, we heartily thank them. Those two parties have settled on ACT’s policy prescription—a prescription that has ensured that the ACT party has been an Opposition party since its inception. For half a century, until Jim Bolger’s departure from National’s leadership, the National Party dominated New Zealand’s parliamentary politics. Under the first-past-the-post system that was often easy to do. A party did not need a majority of votes at all, but it could have enough seats to have a majority in Parliament.

Since the coup against Mr Bolger, National and ACT have turned further inward looking. They are now stuck in the rut of all ideologically motivated parties. They are big on philosophical purity and grand theories, but out of touch with the vast majority of the community and unable to participate in implementing practical solutions to real challenges. Everyone agrees that the challenge to all parties is to get good things done for people. The question of confidence that needs to be decided is this: would a National-ACT administration do a better job than the Labour-Progressive coalition? That is the question that confronted New Zealand First and the Greens in the 1999-2002 Parliament, and that confronts those parties, as well as United Future, in this Parliament.

The people of New Zealand have resoundingly answered “No” to the question I posed. [Interruption] It seems that in this Parliament there are two members of Parliament, for the fading and failing Opposition parties, who say “Yes”. Those three parties—that is, New Zealand First, the Greens, and United Future—constantly have to weigh up whether what the Labour-Progressive administration is doing is better for people than what would be happening if we had that National-ACT Government. The political challenge to the Labour-Progressive coalition over this and coming years is to continue to hold the confidence of a majority in Parliament, and to continue to inspire the kind of support and respect that I believe the National-ACT bloc is so many, many years away from achieving.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Minister of Education): We heard interjections from the “agent for Monaco”. Who was responsible for Monaco’s commercial spy ring in New Zealand? It was that member over there. I do not see how he can sit in this House when he runs the commercial spies, the industrial agents, and so on. Someone on the other side of the House called Mr Worth is the agent for Monaco in New Zealand, and he has the cheek to sit in this Parliament at the same time. What an embarrassment he is to his party! [Interruption] He invited it—he interjected the very minute I stood up. I ask members what contribution he has made to New Zealand. He was the agent for Alinghi. That member ran the trust fund for Alinghi and has progressed since that time to running spy rings in New Zealand for the principality of Monaco. I do not know how that member manages to live with his conscience.

Clayton Cosgrove: He doesn’t have one.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: I suppose so; he is an old Tory. It is no great surprise. One of the things I contemplate when we come to the Appropriation (2003/04 Estimates) Bill is that I look at the alternatives—

Richard Worth: Do you know about it?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: I did a helluva lot of work on it. To be fair I probably did not do it in quite the way my ministerial colleagues would have preferred—but we shall leave it at that point, because we work together. I look over to the other side of the House and ask whether anyone there could possibly put a Budget together.

John Key: Yes.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: I just about believe that. We do feel sorry for John Key, do we not? He agreed to Michelle Boag coming in to be the rising star and spokesperson on finance for the National Party. Then what happened? Bill English asked Don Brash to do the job, as well. That was absolutely unfair. When that member was invited in to Parliament, as the member was—I mean, of course, Mr Key, the member for somewhere in west Auckland—by the president of the party to be a rising star in the finance area, who went in front of him? It was Don Brash. I feel sorry for Mr Key. I think we all feel sorry for him.

Jill Pettis: No!

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: People do not feel sorry for him? Who on the opposite side of the House would, if in Government, be trying to put together a Budget? We all know, of course, that it would be Richard Prebble. He is the only person. He is the person who Murray McCully says has more political skills than anyone on the front bench of the National Party. Also, he actually said that Rodney Hide is better than anyone on the front bench of the National Party. I tell members that we do not run that tight a caucus discipline on our side, but I would be looking for the Prime Minister’s ruck marks if I made a comment like that about my leader.

Of course, we are lucky that we have a great leader who deals daily to National, to the point where today National members are too scared to ask the Prime Minister a question. In Opposition, we used to itch for it when Jenny Shipley and Jim Bolger were Prime Minister. We thought: “What questions can we ask the Prime Minister today?” We wondered how we could hold him or her to account. But what do we have here? We have a National Party whose members do not even have the spine to ask the Prime Minister a question. Not one of them was prepared to front up today.

We could go along National’s front bench and point out people like Gerry Brownlee—[Interruption] Well, he has stretched buttons at the moment. There is a lot of hot air over there. They do not ask me questions, either, and that is not fair, because I quite like questions. As Minister of Education I think I should have my fair share of questions, but unfortunately, no one in the National Party—

Richard Worth: There should be a question mark over you.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: I would like there to be a question mark as a result of a bit of pressure from Parliament. But it needs an Opposition. As for Nick Smith, I would like him to ask me a question. This is a relatively sad Opposition.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: As I left the House we were contemplating who, other than John Key, with 10, 15, or 20 years’ experience, could possibly put a Budget together. It is quite clear that the sad, wrung-out dish mop, Dr Brash, could not possibly do it. He has given up already. He has been here a year, and he has given up. Now, he almost says he is sorry before he asks questions.

Hon Dr Michael Cullen: He is a sort of Mary Batchelor of the National Party.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: I think that is bit rough on Mary Batchelor, and Danny Kaye for that matter, as well. There is a little bit of talent left on the National Party side. There is Mr Power, who is sort of threatening, but I do not think he will ever make it in the financial area, because it requires a bit more work than the gentleman rural member is prepared to do. Therefore, what is obvious, and sort of delightful, and what people who are being polled this very night by UMR Insight will be saying, is: “We really know that if the very, very weak Leader of the Opposition was ever involved in Government again with ACT as the coalition partner, Richard Prebble would be Treasurer.” Everyone knows that there is no way that someone as weak as Bill English would ever be able to stand up to someone like Richard Prebble. I wonder now how much longer anyone with any self-respect would stay in the job, in the position Bill English is in. Every now and again—and it is very hard because he is a Tory—I start feeling sorry for him. Clearly, he is someone who was promoted before his time. He is someone who had a whole pile of potential and never delivered, and now he has a mutinous bunch around him, and there is no sign at all of any policy direction.

I ask members to look at the issue of the beaches. What a fundamental mistake he has made. He has ended up attacking his rich mates and their private beaches, because he said there should be one rule for everybody—access to those beaches, even if it has not been there in the past. I happen to agree with him. There are matters of property rights and things like that to work through, but I never thought I would hear from a National Party leader about confiscating the rights of people who have private beaches. But he said it, and I congratulate him—

John Carter: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. We had this debate earlier on, and Minister Tamihere made the same claim. It is just not correct. The member Wayne Mapp has given his word, and the Leader of the Opposition would if he were here. Members are honourable members, and their words are to be accepted. The Leader of the Opposition has never said that. The Minister should not be allowed to repeat it, because it is not correct.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Speaking to the point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I think you know and I know that Bill English may be able to come to the House and make such a claim, but someone else cannot make it on his behalf. It is a matter for debate.

John Carter: The fact is that the member cannot come into the House and make misleading statements. That is against the Standing Orders, as well, and the fact is that if he continues he could be before the Privileges Committee.

Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, that is debatable. The member would have to come to the House himself to make a statement.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Let us just make it clear. We have someone who says there should be one standard for everybody, and the absolute consistent point flowing from that is that his mates’ beaches have to be confiscated. We all know that. What we have is a sad, little man running around looking for some policy, thinking he can scratch a few itches. [Interruption] I think it is disgraceful, too. Bill English, of all people, is deciding that it is about time to kick a few brown people. I think it is outrageous. He thinks he can make progress on something that comes right up to the edge of being racist.

John Carter: Oh! He’s worried about it if he’s talking about it.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Well, I am—and do members know what? I thought he was better than that. I thought he had a conscience and I thought he cared. What is clear is that we now have a leader of the National Party who is a very sad case. He is now like a poor old wrung-out tea towel, about to be cast aside as a wet little thing in the kitchen by the National Party. I say that it would be a much better thing for the country if those members just got on with it and did not keep him there. I do not really care whether it is Mr Power who goes or who holds on and loses the next election, and whether John Key then comes in, whether they go in as a team, or whether they do the logical thing and go straight to John Key and cut out those who are sitting in the middle. I do not think it is that relevant for politics in New Zealand for the next 4 or 5 years, but it is a very sad thing to watch.

KATHERINE RICH (NZ National): What a pitiful speech that was from a member we used to hear a lot from! We used to hear a lot from him, but he has gone all quiet under Helen Clark’s thumb. He is laughing, but that was one of the saddest, slowest speeches I have heard, with the least amount of content. What we are supposed to be talking about, of course, is the Budget. When, like many members, I got to read the Budget, I had great expectations that we would see something in the welfare area. But, no, I thumbed through the Budget and did not see any expenditure that will make a difference to people at the front line. I think the Government realised it did not have enough in its Budget for the welfare area, so it quickly moved to make the announcement that next year would be welfare’s chance to get some expenditure.

But as we know, Labour—through its polling, I imagine—then realised that it was on the wrong side of the welfare debate, and we have seen an about-face this week. We have seen a rush to announce a number of new policies, with great fanfare. The Government has presented them all as new. The policy is called the Jobs Jolt, renamed the “Jobs Joke”. The Government reannounced a whole set of things that were already in place. Some of them had been in place for the last 10 years—no one had told the Minister. The Government dressed up existing programmes and tried to sell them as new ways of trying to get people into work—and so it should try to get them into work. One of the questions Government members have failed to answer is why the number of people on welfare has gone up, not down, even though the Government has had the best economic conditions in a very long time. If we look at total figures in this country, we see that the number of people on welfare, dependent on the State, has increased, not decreased. That is something the Government should be very, very embarrassed about.

This is a Government that was going to make huge changes to the welfare area. What it did was to take a backward step by undoing a number of things that had been done by National in the last 5 years. We have seen a large increase in certain benefits. The number of people on the sickness benefit and the invalids benefit has skyrocketed in the last few years. No one can explain that yet. The numbers on both those benefits have increased at rates that cannot be explained by levels of disability within the community, and they certainly cannot be explained just by saying we have an aging population, or that it is due to population growth.

The culture within Work and Income has changed, all right, but it has changed for the worse. Some of the initiatives that have been reintroduced as new were there already. They are some changes within Work and Income to do what it should have been doing in the first place. The Minister announced a new initiative for intensive new services in isolated areas. Case managers have always had the right to call people in for interviews, and they have always had the ability to provide one-on-one advice and support to individuals. That was the whole theory of that case-management approach. In terms of special assistance for sole parents, the Minister has often said that no assistance was provided to help women, in particular, to get back into the workforce, but that is absolute rubbish. Each year there were interviews, training programmes, and all sorts of support, such as the Compass programme, which was brought in by Jenny Shipley. Once again, what is being proposed is not new.

My personal favourite, looking at the Jobs Jolt, is the information technology training, something called “cyber communities”, which will help 140 long-term unemployed people back into work through information and communication technology. That is a fat lot of use for the 6,000 New Zealanders who have been on some form of welfare for the last 10 years. The amounts of money we are talking about are pitiful: $2.5 million over 3 years. That department spends $3.5 million a day, so $2.5 million over 3 years is not a drop in the bucket. It is not even one drip, and it will make little difference. There is an idea that, suddenly, there will be greater support for the Mayors Task Force for Jobs. For the last couple of years, Work and Income New Zealand has provided staff members for that task force, so what has been announced in the last couple of days is not new.

The next thing the Minister has introduced as new is the idea that people could potentially have their benefits cut if they move to remote locations. Once again, Work and Income New Zealand had the ability to do that. What was new yesterday was that, when Sue Bradford asked a question about whether Māori would be asked to relocate from papakainga, or ancestral lands, the Minister confirmed that they would not be included. It seems that everybody else will be asked to move from remote areas to look for work, except Māori. Once again, we are seeing two standards of citizenship develop in this country, and Steve Maharey agrees with that.

Finally, it is rather ironic that when the Minister tries to talk tough on welfare, he does not focus on the under-25s, which is the group on the welfare register that is of most concern to New Zealanders, but picks on the 55-59-year-old New Zealanders—those who are nearing retirement. When he talks tough on welfare, the first thing he does is to try to kick those who are about to retire in the shins. I ask the Minister where it states in the third-way manual that the first people one picks on are people aged 55-59. Most of us know that those people are the sector of the welfare register who are very motivated to get work but face a wide range of barriers into employment that should be recognised. So that is kind of funny—he talks tough on welfare but the first thing he does is talk tough in respect of those who are close to retirement. That is really kind! I am sure Tony Blair would be very proud of Steve Maharey and that announcement. The thing is that someone forgot to tell the Minister that people in the 55-59 age group are already work tested. Yesterday, he seemed to think that that was something new. I say to the Minister that what was removed was the ability to apply for an exemption. People apply for those exemptions not, usually, because they want to but because their bodies may have worn out from a lifetime of hard work and they are unable to work.

I can see that members on the other side of the House are getting really uptight about this, because they know we have seen through this plan—a plan they announced as being some sort of cunning plan. I remember the story of the emperor’s new clothes. I say to the House that Steve Maharey has no clothes. What he announced yesterday amounts to absolutely nothing. It is a rehash and a reheat of policies already in place, not just in the last couple years but, in some cases, in the last 10 years. Some policies were in place when we had the New Zealand Employment Service. Somebody forgot to tell the Minister that many of those things were already being done.

Tonight we heard about welfare fraud. We heard about a staff member who, after 2½ years, has managed to extract $1.9 million out of Work and Income New Zealand. It comes as no surprise. Benefit fraud on both sides of the ledger is something that has been truly neglected under this Government. That Minister can shrug his shoulders, as he did tonight, and say that that was an operational issue, but if National were in Government, we would not think it was just an operational issue. We would think the Minister would have to get involved in an issue of $1.9 million. We are talking big dollars. We have an expectation of those on welfare that they will not defraud the system.

The Minister, poor thing, puts out his press release and has to ring around because nobody has followed up on it. I can see why he is feeling under a bit of pressure with his “Jobs Joke”. Everybody knows that it is a joke and that it is not designed to make one iota of difference to those who are unemployed or to bringing down welfare numbers—numbers that Treasury have projected to increase over the next few years. We have the best economic conditions in a generation, and welfare numbers will be going up. That is because that Government has undone many of the things that were being done in Work and Income New Zealand to bring numbers down. It was working. The Government has a problem. Its polling is telling it that it has a problem and that it had better make some decisions. That is why Steve Maharey has had to swallow a dead rat and start to bring in some things that he feels deeply uncomfortable about.

Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister for Social Development and Employment): I was going to say, as the beginning of my comments on the Appropriation (2003/04 Estimates) Bill, that that speech was like listening to someone on Mogadon, and that it was “Kath without the Kim”, but the problem is that I quite like Katherine Rich. On this side of the House, we regard Katherine Rich as being one of the better members of the National Party, and it is easy to see why, because that was 10 minutes of inspiring, insightful stuff that really went to the heart of this debate. Katherine Rich is someone whom I regard as being in the wrong party. She is intelligent and she does not believe the stuff she is required to say as a member of the National Party, which largely consists of warmed-over policies from the 1990s. I do not think Katherine Rich was born then—I am not really sure whether she was—as she is such a young person.

Mr Carter remembers all those horrendous policies of the 1990s, which even he did not believe in, finally. Even he cracked under the pressure of the kinds of policies that the National Party tried to introduce. Even he knew that they were wrong and that they were on the wrong track. But Katherine Rich comes from an intelligent legal background, and from the very, very forward-looking town of Dunedin, in the Otago region. She has come to Parliament and been given the job as spokesperson on social security. The National Party has asked her to do all sorts of things—to beat up on beneficiaries; to carry on with that 1990s way of doing things—and one can tell when one sees her here tonight, talking quietly into the microphone to herself, that she does not have her heart in it. She does not believe it and, therefore, it leaves us on this side of the House once again to map out what will be happening around these issues. Sue Bradford, I am sure, will either viciously attack me later in the debate or has already done so. I am not sure whether she has got to it yet.

Budgets are normally a time when members get up in the House and talk about what they would like to do. At present there is a real litmus test going on in the House of potential Governments, because the only two parties in the House that have really presented a Budget are the Labour Party and the Progressive Coalition. When the Labour Party was in Opposition, with people like Mike Moore, who went off to the World Trade Organization—we have so much talent in the Labour Party we can afford to send people off to run the World Trade Organization—followed by Helen Clark, what did we do when the Budget came around? We put out vision statements and policies,—

Darren Hughes: Alternative Budgets.

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: —we wrote alternative Budgets, we came to the House and talked about them, and we went around the country and held meetings about them. What people got was a strong impression that there was an alternative Government.

But when we come into the House and have this kind of debate, what do we get? We get all the Opposition parties coming down and whingeing and whining about what the Government is doing. They never once put the discipline on themselves, and rather than talking about all those little wild schemes they have, say that if they had this amount of money, how they would bring it down to hit between the pages of a Budget. That is what people vote for at election time. They may enjoy Rodney Hide getting up and going on about some little issue. They may really like the fact that Mr Carter gets up and talks about some case in Northland. They may like to hear criticisms of various people in this House, but, in the end, what will they vote for? They want somebody to get up and actually run the country. They want somebody who can run the country. [Interruption] I can hear Mr McNair saying that people vote for New Zealand First. Well, a few of them do. The New Zealand First Party has only three policies, so it gets about only three votes. That is the problem. People do not want the New Zealand First Party in Government because it does not have a plan for the country. It has only three constant whingers who go on and on about what we are doing about immigration, crime, and whatever else they are worried about, which is on New Zealand First’s big posters. But New Zealand First cannot run the country.

That is why the only party that is polling well—the only big party in this Parliament any more—is the Labour Party. We are the only group that actually looks like a Government. I have said before that what has happened in this party is that what one might call the Scandinavian approach to life is starting to emerge in New Zealand. From now on there will be one big party, which will be called the Labour Party—

Darren Hughes: Very good name.

Hon STEVE MAHAREY: I think it is a very good name, as my neighbour from Horowhenua says. It is such a good name, and it will be the Government’s name before long. It will be a little like the way in which a fridge became known as a Kelvinator. People forgot about the notion of fridges, and just started to call them Kelvinators. In the future, we will find that people will say “the Labour”; they will not even bother with “the Government”. They will say “the Labour” because our party will be synonymous with the Government.

I say to people that this is no criticism of Helen Clark, but if members cast their eyes around the House tonight they are probably looking at a future Prime Minister. He is in this House now. I am talking about the young man back there. We are grooming him for 25 or so years’ time when he will come into his prime, and “the Labour”—in other words, the Government–will move smoothly to its fourth or fifth Prime Minister while in office. That is what we are looking at, simply because the small parties on the other side of the House, along with the shrinking National Party, are held together by the fact that they won some votes last time. If there were an election today National members would fit even further down the other part of the Opposition benches, to squeeze into a little bit of foreshore over on the side there, which would give them customary access only, as part of that. We would not give them any title or right to it, because of course they are being squeezed off, but they could get a bit of Queen’s chain access to it. Then we might give them a little bit of customary use of the seats, because of their long history, since 1936, in opposing Labour. So they would have a customary right to those few seats over on the side there.

So that is what it is coming to. We are the only people who bother to put up a Budget. We are the only people who actually say how to run the country. We are the only people who have policies on everything. Everybody else now is going into his or her wee niche, and as time goes on we will find that Labour members will move further and further around the Chamber. The Opposition parties will then fit into nice little niches on the other side as they pick out their little issues to argue with us about—but they will never be the Government because they do not bother to write Budgets.

Mr Hide over there, who pretends he is an economist, could at least spend some time on what is supposed to be his core discipline, instead of chasing ambulances all the time. He looks a bit like one of those people off the old shroud-waving kinds of American crime shows, chasing one little ambulance after another. Why does he not do some serious work on saying exactly how the ACT party would run a full Budget, to give people some choice? Well, I do not think that party will, and therefore we are looking tonight at the only game in town.

I was proud to sit in the Chamber and listen to the fourth Budget presented by Dr Michael Cullen, who, I think personally—and this is not just because he is close to me in the Chamber, and all the rest of it—has now presented four Budgets that have given him total credibility in this area. That has reflected extraordinarily well on the Government so that people know, as the old saying used to go, that the chequebook is safe with the Labour Party. The chequebook is safe with this Government, because we have a person in Dr Cullen who has earned the respect of all parts of our community. Whether one is a welfare beneficiary, a business person, or somebody who teaches in a school, wherever one may be, one is able to look at Dr Cullen and say: “That person knows what he is doing with the chequebook. He will spend it responsibly. We ought to keep him there, Budget after Budget, to make sure that what he is doing is spending the money wisely.”

I was proud to be part of that, and I say that as a person who is trying to spend more and more in the social area because there are so many things to do in this country. I have to go along with Dr Cullen, I have to fit in with the kind of plan that he is putting forward for this country, and I am able to understand what he is doing. I am able to see how welfare budgets, education budgets, and housing budgets are fitting together into the broad plan that he is putting forward. As someone who wants to spend this amount of money on people in this country, I have been able to work with Dr Cullen knowing that our budgets are in the safe hands of someone like him, with his expertise. I have been proud of that. I know that I am surrounded in the Chamber, because I can feel the warm glow, by comrades amongst the Labour Party who feel exactly the same about Dr Cullen. They have that warm, suffused beam of pride that comes from knowing that the country’s Budget is very well managed.

I want to finish on that note. It is hard to debate in the Chamber this evening with a series of parties that are not really serious about running the country. This is just a little whinge session for them, on their own little issues that they want to get on with. The country knows that. People hear them chipping away at their little issues, but they know that however entertaining that might be, or however that might scratch a little itch, it does not constitute a sound visionary policy and Budget, which means they can get up each day and know that their lives are taking place in the context of a Government that knows how to run this country. That is what Labour can do.

SUE KEDGLEY (Green): As our leader has already pointed out earlier today, the Green Party will not be able to support the third reading of this bill because this Government, which projects itself as seemingly cautious, sensible, and pragmatic, is defying common sense, simple logic, and the wishes of the vast majority of New Zealanders by lifting the moratorium on genetic engineering (GE) so that New Zealand can climb on the GE bandwagon and grow GE foods that no one wants to buy or eat.

I have just come from listening to a Labour Minister, the Rt Hon Michael Meacher, who was the Minister for the Environment in the Blair Labour Government until he was recently tossed out because he questioned genetic engineering. No doubt if he had been here in New Zealand he would have suffered a similar fate. The Rt Hon Michael Meacher said that he was genuinely puzzled about why an export-oriented nation like New Zealand—arguably the world’s leading producer of agricultural products, which has an outstanding branded image of being clean and green—would put at risk our brand and our world export markets to grow food for which there are no markets, no consumer benefits, and no economic benefits, and for which even the claimed producer benefits have failed to come to pass.

Michael Meacher confirmed to a very, very large audience across the road—I have just been there—that the attitudes in Europe to GE food, and let us remember that Europe is our largest single premium market, show no sign of shifting, and, if anything, are strengthening in their rejection, deep suspicion, and distrust of GE food. He predicted that that situation would continue for the foreseeable future. He pointed out that the new GE labelling and traceability laws of the European Union, which will require every single GE ingredient in food to be labelled, will require, first of all, guaranteed GE-free food supplies. The European Union will require any New Zealand exporter who is exporting to Europe to segregate food containing GE from GE-free food, and to provide the Europeans with full traceability all the way through the process, to prove that the food we are exporting is GE-free.

So why would we want to imperil our premium market? We have already had a warning with the latest GE corn contamination, the Sunrise corn fiasco, that even a tiny amount of contamination can imperil our markets—in this case, the Japanese market—which want nothing less than guaranteed GE-free food supplies.

Michael Meacher spent last week in Canada. I think it would be a wonderful idea if our Minister of Agriculture took a little visit to Canada to see just what the experience of the Canadian farmers has been with GE. They wholeheartedly embraced GE when it was introduced there. They believed the hype, that it was going to introduce higher yields, herbicide-resistant crops, and so on and so forth. Now all of them, from the major Canadian Farmers Union down, are totally opposed to GE. Indeed, the head of the Canadian Farmers Union went to England to say to the farmers there: “Don’t touch GE.” The contamination has spread throughout Canada, yields have not increased, and farmers in Canada are being sued by GE seed companies. They are now taking out full-page advertisements in the newspapers and waging a major campaign against Monsanto, which is trying to introduce GE wheat there. The National Farmers Union, GE Agribusiness, and the Canadian Wheat Board are all implacably opposed to it. A court case has even been taken out, saying: “Please, we beg of you, don’t grow genetically engineered wheat. What has happened in Canada has been a fiasco, and we do not want any further disasters.”

Why will our Government not listen to the former Environment Minister of the United Kingdom, when he says that it will be a disaster for New Zealand, and that there is no market for GE foods? He cannot understand what on earth this Government is doing.

Hon MARK BURTON (Minister of Defence): I just want to say it is a pleasure to join this debate, and to acknowledge that the foundations for a secure, long-term future for New Zealand have now been well bedded in over the last three Budgets by Dr Michael Cullen. I think now is a time for ensuring that we stay the course and work our way through. There are periods of uncertainty, and we are in one now, but I think we have a coherent and highly credible programme for 2003-04. The foundations are there, and we have to build on them.

I will take the time I have in this debate to talk about defence, because over the last few days, in what was once a credible national newspaper, and, more recently, in comments made in this House by one or two members, we have had what has passed for some sort of critique of defence policy. It is a critique that is appalling in its lack of quality, substance, and, indeed, accuracy. So I think it is about time we put the record straight a little.

Before getting into the real detail of it, I have to say that yesterday I was stunned to hear Dr Wayne Mapp claim that this Labour Government had cancelled the third frigate, which I think is a good example of the complete lack of memory on the part of the National Party. That might have been a good decision, but I think Dr Mapp must be suffering from severe amnesia. In 1998 the decision to axe the frigate was made by the National Party, and it was well covered in the media. I can only assume that Dr Mapp was doing something else that month. I will quote him a little bit of his own party’s defence policy from 1999: “National will not be proceeding with the replacement of our last Leander-class frigate with a third Anzac frigate.” I think the member’s comment about the frigate is, therefore, about as credible as the National Party’s comments about it caring about personnel and pay rates.

We need go no further than those in the National Party who do at least have some memory, and I refer Dr Mapp to his colleague Simon Power, the defence spokesperson for National. Mr Power said in a recent speech, made only in the last few weeks—

Jill Pettis: Not much firepower there.

Hon MARK BURTON: No, but at least he got this right: “A National-led Government did not allow defence spending to keep pace in the 1990s.” That is from a recent speech made by National’s current defence spokesperson. Perhaps if Dr Mapp is not satisfied with that, if he wants an older, wiser head, he could go to Richard Worth—that well-known doyen of the legal profession and camel rider. He is a wise man, and he spoke recently on National’s time. He said 9 years of neglect had left New Zealand’s Defence Force “perilously low in capability and short of the funds to correct this.” Clearly, neither Mr Worth nor Mr Power suffers from amnesia.

Anyway, let me move on. As I said earlier, in recent days accusations and assertions have been published in a once-credible newspaper. There has been a series of big articles based on selected bits of recycled questions. The newspaper calls it an investigation, which I think is a grandiose term for a bit of recycled question material and self-interviewing. Let us have a few facts in this ill-informed debate.

In 1999 this Government inherited a Defence Force that was, by National’s own admission—and I have given quotes from Mr Worth and Mr Power—suffering from 9 years of neglect. It was, Mr Worth said, “perilously low in capability and short of the funds to correct this.”, and he was right. As I said before, Mr Power, in his comments made recently in a well-publicised speech, reinforced that. So by 1999 we had the Army, Navy, and Air Force actively competing against each other for the crumbs of what was left after 9 long years of neglect—neglect that dated back to the 1960s. Pay rates had lagged behind, and there was a seemingly bleak future all-round.

When we took office in 1999 we said the time had come for a new way to run defence issues in this country. Contrary to the sorts of nonsense that we have seen published, for the first time a Government did what it said it would do. It was based on the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee’s Inquiry into Defence Beyond 2000. There had been plenty of opportunity for discussion and debate about setting a course. We said we would build a policy on that, and we did. Within 6 months the defence policy framework had been published and released. Within a year we had a force structure document in place. It said: “Here’s the policy. This is the force structure that, logically, you need to implement that policy.” Last year, before the election, we released the long-term development plan, which is the plan that will put into practice the equipment, resources, materials, and tools for our men and women in the Defence Force to do the job we ask of them, which is clearly laid out in that policy framework. We have committed $3 billion over the next decade. That plan was updated just last month. It is a continuing, rolling-out document, and there will be $3 billion over the next decade to put that plan into effect. In other words, we defined the need, we laid out the policy, we looked at how it can be achieved, and we are doing it, which is the rarest thing of all. Unlike the National Government, we are actually getting on and doing it.

National has the gall to say that it is policy made on the run. It has been frustrating for me to have to take the time to do it, but we have done it right, and now we are rolling out the policy, and Mr Power tries to call that running around with a shopping list. We have built an acquisition programme based on a clear policy framework, and if that is running around with a shopping list, then I am guilty, because, frankly, what National is asking for is another white paper. Do National members know what another white paper will actually mean? It will mean a stop to the acquisitions, a stop to the replacement of that old equipment, which those members criticise daily, just as they daily insult and offend the good men and women of our Defence Force. Do National members know why a lot of our equipment requires work on a regular basis? It is because of the pace of the work that our people are involved in. They are working hard. They are doing a lot of things with that equipment.

Clayton Cosgrove: Unlike them.

Hon MARK BURTON: Exactly. They do not get it; they just do not understand. On Monday I had the great privilege of getting out and greeting the men and women on Te Mana as they arrived back in New Zealand. They came back second to none. They have the accolades of the international community. The Canadian commander who had command of that interdiction force said that they are second to none. They had the highest rate of operation of any ship in that force. Of course, when operating in 45-degree heat, they will have some maintenance issues that are quite unusual. Should we attack and criticise them or their equipment? No, we should admire them. They have shown ingenuity and initiative of the sort that New Zealanders are famous for.

The thing that saddens me is to have a once-great newspaper wheeling out that claptrap for a whole week. It is absolute nonsense. It does not insult me, and it does not affect me; it insults the men and women who are our Defence Force. It is an absolute affront. I get out and about and I talk to the NCOs, people who have spent 25 or 27 years training some of the finest personnel in the world. They are now being told their training is useless. Well, it is not; it is fine. They are the best people anywhere; they are second to none. When they go out, they deserve to be properly equipped, and that is what this Government is doing across all three services.

We have committed $1 billion to upgrading the Air Force’s capabilities. I see Dr Cullen breaking out into a sweat even as I mention it. We have $120 million worth of new radio and communications equipment for the Army and Air Force. Why? Because I am not prepared to send out young people with 60lbs on their back with three radios because they cannot trust the old, clapped-out radios in their packs to work when they need them. That is why we have made that commitment. That is why we are spending $600 million on up to date, 21st century equipment to move them around. The old Vietnam War equipment served us well, but its day is done. That is why Project Protector will provide a fleet of modern and appropriate vessels to complement what we already have, so that our Navy can do the roles, alongside many other agencies, that we require of it. That is why we are engaged in numerous other projects in the long-term development plan: so that the young men and women who are the current and future Defence Force of New Zealand are properly equipped and are properly supported to do the job that they are doing for us.

I challenge the Opposition just once to stop whingeing, to stop whining, and to stop attacking those young men and women. When you do that, when you slag them off, when you attack the Government’s defence policy, you are not hurting me, and you are not hurting us; you are insulting them, and they deserve better. They deserve better from this Parliament.

Rodney Hide: I raise a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Do I need to explain this point of order? I do not think it is acceptable that the Minister of Defence spends his speech attacking the Speaker.

Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am sorry, but I did not hear that.

Hon MARK BURTON: If I inadvertently used the second person, I unreservedly apologise. My comments were directed entirely at the sort of nit-picking that member just engaged in, which was a great example of not actually engaging the real issues.

CLAYTON COSGROVE (NZ Labour—Waimakariri): I suppose this is a debating tag team in one respect. Rodney Hide would know about that, being a big-time wrestler from way back. I want to pick up where the Minister of Defence left off. Mr Hide’s contribution showed exactly how bereft of any spirit he is. This is the man who, we should never forget, attacked—

Rodney Hide: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. My point of order was ruled on and it was ruled in my favour. It is not acceptable that this member—I forget his name—then gets up and uses his speech to discuss my point of order. That is outside Standing Orders.

Hon Dr Michael Cullen: That is a very good point, and it is one that I think we should follow on every occasion. Once a point of order has been ruled upon, a member should not be commenting on that ruling in a subsequent speech.

Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: That is quite correct.

CLAYTON COSGROVE: My apologies; I will not transgress your ruling. Let me say this in respect of Vote Defence. Mr Hide’s career is littered with attacks, as our Minister of Defence said, on our defence personnel. He is known in this House to wear a Returned Services Association associate’s badge, and to parade about as though he were a friend of our armed services. Yet this is the man who got stuck into the Private Leonard Manning affair to the point where the dead soldier’s family told the Minister to get him to back off. Mr Hide is the man who attacked the Air Force because it had decided to pick up—I forget from which island; was it Samoa—a person in distress, after a request by a responsible Opposition member, who I think was Katherine Rich. The old blunderbuss, Mr Hide, never gets up to back our armed services.

There used to be a protocol in this Parliament that when our men and women were overseas, peacekeeping, fighting, protecting others and protecting our country, we backed them in unison. I believe that most National Party members generally observe this protocol, but not the grubby Mr Hide; if he can smell a bit of a scab to pick off, he will be in there. One has to say—no, I would breach Standing Orders if I did say it, but words like “patriotism” come to mind—that those members who do not engage in his sort of activity are the patriotic ones.

I turn to the Appropriation (2003/04 Estimates) Bill. We now look at the state of New Zealand in the light of the positive economic statistics that we have in this country, in an environment of international uncertainty. If we look at the good economic news—and I know that certain members opposite hate it—we see that a household labour force survey shows an unemployment rate that is one of the lowest in the OECD. That is undisputed. Our gross domestic product growth rate is one of the highest in the OECD; in the last quarter there was an increase of 0.6 percent, and there was an annual increase of 4.3 percent. Those are solid economic platforms from which we can build. The ANZ Job Ads series increased in June by 5.6 percent. We have the lowest unemployment, I believe, for 15 to 20 years. Those are all solid achievements that are good for our people and good for our country. From those we can provide further opportunities for New Zealanders.

I remind members of Parliament that the last Government raised the white flag on regional development. The last Government sold out the regions, sold out places like the West Coast and the Bay of Plenty. It got rid of the business development agencies. I think the Minister at the time—

Georgina Beyer: That’s right.

CLAYTON COSGROVE: My colleague says that is right. It was Max Bradford. It is interesting that we are the first Government to have a Minister for Small Business. We know that small business provides 85 to 90 percent of the jobs. We have a Minister for Small Business, but what did the last crowd do? How did those members advocate around the Cabinet table for small business? Let us look at the regional growth rates around the country. I am proud to say that my own province of Canterbury leads the South Island at 4.9 percent, and is second only to the Bay of Plenty, which is at 5.1 percent. I think they are solid achievements. I think they are the things that people listening here tonight and people around the country want to hear about and want to talk about, rather than the sort of flummery and posturing we have from people like Mr Hide. How do I know that people want to talk about development and growth in this country? I say just look at the polls. The polls are a reflection of the support this Government has, and I do not say that arrogantly; I say that with a high degree of respect for our people.

Georgina Beyer: It is a matter of fact.

CLAYTON COSGROVE: It is a matter of fact, as my colleague says. Let us look at some of the key achievements. Let us look at our progress in health. There are now 1.7 million New Zealanders enrolled in primary health organisations. There were 157,000 elective operations in 2001-02, up from 151,000. There has been progress in education. We said we would put more teachers into schools, and we have created an extra 774 teacher positions for next year. We have invested $78 million in information and communication technology in schools. In the tertiary area, we are widening eligibility for student allowances so that we can make tertiary institutions and universities more accessible and more affordable for our young people. Why? Because we value education. What do we get from education? More skilled New Zealanders. What do you get from more skilled New Zealanders? Jobs and tax revenue that we can then redistribute and redeploy to those who need help within our economy. In terms of the progress in law and order, we hear a lot of bleating from the ACT party and from—I think his name is Ryall; he reminds me of a jug of beer with big handles.

Rodney Hide: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker.

Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member will refer to the member by his proper name.

CLAYTON COSGROVE: My apologies. Mr Ryall bleats on again about police numbers. Here is a fact that members should have etched in their memories: there are more police in New Zealand than in any other time in the history of this country, and this is the biggest police budget in the history of this country.

John Carter: Not true.

CLAYTON COSGROVE: I say to the member that I remember that just before the last election Bill English—and my colleague will refresh my memory—put up a paper before Cabinet to cut it by $120 million.

Hon George Hawkins: 540 police jobs.

CLAYTON COSGROVE: My colleague tells me the proposal was to cut 540 police jobs. Had the country not put the sword into Mr English and that Government, we would be 540 police down today. National’s biggest contribution to the police was chewing up hundreds of millions of dollars of the police budget, not on batons, pepper spray, cars, and those sorts of things, and not on personnel, but on INCIS, a silly computer system that never worked. That was its contribution. [Interruption] I invite that member to get off his chuff, take a call, and justify that.

Let us take a look at social development, which is important within our country. The sum of $153 million will be spent over 4 years to help people move off welfare and into work. I would have thought that was something even Rodney Hide—the tsar of the zany in the ACT party—would support, but, no, those Opposition members will not talk about opportunities for New Zealand; they put the boot in because that is their specialty.

I want to contrast that with some of the geniuses in the National Party. I ask the House to look at some of the contributions that have been made by National Party members. I want to conclude briefly with Bill English and the National Party on the foreshore and seabed issue. I made a general debate speech this afternoon, and I said that their politics of scaremongering is one of the lowest points I have seen in this Parliament. This is an issue that has perplexed and worried a lot of New Zealanders. For some, that is through a lack of understanding, and I pay no disrespect to people who do not understand the issue. They get most of their information through the media, and it is often skewed by members opposite. But the National Party had a chance on this issue to show some leadership. Instead, what we got was grubby politics from a grubby party and grubby members opposite. Where has the leadership of that party been on this issue? Instead of scaremongering, what it could have done was to say to New Zealanders: “This is an issue that transcends politics. This is an issue where we need to join together and get it sorted out.”

Well, I say to the House tonight that we will sort it out. It is a tough issue, it is complex, and it will take some time, but this Government will sort it out. Why? Because this Government is the only one that can sort it out. It is the only one with the guts to confront the issue head-on and deal to it. The only thing we get from Opposition members is: “You are not moving fast enough. Where is the plan, where is the strategy?”. Well, unlike the slogans, the billboards, and all the rubbish that they come up with, we are going to get this right. We are going to get the framework up and get the consultation done, then we are going to put the issue to bed. All New Zealanders will know, thanks to us, that they will be able to take the kids to the beach and, as John Tamihere said, have a barbecue, play cricket, volleyball, or whatever, take some fish, and have a good time. They will have access, as they have today. I finally call on the Opposition to make a decent contribution.

Dr LYNDA SCOTT (NZ National—Kaikoura): What an absolutely pathetic speech from Clayton Cosgrove! Members can tell that the seabed and foreshore issue is absolutely hurting this Government, and it is not going to sort it out; it is just going to do deals. The issue is a very easy one. I come from Marlborough, and the line in the sand is the Marlborough foreshore and seabed. That is the line in the sand, and New Zealanders know it. It is not a complicated issue. It is not complicated, at all. The Māori Land Court should apply to land—not foreshore, not seabed; just land. All the Government has to do is define “land” as land. If the Government did that, then, when it wanted to talk about it, title would remain in Crown ownership. It is very easy to solve that problem. Government members talk about other issues, but the problem of title is easy to solve. Yet this Government cannot do it. Helen Clark came out and said she would, but she has backed off every day since, because they cannot sort out a deal with the Māori caucus. The Government can spin this all it likes, but people throughout New Zealand know that this is a line in the sand, and they are not going to tolerate it.

But, actually, I came down to the House tonight to talk about health. I am going to talk about primary health organisations, because $165 million is being allocated in the 2003-04 year to that experiment. Every superannuitant out there who cannot get a hip replacement, cannot get a cataract done, and has been bumped off the waiting list—every one of the 25,000 people in the 2003-04 year alone; every one of the 10,000 in Christchurch—has to wonder where the money is going. Why have the points—the hurdle that people have to get over to get an operation—been put up? It is because a lot of the money is going to primary health organisations. The Government is also pouring money into district health boards, which is like pouring money down a black hole because the governance structure and the management structure are failing New Zealand. That is why we had the highest ever deficits last year, and it is why they will be higher this year.

But I come back to the issue of primary health organisations. The Minister of Health has actually stated that she wants to be remembered for primary health organisations. What are they? They are untrialled, they are rushed, they are uncoordinated, they will not deliver on expectation, they are expensive, they are heavily bureaucratic, they are hated by general practitioners, and they are race-based. That sounds a bit like the Minister of Health, actually. A problem list as long as that takes a major increase in the number of health officials to sort it out. We have to wonder why the Government decided not to build on the independent practice associations that were developed by doctors, who thought they were doing a good job for New Zealand. All the things that the Ministry of Health says it wants to achieve with primary health organisations—better diabetes treatment, better access for Māori, better screening programmes, more immunisation, better management of pharmacies and laboratories—were being done by independent practice associations.

So why destroy a system that was working, just to create a race-based system of targeted funding on location? How can it possibly make sense to put $165 million into funding based on location? Ten main issues have been raised regarding the establishment of primary health organisations. Funding is based on location, not on need. A primary health organisation needs 50 percent of Māori, Pacific Island, or low deprivation, but the fact is that the other 50 percent do not have to have high health needs or be Māori, Pacific Island, or low decile. In the South Island there is nobody on cheap health-care, whereas other areas get cheaper care. It does not make sense, and when we ask the ministry it says that, over 10 years, it will roll it out to everybody. But what will happen during those 10 years? People in the wrong location will not get cheaper access to care, whereas wealthier people in the right location do get that access. It is ridiculous.

The Government did not build on the independent practice association model. Instead, a whole new system was set up. The public has to enrol, but nobody actually knows about enrolment. People have not been told that they are supposed to enrol with just one general practitioner practice. So what happens? People move—they live in one area and they work somewhere else, and if they get sick, they go to the local doctor down the road. What happens to the funding? The funding does not stay with the general practitioner they normally see; it gets moved. Capitation funding is causing massive funding flows for general practitioners, and it is affecting their ability to practise. So, with capitation, the cross - primary health organisation flows are really detrimental, and people are finding it very difficult.

The fluctuations that are occurring in the incomes of primary health organisations is huge. The ministry has allowed small primary health organisations of 5,000 to 7,000 patients to develop.

They know that they will not survive. They know that they cannot continue on the funding that they have. They know they will fail. Why were they allowed to be set up in the first place when the management and administration costs are so high? Every primary health organisation has to have a board, and there is concern from the ministry that there is not enough Māori involvement in the governance. That is what this is about. It is more about getting Māori and Pacific Islanders involved in governance structures than about delivering care on objective measures. We have to look at how much it will actually cost to have the bureaucracy and the administration of these primary health organisations. It will be huge. In the past we have had deficits in hospital-level care. We have never heard about deficits in primary care, but that is what we will get.

The Government is pouring $165 million in, $20 million of it for primary health organisation establishment funding, and a whole lot of that will disappear, and primary health organisations will be back to the Government with their hands out asking for more money. That has not happened in the past. The general practitioners have worn the cost, and they have delivered because they have done it on a public and private system. One gets public money plus private money. That pays for primary care. Funding can be an issue. No one denies that funding can be an issue for people when they need to see their doctor, but why not target it on need? In relation to the independent practice associations, the doctors all got together and said that there should be a care-plus system where those with high health needs and low incomes get better access. The Ministry of Health agrees with that, but how much money is it putting into them? It is putting in $2 million, as opposed to $165 million into primary health organisations. No one disagrees with more money going into primary health care, but the way it is being done is confusing to the public. It will not deliver on its aims, and, unfortunately, it will be waste a huge amount of money.

Today I talked to a consumer of mental health services. Mental health services have continued to be a problem in this country. The lady I am talking about lives north of Auckland in the Waitemata area. Waitemata looks after all the forensic services for Auckland. She said that the doctor who was to discharge her brother was not signing his discharge letter but was, instead, signing his death certificate because there were no acute beds for her brother to stay in. This man had tried twice to kill himself, but out he was going, that day, because there are not enough mental health beds. If the Government wants to do some good, it should put more money into mental health beds. We have gone too far with our lack of beds for those who are acutely unwell. The police have had enough. They were trying to help. People were being kept in police cells—illegally, actually—and the police have now been told that they have to stop doing that, and that 6 hours is enough. However, there are no acute beds for those patients. That means that they are a risk to their family and to themselves. We need more mental health beds. The situation is so stressful that the staff leave, because they are under so much pressure. We are nowhere as near to the blueprint funding as we should be. This is one area where we could be looking at putting more money. Also, if we look at how much funding Phamac has been allocated, we see that its funding has reduced. That means lack of access to new medications. Primary health organisations get all the money, and they will not deliver.

LUAMANUVAO WINNIE LABAN (NZ Labour—Mana): Kia ora, talofa lava, and warm Pacific greetings. As a proud member of this Labour-led Government I have much pleasure in standing to participate in this debate. The strong foundations for long-term sustainable social and economic development have been laid in the last three Budgets. This bill continues that good work. The fine leadership and economic stewardship of our Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Dr Michael Cullen, is to be applauded. He continues to be a safe pair of hands, and our country can feel reassured by his leadership and commitment.

I want to give the House some examples of Labour’s ongoing commitments in the Mana electorate, with a strong focus on achievement and positive outcomes. I will talk about progress and jobs in the economy, and progress in education, health, law and order, conservation and environment, and social development.

Economic growth in the Wellington region has improved. As of July 2003, Porirua City currently enjoys an economic growth rate of 5 percent and the Kapiti Coast district a respectable 3.1 percent. Unemployment continues at its lowest levels, and that is complemented by the significant reduction of unemployment in the Mana electorate. Porirua out-performed the region with an unemployment level of 4.6 percent. There are now 16,200 more people in paid work since Labour formed the Government in 1999. The partnership of the various stakeholders, including Positively Wellington Business—formerly the Wellington Regional Economic Development Trust—Business Porirua, the Porirua City Council, and the Kapiti Coast District Council, together with central government agencies is a good working model of partnership, collaboration, and consultation. It ensures that resources are utilised for good planning so that we can maximise the outcomes and benefits for the people of the Mana electorate and, of course, for the people of New Zealand. We all know that we need dollars to make it happen. Innovation Greenhouse Porirua has been awarded a business incubator grant of $80,000. Innovation Greenhouse Porirua will be assisting start-up businesses in the area to grow, without making some of the mistakes that businesses normally make within the first 3 years.

We are committing an extra $23.6 million to expand the Gateway programme, which is currently being piloted in 63 schools to reach all decile 1 to 5 secondary schools by 2007. Mana College in Porirua is a current Gateway school. In our electorate there are an estimated 12 extra teaching positions in 2003, and there will be a further 15 extra positions in 2004. Schools in that area will also get an extra $298,000 for operations funding in 2004.

With the boost from the number of businesses and workers involved in industry training, we will get an extra 7,000 trainees in the Wellington region, including those in the Modern Apprenticeships scheme. The Government has also given the go-ahead for a major redevelopment of health services in the Wellington region, including the construction of our new regional hospital in Newtown, the remodernisation of Kenepuru Hospital, and the provision of more health facilities for Kapiti. Primary health organisations were set up to target populations with the greatest health needs. In our area these include the Porirua Plus primary health organisation, which enrolled 11,768 people, Tumai mo te tangata, which enrolled 48,497 people, and the Kapiti PHO, which enrolled 33,189 people.

In February this year we were involved in the opening of the new Kapiti police station, which has become a striking addition to buildings on the Kapiti Coast. Senior Sergeant Mike Coleman, who heads the 38 sworn police officers and four civilian staff based at the Kapiti police station, says that his staff members are delighted with the new building. There has been a significant drop in reported crime in Mana, which parallels the drop in unemployment and shows the clear link between the improved economic situation and social indicators such as crime statistics.

Mana Island and Kapiti Island are two beautiful jewels of the Kapiti Coast. The Department of Conservation manages those two major assets of New Zealand’s conservation estate. I have visited both of those islands and have seen at first hand the tremendous work of the Department of Conservation. Native birds, plants, and other aspects of New Zealand’s heritage have been preserved, and restored to those islands. In relation to some of the money that has gone into projects for example, $26,000 has gone to the Pauatahanui Inlet Community Trust to guide rural landowners on restoring biodiversity. It is important that this Government continues to manage sustainably both the conservation estate and the financial resources of New Zealand in order to provide for future generations.

The Labour Government has also achieved a good balance between prudent financial management and sound social development. Partners Porirua is to run one of two new pilot programmes focusing on improving employment prospects for 15 to 24-year-olds, funded by the Ministry of Economic Development. The pilots to be run in Porirua and Waitakere are a part of a whole-of-Government drive to improve the transition of young people from school into quality employment.

In Mana, State-house tenants are receiving income-related rents, with average weekly savings of $30 per week, which is $1,560 per year. Porirua is also one of the pilot areas for our Government’s new Stronger Community Action Funds, which help local communities to meet local needs.

In conclusion, I say that this bill continues to build on the strong foundation established by this Government’s prudent financial management. I have listed some of the fine outcomes achieved in the Mana electorate. These outcomes have been repeated throughout New Zealand. The Labour-led Government is committed to managing New Zealand’s economic performance so that we can all provide a good quality of life for all of our citizens. Most Saturday mornings, from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m., I spend time at the Porirua market. Many people have come to me over the last few weeks and told me how well this Government is managing the economy. The word from the grassroots is that things are going well.

RON MARK (NZ First): I rise, unfortunately, to pour a little bit of cold water on top of that speech. It is wonderful, I have to say, to have a member who is so dedicated, so loyal, and so devoted to the leadership of her party that she is prepared to put on blinkers, read out a speech such as that, and ignore the realities. All I say to that fine member is that I know she will one day become a Cabinet Minister; she just has to keep making speeches like that. She will be rewarded for her loyalty in some way.

The reality is that things are not going well. We could talk statistics all day, we could talk numbers all day, and we could have words, words, and more words, but at the end of the day it is the reality on the street that determines whether a Government is achieving the goals it set out to achieve.

I remind this Government of the many, many things it has said in the past. It had 9 years in Opposition and had plenty of time to make it very clear to the nation what it would do. I have here a George Hawkins press release, which states: “ ‘Known offenders are getting away scot-free, because police neither have the time nor the resources to apprehend them’, says Labour’s police spokesman George Hawkins.” That was in 1997. We had press releases coming out from Mike Moore, saying: “Of all the crazy justification for legalising, decriminalising, cannabis, the idea this would remove a profit centre for gangs is bizarre. Why would it?”. He is going on here about gangs and what a scourge they are on society.

Edwin Perry: Who said that?

RON MARK: It was Mike Moore in 1997, giving us a good flavour of what this Government would deliver. “New Zealand can destroy gangs and organised crime within 5 years if we have the will.” Who said that? It was the Rt Hon Mike Moore in 1997, working hand in hand with the honourable George Hawkins on a campaign to bust gangs. Do members remember that campaign? I do; I attended the select committee hearing in Christchurch and made a submission to it. There they all were—

Rodney Hide: The member was a Mike Moore supporter in that electorate.

RON MARK: I was, absolutely. And George Hawkins and Phil Goff, who now sit here as Ministers, were total supporters of those views. One could not say what those guys were not going to do to gangs.

Rodney Hide: Oh, you’re making it up!

RON MARK: I have it here in writing. This is the party that was going to destroy gangs and organised crime within 5 years, if Parliament had the will. Well, I am sorry but this Government has been on those benches for about 4 ½ years—it will not be quite 6 years, because it did not go the full term. According to its own press releases in 1997, we should not be dealing with the nonsense that we are seeing in Taneatua, that we are hearing of in Whakatane, and that we have been witnessing in Palmerston North.

Rodney Hide: Who went there?

RON MARK: I did not see one Labour Party member at the meeting in Taneatua. I saw three New Zealand First people, but I did not see any Labour Party people. All this about statement of intent, having the will, and everything that is espoused by this party, means nothing. Mr Hawkins and Mr Goff, who espoused the view that we could see the destruction of organised crime in 5 years, have been in Government for coming up to 5 years, yet we are dealing with exactly the same problems they were criticising back then.

The only thing to get rid of gangs that we have seen in the expenditure of this Government is that it has given gang members State houses. Good, law-abiding Kiwis, thousands of them, with families—some of them, as we now know, living in garages—are queuing up for State houses, and the Government is giving them to Mongrel Mob and Black Power members. State houses? I ask you! Where is United Future’s head? How could United Future members possibly vote for this Government to appropriate money when that is the way it is spent? I am looking forward to the election, because I have no doubt that United Future has some good explanations for that.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and I am sorry but none of this Government’s Budget, none of its past Budgets, and none of its actions match up to its own words in its own piles of press releases on law and order for the 9 years those members were in Opposition. On the contrary, while I was sitting up in my office listening to the radio, I heard criticism about parties that do not have any alternative. Well, I say to the member who made that speech, and to Labour, that there is a party that has alternatives and that has more, I say to Mr Maharey, than three issues on its plate. But they are the three big ones. [Interruption]

Those members over there should take their pills and calm down. I know it is hurting. They should just pinch their noses and swallow the medicine, because they need to. I refer to deferred sentencing and all the money that this Government has spent on ramming through legislation about sentencing and parole. What happened here? New Zealand First raised the issue, originally through the New Zealand Herald, highlighting the plight of a Christchurch couple, who saw a person given 18 months’ jail, out roaming free the next day. Labour denied it, and then, eventually, Mr Goff came out and said: “New Zealand First is right. We have to amend the legislation on sentencing and parole.” So I say to Mr Maharey that there are things we do here proactively. We are fixing it from the Opposition benches. Imagine how much more effective New Zealand First could be if its members got the salaries that many of those members are getting for doing nothing.

We exposed the fact that 470-odd people got deferred sentences but that there are hundreds of people who should not be on home detention. It is our job to expose the weaknesses in this Government’s plans and what it is doing. Home detention is proving to be a disaster.

I refer now to Mr Paul Swain. I have to take my hat off to that Minister. He gives a nine-page speech on corrections, and actually admits to some of the faults that New Zealand First has found, and he admits he will have to make some corrections. But the accolades this man must get for mentioning victims in only two paragraphs out of the 120 paragraphs in his nine-page speech! He talks a lot about Māori focus groups. He talks a lot about the offenders and their repatriation. He talks a lot about horrible people who want to punish offenders. He talks a lot about the wonderful initiatives. But he mentions victims only twice in the 120 paragraphs of his nine-page speech. The joke is that he gets a headline out of it. He gets a headline in the press, stating: “Victims may be consulted”.

Well, I have news for this Government. Victims should be consulted. Victims must be consulted. In the situation we had in Auckland under this Government where a little girl of 4 years old was killed by an Asian driving a car that he should not have been driving because he did not have a licence, that driver had his sentenced reduced by half through the payment of blood money without any consultation with the victim’s mother, her father, her grandparents, or her family. That is absolutely appalling. And what does Mr Swain say? “Victims may be consulted.”! Here are 120 paragraphs and nine pages on corrections, recruitment, and what Mr Swain is doing in the prisons. It is a load of rubbish, actually. We know the problems that exist inside the prisons, because we have visited them. New Zealand First, I would say, is probably the only party in this House that has taken half of its caucus up to meet people in Paremoremo prison, and been up to the remand prison. I have personally gone through the Christchurch Prison. I tell this Government and Mr Swain that if he thinks this rubbish in this press release is taken on board by the majority of the prison staff, his feet are not on the ground—he is not in touch. The big joke is that when one talks to the offenders, they know it is rubbish too. They will actually tell people to their face that they know that this is rubbish.

This Government has a long way to go if it is to live up to the aspirations that it gave people, be they Māori, non-Māori, victims of crime, or whoever. The statistics speak for themselves. The headlines, such as those appearing in the Minister’s own electorate, are there to be read by everybody.

RODNEY HIDE (ACT NZ): What a pleasure it is to follow Ron Mark in that very fine speech. He is a man who does do the work and knows what is going on in the prisons out in the communities of New Zealand, in the police force, and in our military. I think it says much about this Government that on this side of the House we have Ron Mark who was a serving officer in the New Zealand military, up against a Minister of Defence whose claim to fame is that he was a peace activist in Taupo. That summarises this Government, and the Opposition—the next Government. Of course Ron Mark is also up against George Hawkins. Here we have on this side of the House a man who has carried a gun, and used it, up against a man trying to run the police force who was an art teacher in a secondary school. Again, that shows the difference.

But I want to talk about Dr Cullen’s economic policy. What is it? Well, Jim Anderton announced it. It is hands-on economic management. That is Mr Anderton’s hands in everyone’s pocket grabbing all the cash that he can and spraying it around, supposedly for the good of New Zealand. Well, the jury is in. We have heard the result: Sovereign Yachts! Remember Mr Anderton and Helen Clark trumpeting Sovereign Yachts? When I questioned that, I was a naughty boy! How many people are working in Sovereign Yachts now? How many boats have been built? [Interruption] Steve Chadwick is yelling out and saying something unparliamentary. I think she is saying “not very many”!

Remember The Warehouse? The poor hard-working taxpayers who pay their taxes are unable to get a cop when they call for help, unable to get their varicose veins fixed, and unable to get any attention from this Government, and The Warehouse says it needs $75,000. The Government wrote a cheque with taxpayers’ money.

Ron Mark: Everyone gets a bargain!

RODNEY HIDE: Yes, everyone gets a bargain! I came down to this House and said “This is wrong.”, and Ron Mark and Michael Cullen will back me up. The Government members came along to the select committee and said: “No, it meets all our funding criteria.” Oh yes, Jim Anderton told this House that it met all the Government’s funding criteria, and that Mr Hide was bad-mouthing business.

Hon Member: New Zealand - made!

RODNEY HIDE: Oh, New Zealand - made! [Interruption] Steve Chadwick now says that she agrees with me. Well, I am pleased to hear about that because at the time, they gave me a hard time. The Auditor-General’s report came out.

Ron Mark: What did he say?

RODNEY HIDE: He said that that funding was outside the Cabinet criteria, and that is a nice way of saying “outside the law”—[Interruption] Yes, outside the rules. So then the Government had to go to The Warehouse and say “We are very embarrassed, could you pay the money back, please?”.

Hon Member: That’s a bargain!

RODNEY HIDE: Yes, The Warehouse, where everyone gets a bargain; but has anyone got a bargain out of this Labour Government yet? Have Auckland ratepayers got a bargain out of Judith Tizard? Have hard-working middle-income New Zealanders in business got a bargain out of Helen Clark? Did the art market get a bargain out of the Prime Minister when it bought the painting? No siree, no bargains out of the Labour Government; it is pay, pay, pay. I heard Clayton Cosgrove give a speech.

Pita Paraone: Did he?

RODNEY HIDE: Yes, the media paid attention to him once, and then they realised that what he was saying was not true. Then they wanted to interview him about his secretary, and it is the last time he has been seen on television—it was his backside running up the stairs and running away from the public of New Zealand. Does that not summarise this Government? [Interruption] Oh, then we come to this one. We will give $40 million to the Hollywood big film producers. Yes, $40 million.

Hon Damien O'Connor: Tell me about the Fiji scam.

RODNEY HIDE: Well, if Damien O’Connor sits still I will tell him about this scam—$40 million. I have the Treasury reports, the Inland Revenue Department reports, and the Ministry of Economic Development reports. Damien O’Connor has not been given them, and they are shocking.

DAVID PARKER (NZ Labour—Otago): Listeners can turn their radios up again now after being shouted at with that diatribe. I expect most of them turned their radios down. I would like to speak to the Appropriation (2003/04 Estimates) Bill that we are considering tonight, which is the mechanism through which Parliament authorises the Government to spend the money needed to meet the governmental programmes. Firstly, I would like to thank both the Progressive party and the United Future party for their support in the passing of this legislation. We are reliant upon them, and without that support the legislation would not pass. The Labour Party—and I am sure I speak for all of my colleagues—is grateful for that support.

The appropriations that are met by this bill include some important additions to the funding of the areas that are at the heart of the concerns of most taxpayers: health and education. Health gets $737 million, which is a 9 percent increase in funding—well above the rate of inflation. Education, too, does well with $481 million of additional funding, which represents a 6 percent increase—again well ahead of the rate of inflation. This is being done in a context of a Government that is managing the Budget very well. Dr Cullen deserves to be congratulated on managing to report a $4 billion surplus before capital obligations. Those capital obligations include $1.8 billion being pre-funded into the Superannuation Fund in order to more sustainably fund it into the future, leaving a surplus of about $1.4 billion after those adjustments.

Against that background, growth is running at about 4 percent—amongst the highest in the OECD—and probably coming off that high, but still very healthy in comparison with other countries. Our gross debt, which at the time when the Labour Government took over was about 36.8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), is dropping. In the next year or two that will drop to 23 percent of GDP, which is a vast improvement—a substantial decrease. Net debt drops even further to 14 percent of GDP, so one would wonder against that background what Dr Brash and the National Party would be saying.

It is interesting to look at Dr Brash’s comments reported in the Dominion Post on Thursday, 15 May 2003, around the time of the Budget. He was talking about the rate of growth in New Zealand and comparing the projected New Zealand growth rate with Australia’s. He said: “This is too slow a rate to narrow the large gap in living standards between New Zealand and Australia that emerged during the 1970s and 1980s.” I thought to myself when I read that on 15 May 2003: “What happened to the 1990s, the years of the National Government?”.

So I thought I would go and have a look at the statistics. Those statistics make interesting reading. I am referring to the OECD GDP per capita rankings. Those OECD figures compare the relative performance of Australia, New Zealand, and the rest of the OECD countries. If one looks at 1980, and the time between 1980 and 1990—which was by and large the period of the Labour administration, when our Labour predecessors were responsible for our economy—during that period Australia started at No 10 in the OECD rankings, and ended six places back at No 16. During that same period New Zealand went back one place from 18 to 19. So in comparison with Australia, under the stewardship of the then Labour Government, New Zealand did far better.

Members should look at the 1990s. One would expect from Dr Brash’s comments that the National period of stewardship had been an improvement on what had passed before. Curiously, the 1990s, the period that Dr Brash ignores in his article of May this year, had Australia going forward from position 16 to 12, while New Zealand went backwards from 19 to 20. So in the 1980s, under a Labour administration, New Zealand went forward compared with Australia, or at least not backwards as fast as Australia was going backwards; whereas in the 1990s New Zealand went backwards while Australia went forward. It is no wonder that Dr Brash ignored the 1990s when he presented his views on the Budget of Dr Cullen.

What, then, do Dr Brash, the National Party, and ACT for that matter, have to offer us for the future? What they offer is a return to the past. They offer a return to the neoclassical fundamentalist policies that failed during the 1990s, as is clear from the OECD statistics that show that New Zealand performed badly when compared with Australia, which had more moderate economic policies similar to those the Labour-led Government is now running in New Zealand.

But will they admit that wrong? No, they will not. They still cling to the purity of their neoclassical fundamentalism. It does not matter to the National Party and ACT that there are great big disparities in wealth and income. They do not think that the gap between the haves and the have-nots was growing. They say that it does not matter. They think the economy performs just as well with those disparities. We disagree. Our philosophy is that social cohesiveness and equality of opportunity are important to economic prosperity and to personal security. We think the failed neoclassical policies that widened the gap in wealth and income in New Zealand undermined our security and threatened our economy.

That is evidenced by the fact that during the 1990s, under the stewardship of the then National Government, New Zealand went back one place in the OECD rankings per capita, while Australia went forward four places. The lost decade—the decade that not only Dr Brash lost but New Zealand lost and can never catch up with—is the decade when New Zealand charged backwards from 19 to 20 when Australia was forging forward from position 16 to position 12 in the OECD rankings.

I am pleased to say that so long as the Labour Government remains in power we will not see a return to those failed neoclassical economic policies or the stringency and the austerity that strangled the economies in provincial parts of New Zealand. I am pleased that we will have a continuation of the sound stewardship that members see under the control of the purse strings by Dr Cullen, which puts us in the happy position of having a $4 billion surplus, before capital obligations, and being able to fund $1.8 billion into the Superannuation Fund and to audit it and more sustainably fund it in future, leaving a surplus of $1.4 billion. As I said before, that is after contributing to the areas that taxpayers wish to see properly funded by the State—namely, an additional $737 million to health, an increase of 9 percent, well ahead of inflation; an increase of $481 million to education, a 6 percent increase: again, well ahead of the rate of inflation.

Another area being funded is an increase of $76 million to enterprise and industry development. That increase is quite substantial in proportionate terms, albeit $76 million is a smaller amount compared with the likes of health and education, as it should be; but it is an important part of the increased focus that the Government has on industry and regional development. This supports the growth and innovation framework that is assisting New Zealand to develop higher-value exports to increase the value of our exports overseas and, therefore, improve the wealth of our country.

It is one of the reasons New Zealand’s unemployment rate has been decreasing remarkably, with unemployment now at a very low 5 percent against a background where labour force participation is at an all-time high. Again, that 5 percent unemployment rate compares very well with most of those in the OECD and reflects the same confidence that people can have in the Crown accounts with low debt, both gross and net debt, and a substantial Budget surplus.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment to omit all the words after the word “That” and substitute the following words: “this House cannot express confidence in this Labour Progressive Government and their United supporters because they are determined to promote the release into our farms, fields, and environment of unpredictable genetically engineered organisms, despite strong opposition from consumers, growers, food manufacturers, exporters, economists, environmentalists, health workers, local authorities, churches, and ordinary people with common sense.” be agreed to.

Ayes 9

Green Party 9.

Noes 110

Labour 52; New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13;ACT New Zealand 8; United Future 8; Progressive 2.

Amendment not agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Appropriation (2003/04 Estimates) Bill be now read a third time and the Imprest Supply (Second for 2003/04) Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 62

Labour 52; United Future 8; Progressive 2.

Noes 57

New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8;Green Party 9.

Appropriation (2003/04 Estimates) Bill read a third time and Imprest Supply (Second for 2003/04) Bill read a second time.

Bills

Imprest Supply (Second for 2003/04) Bill

Third Reading

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Minister of Finance): I move, That the Imprest Supply (Second for 2003/04) Bill be now read a third time.

Bill read a third time.

Urgency

Urgency

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Leader of the House): I move, That urgency be accorded the introduction and passing of the Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill. Urgency is sought because, for the bill to be effective, it has to be passed before the next sitting day.

A party vote was called for on the question, That urgency be accorded.

Ayes 69

Labour 50; Green Party 9; United Future 8; Progressive 2.

Noes 48

New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8.

Abstentions 1

Hunt.

Motion agreed to.

Bills

Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill

First Reading

Hon RICK BARKER (Associate Minister of Justice): I move, That the Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. Because of the urgency accorded to this bill, it is the Government’s intention that the bill be passed through all its stages without referral to a select committee. However, for reasons that I will explain, I will be writing to the Justice and Electoral Committee, inviting it to inquire into the scope and application of section 55 of the Electoral Act for future Parliaments.

The purpose of this bill is simple. It is to ensure that no members of this forty-seventh Parliament lose their seats merely because they swear allegiance to, or obtain the citizenship of, another country, as long as they do not renounce their New Zealand citizenship. Section 55(1)(b) of the Electoral Act 1993 provides that the seat of a member is vacant if he or she swears allegiance to a foreign power or prince. Section 55(1)(c) provides that a member’s seat is vacated if that member takes out citizenship of another country, or takes other action, such as renewing a passport, which may cause the same result. The bill provides that these provisions will not apply to any member of this Parliament, as though the bill had been in force on 14 August 2002. That was the day that the writ for the election of members of Parliament was returned. The bill applies only to this Parliament, and will expire at the close of polling at the next general election.

The bill has been introduced on the advice and recommendation of a majority of the Privileges Committee. It has been triggered by the situation of the member of Parliament for New Plymouth, a very popular member with a majority of 14,930 votes. Mr Duynhoven, a Dutch citizen by birth, a New Zealand citizen by birth, and first elected to this House in 1987, lost his Dutch citizenship by operation of a Dutch law in 1995. He took the opportunity to reinstate his Dutch citizenship this year, following the repeal of the 1995 law. By doing so, he inadvertently brought section 55(1)(c) of the Electoral Act into operation. This provides that the seat of a member is vacated if the member obtains the citizenship of another country.

Did Mr Duynhoven dupe his constituents in reinstating his Dutch citizenship? No. Mr Duynhoven—his name is a good clue as to his origin—is rightly proud of his Dutch heritage, and the electors of New Plymouth were well aware of it when he was elected in 1987. He was a Dutch citizen then and when he was re-elected in 1993. He has taken no oath of allegiance to any power other than to Her Majesty the Queen of New Zealand. In completing the documentation to reinstate his Dutch citizenship, he was simply recovering an entitlement he was born with as a consequence of his father’s nationality.

A member in Mr Duynhoven’s situation should not lose his seat. Dual citizenship is not unusual in New Zealand. We have a very relaxed approach to our citizens adopting the citizenship of other countries. No person who knows Mr Duynhoven doubts his loyalty and commitment to this country. Nor, for that matter, should anyone reasonably question the commitment to New Zealand of other members of this House. There is no reason to believe that members of Parliament with dual citizenship cannot put New Zealand’s interests foremost.

Section 55, and in particular subsection (1)(b) and (c), needs a thorough review. The provision was first introduced into New Zealand through the New Zealand Constitution Act 1852, an Act of the Parliament in Britain. Its terms have been largely unchanged since then. Under the close examination provoked by Mr Duynhoven’s situation, it has become apparent that this situation does not meet the needs of modern New Zealand and its Parliament, and, indeed, its operation gives rise to some inappropriate and surprising consequences.

The constitutional and legal context today is completely different from that of 1852. In 1852 there was no concept of New Zealand citizenship. We were all British subjects. It was not until 1948, with the British Nationality and Citizenship Act, that provision for New Zealand citizenship was introduced. It was not until 1975 that the Electoral Act caught up with our sense of nationhood, and we made New Zealand citizenship a requirement of candidacy for Parliament. In 1975 an electoral amendment also provided an exception for British subjects registered as electors; it provided that they could contest parliamentary elections. It is clear from the report of the select committee considering the amendment that this exception was intended to be a short-lived opportunity designed to allow those people to obtain citizenship. As it happened, Parliament did not get round to removing that exception until last year.

Section 55, as it is currently drafted, appears to have some odd effects. A New Zealand citizen who is a dual citizen can, as is quite proper, be a candidate and be elected. However, a New Zealand citizen who obtains dual citizenship after the election loses his or her seat. But get this: members who renounce their New Zealand citizenship do not lose their seats. That is quite extraordinary.

It has been suggested that the object of the provision might be to require members who obtain dual citizenship after their election to re-test their support with the electorate. It is not at all clear that this was the objective, but if it was the rationale, it does not work in an MMP Parliament. List members do not have the opportunity to contest a by-election. They are simply replaced by the next person on the list.

Clearly, section 55 needs to be looked at. This bill suspends its operation for this Parliament, and addresses Mr Duynhoven’s situation and that of any other members in a similar situation. This will allow the Justice and Electoral Committee the opportunity to inquire into the scope and application of section 55, and consider and report on what the law should be for future Parliaments.

I want to touch on the retrospective aspect of this bill. It provides that, in determining whether the seat of a member has been vacated by operation of section 55(1)(b) and (c), the bill must be taken to have been in force on 14 August 2002. This was the day that the writ for the election of members of this Parliament was returned. Retrospective legislation is wrong where it takes away rights. However, it is perfectly acceptable constitutionally, and not uncommon in this Parliament, to confer a benefit, or remedy a defect or an inadvertent detriment, through retrospective legislation. For example, the 1997 Parliament enacted the Fisheries (Quota Operations Validation) Act to validate retrospectively allocations and entitlements under the fisheries quota system. In 1998 the Oaths and Declarations (Validation) Amendment Act was passed retrospectively to validate oaths and declarations improperly taken by employees of New Zealand Post. There are many other examples of retrospective legislation that has been very agreeable.

This bill before the House suspends the operation of provisions that have, to say the least, inappropriate, surprising, and unexpected consequences. It confers a benefit on all members of this forty-seventh Parliament. Its application is limited to this Parliament, and expires with the next general election. It provides an opportunity for a thorough review of the law by the Justice and Electoral Committee, so that section 55 can be tidied up for the benefit of future Parliaments. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon ROGER SOWRY (Deputy Leader—NZ National): Let me make it quite clear that the National Party totally opposes this bill. This bill is a cynical manipulation of Parliament by the Labour Government, supported, obviously, by the Progressives and United Future. It is a cynical attempt to allow a member of Parliament who has broken the law to get off that breaking of the law. I start by saying that not only is this a cynical move—in fact, the most cynical move that I have ever seen this Parliament take part in—but I do not believe for one moment that people who watch this from the outside think anything other than that this is a carefully planned move.

The danger is that Mr Speaker himself is in danger of being seen to be part of the planning, because of his inaction under section 129(1) of the Electoral Act 1993 whereby he is required, in circumstances such as these, to declare a seat vacant. He is required to do so without delay. So we find ourselves here tonight to try to avoid his having to do that on the next sitting day. Certainly, the Opposition believes that he should have done that today at 2 o’clock, when it was clear to every New Zealander that Mr Duynhoven was no longer eligible to sit in Parliament. Rather than Mr Speaker making that decision today, we have seen him, for his own reasons, decide not to make that decision until the next sitting day, thereby providing the Government with a window of opportunity in which to change the law in a retrospective way.

We are being asked to believe that that is just pure good luck for the Government—that it is coincidence, that the cards happened to fall the Government’s way. I do not think New Zealanders believe that. New Zealanders believe that this Government micromanages. That is what the Government spin has been about for years. I believe that it has micromanaged this, and I believe that it is in danger of looking as if it is micromanaging the Speakership of Parliament. That causes me a great deal of concern and pain, quite frankly, because I, for one, believe in the integrity of this place. That is undermined by this bill.

The bill states that a member of the Labour Party who breaks the law can get a law change retrospectively, and that is OK. We have seen a whole range of spin from the Government as to why that is OK. First of all, we were told that it is a silly law. I say to members of the Labour Party that I get all the time people who were picked up for driving less than 10 kilometres per hour over the speed limit and got a ticket, and they think that is a silly law. But they do not have the privilege of having the law changed retrospectively for them. Only Labour members have that opportunity. Then we were told by Dr Cullen that the reason was the cost. It would cost $350,000 to have a by-election, New Zealanders would not like that, so the Government would change the law to avoid it. Well, it will cost taxpayers $3.5 million in taxpayer-funded time to change the law, so the cost argument does not stack up, either. Then we were told—this was the doozy—that Mr Duynhoven would win his seat anyway. We even heard Michael Cullen saying tonight: “Well, he’s got the largest majority in the country. He’s going to win anyway, so let’s not have a by-election.”

Simon Power: Let’s not have a general election, then.

Hon ROGER SOWRY: What a weak, pathetic excuse! Does that mean that if Mr Duynhoven had been a list MP, he would be gone? There is no cost in bringing in the next list MP.

Simon Power: A marginal seat.

Hon ROGER SOWRY: If his seat was a marginal seat and he did not have that huge majority, would we be having a by-election? If it was a marginal National seat, perhaps we would be having a by-election, but as it is a safe Labour seat we do not. Perhaps that is the reason. I have never heard such cynical reasons given—and reported on—for legislation that we are being asked to support. This is arrogance. This shows that the Labour Party will go to any length at all to keep one of its members in Parliament. If a member has broken the law, that party gets out there, puts the spin around, tries to discredit the law, then changes it for that member. Those are the reasons that we are opposing this bill.

I say again that I regard it as a tragedy for the Speakership of this Parliament that the Speaker is now being seen by some to be complicit in that approach. That is a tragedy for the Speakership of this Parliament. Speakers come and go. Speakers are judged on their independence, their integrity, their standing up for Independents and for smaller parties in Parliament, and their standing up for the parliamentary process.

Simon Power: Parliament’s man.

Hon ROGER SOWRY: The Speaker is Parliament’s person, and the only thing any of us, including the Speaker, walk away with from this place is the respect of other parliamentarians. When I see law as clear as this law is, and I see a process that can only look like the Government taking advantage of an opportunity that has come its way because the Speaker decided to postpone making a decision when he did not have to postpone it—in fact, when the law states that he should not have postponed it—I have to say that is a sad day for the Speakership.

What about the bill itself? Is this a bill that states that the law is so wrong that it will be fixed? No. It is a bill that fixes it for this Parliament; after the next election, it will be gone.

Simon Power: It’s not a matter of principle.

Hon ROGER SOWRY: There is no great principle. This is not a change for all time. This is a retrospective change for members of this Parliament. Presumably, in the next Parliament, if a Labour member goes and does this, we will have another piece of retrospective legislation. Mr Barker is shaking his head; it will not. The member might have a marginal seat or be a list member, so Labour might want to have a by-election.

This is a nonsense, and the Labour Party knows it. Why not decide to change the law for all time? Why do it just for this Parliament, if the principle is so big and if this law is so archaic—even though Parliament addressed it just a few short years ago; last year, in fact? This shows how cynical the Labour Party has become. This shows a degree of arrogance: “We’re here, and we’ll break every rule to stay here.” The public will see through that.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich): I call the Hon Peter Dunne.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I know this matter relates to the declaration of the results of the election in August last year. If you have a careful look at the E9 for 2002, you will see it shows that New Zealand First came third. That means we are third in this House on a matter like this. This convenient arrangement whereby sometimes they let us speak and sometime they do not is simply wrong. I do not think any fair-minded New Zealander—or fair-minded parliamentarian, for that matter—thinks that the priority you have just given is fair and right. We are the third-biggest party in this Parliament—we will soon be the second and, not long after that, the first—but, in the meantime, we are happy to go third but we are not happy to go fourth or fifth. It is just not right. I want a ruling on this. We have put up with it, and, frankly, we have had enough of it, because it is not fair and it is not right. We always understood, from the day MMP began in this House in 1996, that that was the way the order of speakers would go. We cannot have Mr Dunne sometimes taking priority and sometimes not. If the Labour Party does not want to use its numbers, it cannot do a deal and circumvent the electoral results of 2002.

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (Leader—ACT NZ): I am somewhat sympathetic to the points made by the right honourable gentleman, because Standing Order 103, on the issue of deciding who to call, states that the “overall participation in a debate should be approximately proportional to party membership in the House:”, and under that ruling the right honourable gentleman from New Zealand First should have been called next. However, Mr Assistant Speaker, if you are upholding a Speaker’s ruling that basically says United Future is really part of this Labour-led Government, then I say make our day. I actually think you are correct. I regard the United Future party as a 100-percent reliable doormat for this Government.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich): I thank both members for raising that issue. They are not wrong, but a certain order is followed to maintain order. I have called the Hon Peter Dunne. If he wishes to cede to the member, whose party is obviously the third largest, I would accept that, but I have called the Hon Peter Dunne.

Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future): This bill is probably one of the more significant measures to come before this Parliament in recent years. It is significant because it is unique, and it is significant because of the circumstances that surround it. I want to say at the beginning that United Future will be giving conditional support to this bill. We will be voting for its introduction, but I will be indicating some amendments to be moved at the Committee stage, and there are a number of matters in the bill itself that are of concern, and arise out of the discussion at the Privileges Committee over the last week or so. This is a serious matter, and I think the House ought to deal with it in a serious tone. The speaker who preceded me at least attempted to do that, and I acknowledge that contribution.

The issue that this matter turns on is, essentially, related to the particular circumstances surrounding Mr Duynhoven. The argument will be raised by many, particularly those outside this place, about preferential treatment for members of Parliament over ordinary citizens. I think that is an argument that needs to be taken very carefully at face value, because the circumstances that the previous speaker described—of being a few kilometres over the speeding limit, or, I could imagine others would say, of being just over the blood/alcohol limit—are not akin to the circumstances in this matter, either in their severity or in their relative impact. In both those examples there is a degree of knowledge involved. People know what the speed limit is, and they know what the blood/alcohol limits are.

The issue here relates to the particular provisions of section 55 of the Electoral Act. It is clear, by all accounts, to everyone who was present at the Privileges Committee that there was no fault intended by Mr Duynhoven’s actions, and that there was no deliberate effort on his part to deceive or to circumvent the law. He is certainly a victim, and he is certainly caught by it, but he is not someone who set out deliberately to deceive or to break the law. That is the first point I want to make in respect of this charge.

The second point that needs to be made concerns what this legislation is seeking to do. I think that as it is drafted it is too broad, because it goes beyond the circumstances of Mr Duynhoven. If we look at the provisions of Part 2 in particular, following on from the expiry clause, we see that a potentially absurd situation is created whereby Mr Duynhoven is excused for his actions in the period prior to the passage of the bill, but every other member of Parliament who might seek to take out dual nationality or dual citizenship, or to renew a passport, in the period subsequent to the passage of this bill and prior to the next election is protected. That is clearly absurd because Mr Duynhoven is being held to account for actions that he took, yet we are, in effect, by the breadth of this bill, conferring a grace on other people to carry out with impunity precisely the same action.

Ron Mark: Who are they?

Hon PETER DUNNE: I am glad the member made that interjection, because I think that is a very relevant point. There have been accusations throughout this whole saga of other people being in this situation, and I am very concerned that there may well be other people who have sat quietly and tightly throughout this debate and who have been quite happy to let Mr Duynhoven be the fall guy. Mr Duynhoven will be validated by this legislation; those people will continue to remain silent and relieved. Yet, in the way that the bill is crafted, it potentially gives them an out in terms of prospective action. I think that was a very relevant interjection from the member and I thank him for it. There is an element of unfairness here. [Interruption] We do not know who they are. The allegations have been made, and the one thing that is certain is that people keep saying there are people in this category, yet Mr Duynhoven is the only one who, in one sense, has had the courage to come forward and cause this action to be initiated. So I will be moving an amendment in the Committee stage to limit the application of this bill to the period of time that ends on 6 August 2003.

Dr Wayne Mapp: What if the Government doesn’t accept that amendment—will you still vote for it?

Hon PETER DUNNE: I tell the member that we are simply commencing the debate now, and he will have to wait and see how the debate transpires. He will get his answer in due course.

The reality of this measure is that one has to go back and look at the intention of the clauses that were passed—going right back to 1852. It is absolutely clear that the circumstances at the time of the passage of those clauses and their subsequent carry-through related to a far different world. At the time of their passage there was, essentially, the British Empire, hostile Europe, and not much else. It is also clear that had these—[Interruption] I say to Mr Prebble that my history is accurate.

Hon Richard Prebble: 1852—a hostile Europe? There was no war between the Napoleonic Wars and the First World War—

Hon PETER DUNNE: Oh, come! There were the Franco-Prussian War, and the war of Schleswig-Holstein in 1866. I tell Mr Prebble that there were a whole lot of wars. He should not display his ignorance. This is an important issue. We can even take it right through to the outbreak of World War II, and argue, with some validity, that these provisions were relevant then—certainly, in the way in which we detained people deemed to be hostile aliens. But I do not think that anyone could mount a reasonable argument today to suggest that relations with the Netherlands have so deteriorated that any member who takes an action in respect of that country is breaching the intent of the provisions set out in the original bill.

Gerry Brownlee: That is not the point.

Hon PETER DUNNE: It is actually highly relevant to this bill, in terms of what the intent is. I think that members of the Privileges Committee, to a person, were surprised to learn of the scope of the coverage. They may well have claimed prior knowledge, but I think there was genuine surprise.

The issues that now have to be addressed are, firstly, the relevance of the provision in today’s environment, and, secondly, what changes ought to be made either to toughen the law in respect of people holding dual nationality or other arrangements in the future, or simply to recognise that it should no longer apply. In this case, the bill is a simple device to validate the position in so far as Mr Duynhoven is concerned, to clear the decks in that regard, and then to allow the Justice and Electoral Committee, as has already been foreshadowed, to carry out a wider inquiry. My concern remains the breadth of the bill as drafted, because, as Mr Mark rightly pointed out, there will be others who benefit very substantially from it, through their silence.

It is easy to make all sorts of accusations about intent and motivation in this measure. I want to make this point very clear because I know it has been said, although not by the previous speaker, that there is a parallel situation at the moment whereby another member of Parliament faces criminal action initiated by the Solicitor-General in respect of comments he made. I actually think Parliament should afford him the same protection that is being afforded Mr Duynhoven. I believe that in the case of Dr Smith—and I have said this to him directly—his ability to represent his constituents is severely constrained by the threat of a contempt action being mounted against him. Every single member who comes to this Parliament comes here to advocate for constituents. If members say this measure is being done for Mr Duynhoven, but people would not act in a similar way for Dr Smith, then I want to say that United Future would support a measure in respect of Dr Smith, because his action impinges upon the actions of all members of Parliament. It is not relevant to this bill, but I wanted to say that, in terms of people talking about special interest, I think it does cut both ways.

So we will be supporting the introduction of the bill, and we will wait to see what happens to the amendments we move at the Committee stage before we further determine our position.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich): I thank Mr Peters again for his point of order. The member was absolutely right. I apologise for not calling him first.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): That should not be allowed to happen again, because if it does, I will hit the roof in this House. I have put up with it for a whole year, and that sort of thing should not casually happen in this Parliament.

There is something sinister about this bill, but before I get to that I want to say this in respect of Dr Smith’s case, which has been raised by Mr Dunne. The trouble is that this Parliament has so many parliamentarians with a rather scurrilous record of consistency on these matters. I can recall, on going to the Privileges Committee and asking it to defend my rights, being told to suck it and see. I had every right to ask the committee to do so, and I then went to the High Court and proved that. Yet the committee rushed off to London to defend Mr Prebble, even though he was not in Parliament. Do members see what I mean? The National Party can laugh, but it now wants us to support Dr Smith, when in my case it would not move a muscle—and, worse than that, it tried to bankrupt me, and failed. Even today National does not apologise for that, but now, when somebody has said the words outside the House, and is therefore incapable of getting sanctuary under parliamentary privilege, National wants us to somehow support it. It is unusual for its members to be so—well, I cannot use the word, but it starts with “h”—on these matters.

Members will recall that the Speaker needed to look at the evidence regarding Mr Duynhoven before he could make a decision. It would be most unusual for the Speaker to make a decision based on, for example, the Solicitor-General’s testimony, evidence, or opinion, and I can tell members why he would not do that, based on past examples. I do not want to bore the House with them now, but there have been past examples of the Solicitor-General’s opinion being not worth the paper it was written on. However, my point was that the Speaker said on 23 July that he wanted the matter to be referred to the Privileges Committee, and that he would hear the House’s conclusion on it thereafter. I think that is a proper procedure.

On seeing the evidence that Mr Duynhoven gave to us, we as a political party gave the preliminary view that we would support the rectifying or validation of his position. But what has happened here is that the Labour Party has taken my party’s bona fides, given in good faith, and flung that back in our face. As a consequence, we cannot support this bill. I say to my colleague Harry Duynhoven that we apologise for that, but he should look around amongst his own colleagues if he wants to know why that is. We in New Zealand First were happy to support Mr Duynhoven’s particular or special and unusual position being corrected, because his situation is not within the usual ambit that the original legislation and the amending legislation sought to cover, by way of providing for a member of Parliament’s actions. From day one, we said that if the evidence stood up, we would be prepared to pass retrospective legislation to support Mr Duynhoven’s position. But, sadly, this bill flings that commitment back in our face.

This bill will suspend the rules and the law for the whole of this current parliamentary term, from the day that the results were declared until the next election. The question is why Labour would do that. I want to know which of the Labour MPs is secretly an offender against this legislation in a much more demonstrable, palpable, and obvious way than Mr Duynhoven. Who is Labour trying to protect—or is there more than one person? There is no reason for Labour to take the commitment that other parties have made to rectify Mr Duynhoven’s peculiar and special circumstances, and then to do away with the law for the whole of this Parliament by way of a blanket provision. Who is the secret member—or members—in Labour’s ranks who has offended against the provision in section 55(1)(c) of the Electoral Act? Who is the Labour member who is covertly hiding behind the skirts of his or her colleagues and the aprons of his or her other colleagues, and hoping to gain sanctuary under this provision, without ever declaring himself or herself, or his or her actions? Who is that person?

I ask that person to own up today, or to be seen in time to have abused the processes of Parliament, to have improperly used the Speaker, the Solicitor-General, and the select committee proceedings, and, above all, to have improperly used the name of Mr Duynhoven. Those are the facts. Who is this person—or persons—in Labour’s ranks who has sold his or her soul to a foreign power and does not want to tell us? That is what that person has done, and is doing.

This is not a laughing matter. Mr Duynhoven went to the Privileges Committee for his particular case. Yet the whole of Parliament—119 of us—are to be covered by this legislation, as well. We in New Zealand First do not want that provision, because we are all above board and kosher.

Hon Dr Michael Cullen: You’ve checked, too?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Yes, I have checked. It was an unnecessary check, because we are patriots. We do not call this party New Zealand First for nothing. We put New Zealand first—not second or third, like Labour, with its secret membership that obviously has dual citizenship and nationality from other parts of the world. The only reason Labour is doing this is that it has other members who are caught by this provision, but who do not have what it takes to table that before Parliament.

We intend to move an amendment to the bill to confine its application to Harry Duynhoven MP, and to no one else. We will see whether the Greens are prepared to support that.

Rod Donald: No way!

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Why am I not surprised? I am not surprised that he said “No way!”, because this issue concerns a principle, and principle is not what the Green Party is about.

Steve Chadwick: Stop talking double Dutch.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Let me tell the member for Rotorua to talk to her legally educated husband, and he will tell her what the issues are about. I know she is having difficulty in grasping the issues. She should have a chat to her husband, and he will tell her what they are all about. He will tell her that the use of retrospectivity is thoroughly bad, unless there are no offended parties as a consequence. The consequence here is that we do not know now how many other offended parties there will be, as a result of the covert secrecy and the behind-doors activities that the Labour Party, in these years of Government before it goes in 2005, is becoming notorious for.

Dail Jones: Nandor.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Is it Nandor Tanczos? Is it my friend Mr Choudhary? Has Nandor Tanczos got a Hungarian passport? Is our colleague Mr Robson clinging to his “Ned Kelly” passport?

Gerry Brownlee: Keith Locke is Cambodian.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: And Keith Locke has a Cambodian passport, given to him by Pol Pot. That is why the Greens are voting for this provision.

I say again that Mr Duynhoven came to us and asked whether we would support him. We said that if the evidence stacked up and he was right, yes, we would. However, that is not the case now. The Labour Party is now saying that having got that out of us, it will now make this a blanket provision. It is abusing the principle of retrospective legislation and the principle of disclosure in this case, but intends to pass this measure to suspend the law for the whole of this term of Parliament. That will not do.

Mr Palmer, a former Prime Minister and leader of the Labour Party—temporarily, of course—came along and talked about the de minimis rule. De minimis non curat lex means that the law is not mindful of small things or trivial things. But this is not a trivial matter. In all the Western democracies, the election and continuance of an MP, or of a country’s Government, are matters of grave and great moment. That is why that defence, put up by Professor Palmer, was bound to fail. I have one last question. Who, over there on the Government benches, are the secret members who owe allegiance—or who is the secret member who owes allegiance—to some other foreign power?

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (Leader—ACT NZ): This is a very serious bill. It will amend the Electoral Act, and I remember being told in law school that the Electoral Act is part of the constitution of New Zealand. It is a constitutional document; it is not an ordinary piece of legislation. We have to remember we do not have a written constitution in this country, and we do not have a second Chamber. The guardians of our constitution, of our Westminster system, and of our rule of law are the members of Parliament in this House. There is no doubt that legally we could declare this Parliament—all of us—to be re-elected for ever, and there would be nothing that the courts or the public could do about it.

Rod Donald: I so move.

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE: I have already heard the Greens say they think that is a good idea.

I say to the House—[Interruption]—and to the member who is interjecting that we, as a Parliament, should be very, very reluctant to make a change to the constitution without having full public participation in it. Can anyone say that putting in a change in the law—a retrospective change—under urgency constitutes public consultation or proper discussion? I say that the process we are following will be a very dangerous precedent. I have attempted to find out whether there is any Commonwealth Parliament, or a Parliament that we would like to associate ourselves with, where a similar situation has arisen and the Parliament has decided to pass, under urgency, a retrospective piece of legislation. I cannot find one. There have been Australian members of Parliament who have lost their seats under a similar provision, but there was no attempt by any Australian Parliament to do what we are doing.

So I say again to Government members that to change the constitution without having the consensus support of this House is a very dangerous thing to do. Yes, technically we could change it with a majority of one, but is that the right thing to do? I say it is clearly the wrong thing to do.

I also need to say that the Privileges Committee, which is made up of senior members of this House, listened to evidence from the country’s chief law officer, the Solicitor-General. Was his advice ambiguous? No, it was not. He said that section 55 of the Act is unambiguous, that its meaning is clear, and that its purpose is beneficial. Its purpose is to ensure that no member, while sitting in this House, gives allegiance to a foreign country. He said that that section had been reviewed by Parliament frequently, and he pointed out that there had been an amendment to it within the last decade. So we cannot say it is a section that we have not looked at. Then we have the Clerk of the House, who, the Speaker told us today, is the best Clerk in the Commonwealth. What was Mr McGee’s advice to us? He said that the section was quite clear, and that Mr Duynhoven, by his actions, had made the seat vacant. There was no doubt about that at all from both those officials.

Members should realise that the MPs on the committee came to a different view. But by the time we had finished, we had the situation of the Green MP who had come to the committee feeling sympathetic to Mr Duynhoven, but who said no, that was the law. We had Mr Dunne, whose opinions I do not often have much time for, but he said that after he had listened to those opinions, to Mr Duynhoven, and to Geoffrey Palmer, he was in no doubt that Mr Duynhoven had offended against that section of the Act. The Rt Hon Winston Peters had also reached that opinion. I had reached that view too, and so had the National members.

So, given that we have already looked at the bulk of the committee, who said that section 55 of the Act was ambiguous? This should worry us. The Attorney-General, who should be the guardian of the constitution and should be our senior lawyer, basically said to the committee that she had no faith in the Clerk of this House or in the Solicitor-General, and that she thought—Waikato law school—that this section of the Act was ambiguous. The Leader of the House, who likes to tell us how clever he is, told us that he had difficulty in understanding it. The Minister of Immigration, who is supposed to be in charge of deciding who should come to this country, then tried to tell us that she could not understand that section, either.

Two interpretations of that are possible. One is that those three senior Ministers may really have difficulty in understanding the law—and is that not a worry? Or, alternatively, they were playing politics with a matter of the constitution, and with the integrity of this House. I say to those three Ministers that if that is what they were doing, then they owe a far greater duty to this Parliament and the country than any duty that they owe to their party.

The view of the Solicitor-General and the Clerk was quite clear. It was that the seat was vacated, that the law should take its course, and that it was for the electors of New Plymouth to decide whether they wanted to re-elect Mr Duynhoven—not the MPs in this House. The electors may or may not elect him.

Hon Damien O'Connor: They would!

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE: Is the member saying to us that the Government would not have introduced this bill if Mr Duynhoven was an unpopular member? Is it all just because he is popular? Is there a different law for popular and unpopular members? It appears that we are being told that. I say the people of New Plymouth can decide whether Mr Duynhoven is popular.

But since the member has interjected, I ask whether he can deny that the Labour Party has a deep and abiding fear of by-elections. No Labour member of the House who was in Government when the Timaru by-election happened has ever forgotten that. I thought the Labour Party could not lose Timaru. I did not know there were any National Party voters in Timaru. [Interruption] I might have helped, but, by God, we found some National voters, and those Labour members have never forgotten it.

Do Labour members want to have a by-election on the foreshore issue? I believe that that is the real issue here. We have a Government that does not want to have the inconvenience of a by-election. It cannot be a question of the cost. The National Party said it will cost $3 million to put this bill through. According to my maths, it comes to $1.9 million. That is what it costs to put Parliament into urgency. In contrast, a by-election is very, very cheap.

Who are the other members who will be affected by this legislation? I want to know that. Is it Mr Barnett, Mr Choudhary, Dr Cullen—he told us that it was not him—Mr Field, Mr Gosche, Luamanuvao Winnie Laban, or Mr Sutton?

Hon Damien O'Connor: Is it Mr Prebble?

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE: I give the House an assurance that it is not a single member of the ACT party. We asked Labour Party members in the Privileges Committee to give us that assurance, and they would not.

I believe we are doing something that is absolutely despicable. Harry Duynhoven has at least owned up. When he said he did not have a clue about the matter, I believed him. He said that he had not given the matter any thought, and in his case I believe him. However, there are dishonourable members of Parliament—and I use the word “dishonourable”—who have given the matter some thought, and who have asked the Government to pass a general blanket exemption from section 55 of the Act. Maybe it is to allow Mr Keith Locke, instead of just being an advocate of the Taliban, to actually go and join it, because under this provision he will be legally allowed to do that. What we are doing is wrong, and it is a disgrace for this Government to violate our constitution in this way.

Debate interrupted.

Sitting suspended from 10 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Thursday)

Wednesday, 6 August 2003

(continued on Thursday, 7 August 2003)

Bills

Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill

First Reading

Debate resumed.

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Deputy Prime Minister): It is with great pleasure that I rise in this debate to talk to the issues. The facts in the case are clear. Mr Duynhoven has resumed his Dutch citizenship, and Dutch law deems him to have been Dutch from birth. In that position now he joins approximately one-third of the current members of the House, sitting in the Chamber at the present time, in holding dual nationality. The interpretation as to whether that would breach the Act and create a vacancy, is less clear. The majority of the Privileges Committee said yes. Professor Palmer, a constitutional expert, said no, but so did Professor Philip Joseph, who is one of the two other leading constitutional lawyers in the country—

Dail Jones: Read page 4.

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: —somewhat outweighing Mr Dail Jones in that regard. The principles are clear. The principle is that we should all owe allegiance to New Zealand and that every member of this House is now a New Zealand citizen, but, equally, dual nationality is not inconsistent with the practices and traditions of this House and of this country. Indeed, some of those who have already waxed lyrical in this debate hold dual citizenship and are married to people who are the consul for a foreign country.

The present law is foolish, outdated, inconsistent, and ridiculous. Some people believe that one could renounce one’s citizenship the day after the election and still remain an MP; that one could exercise a British passport for three parliamentary terms without renewing it, go to Britain, ponce around as though one were a pom, but hold a position as a New Zealand member of Parliament. Yet Harry Duynhoven, simply doing what is his birthright, comes within the purview of the statute.

It is interesting that the first reaction of the National Party, from Mr Brownlee, was to say that we should legislate to overturn the stupidity in the law. But then they did this private little secret survey. At the Privileges Committee I said we should have a proper survey by the committee of all MPs, if necessary on oath, to find out the facts. But Mr Prebble immediately said no, and the National Party said no. Instead we have had these surveys in secret, and National now assures us they are all right. The National Party, having done a secret survey, then decides that its principles are that it is opposed to a change in the law.

Now, what if National had found out that Mr Richard Worth had, in fact, breached the Act? Mr Richard Worth is the consul for Monaco—a somewhat louche principality bordering the Mediterranean, whose only purpose in life is to make money by gambling, and is noted for somewhat dubious princesses. Mr Worth, last year when asked to choose between his duty and his pleasures, hesitated for not a moment, before choosing his pleasures, instead of going to an El Alamein service. “Mr Monaco” is on the record as saying that when he is at a public function, the national anthem of Monaco should be played—which, I assume, is “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?”. But he is all right.

But Harry Duynhoven, who has been Dutch since birth, is not all right, because the Dutch Government changed its law, and for a period of time he was not Dutch and he re-established his Dutch citizenship. The law is an ass, and when the law is an ass it should be changed. That is the reality.

Then we have been told by members opposite—by Mr English—that this has never been done before. In one of those glorious “Prebble-isms” on Morning Report this morning, we were told that the New Zealand constitution is unwritten, and the Electoral Act is part of it. Here is the Electoral Act, and it is written in great detail. Four times in its history this House has legislated in these matters to get members out of a mess—most recently in 1981 when a member of Parliament was marrying a foreign citizen, and then in 1943 when Walter Nash was overseas for a long period as a diplomatic representative. It is definitely not true that this has never been done before. It has been done four times before in New Zealand’s history.

The real issue, of course, is what should our allegiance be. On that there can be no doubt: our primary allegiance must be to this country, but—[Interruption]—clapping his hands is Mr McNair, who is entitled to American citizenship. Sitting next to him is Mr Dail Jones, who is a British citizen. Moving further along, we come to Mr Prebble, who is a British citizen. Behind him is Ms Bradford, who is entitled to American citizenship. I make no secret of the fact that I am a dual citizen, having been born in the UK. Ms Pansy Wong opens her mouth in horror at the thought of dual citizenship. Well, there are words we are not allowed to use in this House about that kind of reaction.

Where does all this stuff derive from, about foreign princes and powers? I hope Mr English is listening to this. It dates back, principally, to the Act of Settlement of 1701. What is the main purpose of the Act of Settlement, Mr Speaker? I think you and I know that. It is to keep Roman Catholics off the throne, and to keep Roman Catholics out of Parliament, and to keep Roman Catholics out of the ministry. That is the whole purpose that this derives from.

Gerry Brownlee: We’ve been paying you back with electoral victories ever since.

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: Mr Brownlee says yes. He thinks that is a good idea. That means his name will be struck off the St Bedes College old boys’ list, for a start.

Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. That is a gross misrepresentation of the fine interjection I made. At least, I never came to this House and abused my former old boys by saying I intended to tax the daylights out of them, as Dr Cullen has done.

Mr SPEAKER: That is not a point of order, and the member knows it.

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: I am glad to have let some of the air out of that rather over-inflated tyre, on that particular matter. But it actually goes back further: this stuff about foreign princes and powers—“foreign princes and potentates” is the original—goes back to the Act of Appeals of 1533, which is actually the first major move in the English Reformation, and abolished appeals to Rome. The whole background of this in our law is suffused with anti-Catholicism. In New Zealand law it first comes in the Constitution Act of 1852 when the purpose then was to be British. Now, if one was, and took out a British passport, one would be in breach of the law, because there was no such thing as a “New Zealand citizen” in 1852, and not for many, many decades thereafter. It is a piece of nonsense that we are dealing with in this particular respect.

Mr Prebble, of course, came up with his usual Aunt Sallies. Sitting there, as a British citizen—he went very quiet in the Privileges Committee when I pointed that out, when we got into questioning—not a million miles from being connected with the consul of a foreign power, and one of such a dubious nature we are sending our police and army personnel there to rescue it at the present time. But no, that is perfectly all right! It is perfectly all right for Mr Worth, representing a foreign power; and last year, let us remind ourselves, he wanted to represent the Italian challenger to Team New Zealand. I regard that as close to some form of treason in this country. It is much more serious than asserting one’s right to be a Dutch citizen from birth, as Dutch law allows.

But no we are going to have all this pompous self-righteous nonsense paraded through the day from Opposition members, as they try to argue somehow or other that Harry Duynhoven ought to feel the full force of a law that none of us actually knew had that effect—certainly not Mr Prebble, previously; certainly not Dr Mapp previously—

Dr Wayne Mapp: Simple resolution—have a by-election.

Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN: —certainly not Dr Mapp previously, knew that was the effect of the law. We have never had a briefing from the Clerk’s Office or from the Parliamentary Service Commission that members needed to be aware that if they were British citizens they could not renew a British passport.

I have no doubt in my mind that many MPs in the past have breached that law. Many MPs, I am certain, have breached that law in terms of renewing British passports. Parties opposite having carried out secret surveys, assure us they are clean, and now on principle they can vote against the bill. I do wish Richard Worth had not passed on a technicality. I would love a by-election in Epsom, where ACT would put Mr Richard Worth out of Parliament, and I have to say this bunch of National Party turkeys opposite want a by-election in New Plymouth where our Harry would return with a massive majority, and they would not even come second. They would be lucky to come third, and, more probably fourth, behind ACT. New Zealand First would come second, ACT would come third, National could come fourth. But, of course, they know they have not got the majority, so they are safe to take their principles into oblivion by the end of the day.

ROD DONALD (Co-Leader—Green): The Green Party supports the Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill and, indeed, we are pleased to have been able to work with the Government in the development of this legislation. I have known Harry Duynhoven for almost 20 years, mostly through our joint involvement in the Trade Aid organisation. I regard Harry Duynhoven as a friend; but it is not our longstanding friendship that is our reason for supporting this bill. This bill is not the “Save Harry Duynhoven Bill”. The Green Party would support this legislation even if it saved the seats of Winston Peters, Roger Sowry, or Richard Prebble.

Hon John Tamihere: Would Roger Sowry have National support?

ROD DONALD: That is an important point. Under this ridiculous law, list MPs do not even have the opportunity of standing again in a by-election, and that is why I particularly mentioned a list MP in this context. This confirms the principle—a long held principle—that New Zealand members of Parliament can have dual citizenship. It fixes an obvious nonsense in the Electoral Act—an archaic provision that has been gathering dust for over 150 years. It is accepted in this country that an MP can be a citizen of another country, or hold a passport of that country, without his or her allegiance to New Zealand being undermined or negated in any way.

Mr SPEAKER: Dr Mapp can interject from his seat—not by moving closer to Mr Donald. I think this is a serious debate. I want to hear Mr Donald, whose party has this one call in this first reading. I do not think he needs to be subject to that sort of noise.

ROD DONALD: Indeed, a number of members of this House, perhaps upwards of 30, are citizens, or hold passports, of other countries, and that includes a few of our own members, I would acknowledge. Anyone who votes against this law is in effect challenging the commitment of those MPs to our country. Surely they do not mean to do that. It is also accepted that if an MP becomes a citizen of another country during a term of Parliament as a result of marrying a foreign national, that is OK. The law was amended in 1981 to make that explicit, but it was not amended to protect sitting MPs from renewing their foreign passport or taking out dual citizenship.

The stupidity of the current law is highlighted by the fact that not only has Harry Duynhoven broken the law—and we do acknowledge that a vacancy has been created—but also that he is eligible to immediately stand again in a subsequent by-election. How ridiculous can the law be? But even more significantly, the current law has not been amended to require MPs to maintain their New Zealand citizenship while they are in Parliament. I would ask opponents of this bill whether they are happy to leave in place a law that means that every member in this House, at the moment, could legally renounce his or her New Zealand citizenship and remain in Parliament. It is clearly a nonsense. Both these extraordinary flaws in the Act need to be fixed, and will be, by this bill.

Clauses 4 and 6 ensure that every MP’s loyalty to New Zealand is not in question, providing he or she remains a New Zealand citizen. There has been some talk about amending the bill to apply only to Harry Duynhoven or to apply only from the period from the election until now. I think both of those ideas are patently ridiculous and undermine the very principle that we are trying to reinforce with this bill. Because the principle we are trying to reinforce is that dual citizenship is valid and acceptable, and there is no question about any member’s allegiance to New Zealand, if he or she is also a citizen of another country.

If we constrain this bill to one MP, then it becomes the “Save Harry Bill” and ignores the principle, in fact, undermines the principle. If we make it only from the election until now, what we are doing is denying the rights and opportunities of all other members in this House who are entitled to have a foreign passport, when that passport comes up for renewal, or who are entitled to take up a foreign citizenship during the period from now until the next election. So we say those amendments are not helpful and, in fact, undermine the very principle that we are trying to reinforce with this law, and we will not support any such amendment.

In our view this bill is clear, straightforward, and short. It will deal with the immediate problem that has been highlighted, and also give the Justice and Electoral Committee the opportunity to have a wider review of the legislation to make sure all the archaic elements are dealt with. This bill should not be a matter of great debate in this House, but clearly it will be. It will be because National, and ACT, in particular, are determined to make fools of themselves. If they had their way Harry Duynhoven’s seat would be declared vacant and a by-election would need to be held. That would cost, I am told, around $350,000.

I have heard some other members say that this session of urgency will cost more. That is only because they are dragging out this debate. I say that that is a complete waste of public money. Would any taxpayer thank National and ACT for putting the country through this unnecessary expense? I have had only one communication saying that there should be a by-election, and heaps of people saying “What an absolute nonsense; why don’t you fix the law and fix it quick.” How many people have asked ACT to waste a whole heap of public money on a by-election? How many voters in New Plymouth have asked National to campaign for a by-election? The Government must have been sorely tempted to call one, because National would have been on a hiding to nothing. That is because Harry Duynhoven is the most popular constituency MP in this country. He won over 20,900 votes at the last election: more than any other MP in this House. He has the second-largest majority in this House. What is more, National, ACT, and New Zealand First voters gave him that majority. Their own voters must be wondering about the credibility and commonsense of the leaders of the parties they voted for. Because just under half of the people who voted ACT—747 voters—also voted for Harry Duynhoven. Almost one-third of the people who voted National—2,079 of them—endorsed Harry Duynhoven as their local MP. Members should go into the Internet and check the split vote report. That is the same reason that I sense New Zealand First members want to support a “Save Harry Bill”. Because if they have done their research they will know that well over half of their voters—2,299 of them—voted for Harry Duynhoven as their local member of Parliament. So I suggest that certainly ACT, and National, get a reality check—

Dail Jones: Was there a New Zealand First candidate?

ROD DONALD: I would have to check. Mr Jones should have a look and tell me in a minute.

Dail Jones: There wasn’t one.

ROD DONALD: Well, there we go. I suggest anyway that National and ACT get a reality check from their own voters before opposing this bill. My colleague Metiria Turei will raise a number of other issues during the second reading debate. But for now I simply want to say that the Green Party believes that Harry Duynhoven—or any other sitting MP—should not suffer the unintended consequence of losing his seat as a result of reclaiming his Dutch citizenship, something he actually had when he was an MP from 1987 to 1990, and from 1990 to 1993. Harry Duynhoven was not putting his Dutch heritage ahead of his commitment to New Zealand, and parties opposed to this bill should stop their political point-scoring and pass this bill.

Mr SPEAKER: I call the Hon Matt Robson.

GERRY BROWNLEE (NZ National—Ilam): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. We have not had a second call at this point in the debate.

Mr SPEAKER: I want to make a comment about that. There are 12 calls in this debate. Six calls go to the Government or its supporters, and that has been the situation ever since the general election. Every second call goes to a Government MP. The Labour Party and the Progressive Party have 54 out of 120 seats, and get every second call. The National Party will get its call in due course.

DAIL JONES (Junior Whip—NZ First): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. So do I take it from your ruling that you regard United Future as being a Government party, bearing in mind that it got the second call last night ahead of New Zealand First?

Mr SPEAKER: No, I did not say that. I said that had a Labour member taken the second call last night the Labour Party member would have got it.

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (Leader—ACT NZ): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I want to clarify this matter. Mr Donald has just told us that he is proud of the fact that he helped to draft this bill. It would seem to me that the divide really is between those members of Parliament who saw the bill only when it was tabled last night, and the other MPs—apparently from the Green Party, maybe from United Future, as well, and from the Labour Party—who did. I think that is where the division should be. Half the speakers should be MPs who were not allowed to see the bill prior to it being tabled, and the other half should be MPs who have colluded with the Government in this constitutional change.

Mr SPEAKER: That is a novel point, but it is not accurate.

Hon MATT ROBSON (Deputy Leader—Progressive): This issue began around the question of Harry Duynhoven and whether he could sit in this Parliament. It was referred to the Privileges Committee, so the committee could look at a matter of privilege. The Speaker, of course, has the legal responsibility of declaring a seat to be vacant—or not. The Privileges Committee, in its majority report, found that the law did, indeed, state that the seat was vacant. But more questions were thrown up than we actually had answers for.

This debate is typified by the facts that the Privileges Committee, when adjudicating on a New Zealand citizen who is also a Dutch citizen, was chaired by an Australian-born member of Parliament who is entitled to sit in the New Zealand Parliament, and that we did so in the Māori Affairs Committee room, where the spirit of the 1835 declaration announcing tino rangatiratanga in New Zealand was present. And every member of this House has had to consider whether some way or another he or she has inadvertently, or even advertently, breached the law.

The question that emerged, in terms of the situation for New Zealand, is this. Dual citizens in New Zealand can stand for the New Zealand Parliament. That is allowed by law; it is enshrined in a constitutional document, the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Every New Zealand citizen has the right to sit in the New Zealand Parliament. Yet, at the same time, if an act is done under a statute that no one was aware of, an act that is as minor as a member with dual citizenship renewing his or her passport—as one is entitled to do in law—that puts that MP at risk. It is not even the act of achieving a passport, or achieving citizenship; if one looks at the law, one finds it is possibly just the act of inquiring about, or making an attempt to obtain, a passport, for whatever particular reason.

In this Parliament we have had the privilege, because of this debate, to upskill ourselves in a whole range of areas. We had Sir Geoffrey Palmer appear before the committee, and whatever the opinion people may have of the views he holds, he is recognised as a very learned lawyer in New Zealand. We had advice from Terence Arnold, the Solicitor-General, and various comments in the media from constitutional lawyers, so the debate has been educational for members of Parliament. But the one point that has struck me is that in almost all that comment, nobody has suggested that we should not have dual citizenship in New Zealand. That reflects two things. First, I hope that it reflects a very broad-minded attitude that we do not just judge people’s allegiance to New Zealand by where they may have been born, the colour of their skin, or their religion, which in this world is a good step. Second, it reflects the fact that dual citizenship is, in every part of New Zealand life, accepted.

In fact, we have gone one step further than that, on the question of residence. In this Parliament, even at the present time, one does not have to be a citizen of New Zealand in order to be a member of Parliament. One can be a member if one was on the electoral roll in 1975. That was my position. In 1975 I was a New Zealand resident, and subsequently I was elected to this Parliament. No one can say that I have not been the most loyal and wonderful member of Parliament, in representing New Zealand’s interests. In fact, with regard to New Zealand’s interests, when I have spoken to the Australian Government it has had no doubt that my allegiance lies with New Zealand’s defence policies, and not with those of Australia. New Zealand is in no danger that I would swap the allegiance I hold to New Zealand for allegiance to the Australian Government. Yet, as Mr Peters pointed out last night, my allegiance may be to Ned Kelly. May I say that someone like Ned Kelly, who, had he been here, would have been entitled to be elected to the New Zealand Parliament, and would have made a very good member of this Parliament. He would have raised the standards very high.

Of course, we have had the benefit of not only the Deputy Prime Minister but also of a lecturer in history, with some knowledge in that field. History is a debatable subject, and we do not all have to agree on its interpretation. However, we do know that the purpose of the Act of Settlement 1701 was to ensure Protestant dominance in Great Britain, and to retain the power of the Protestant groups. In New Zealand, well before other countries, we accepted Roman Catholic Prime Ministers. In fact, one of our best Roman Catholic Prime Ministers also had his allegiance to Ned Kelly: Michael Joseph Savage, one of the great Prime Ministers of New Zealand. Not only was he a Roman Catholic but he was an Australian, who was born very close to where Ned Kelly had his major areas of operations. Michael Joseph Savage was a very good Prime Minister. As well, on the National side of the House, in terms of spurning the Act of Settlement 1701 we have had James Brendan Bolger, who I believe is also a Roman Catholic. Therefore, we in New Zealand have put aside this legislation about allegiance to other countries.

What are we being asked to do? In its majority report, the Privileges Committee stated that yes, this particular section of the Electoral Act means that the seat can be declared vacant. But it has also raised the question of the ambiguity of many laws and practices in New Zealand that recognise dual citizenship. We as a country have also not declared that for it to be said that one is patriotic, one has to have a type of false patriotism and be able to say that the only country one will ever live in, and stand on the soil of, is New Zealand. We recognise our heritage. We recognise the ability to have allegiance to New Zealand and to hold dual citizenship, and that is a very good thing.

What are we faced with? Parliament is faced with fixing a problem, and fixing it in the eyes of the public, not with hiding some treachery, and not with hiding some allegiance to countries that will undermine New Zealand’s sovereignty. New Zealand First is often telling us that it is here to fix it. Well, let us take up that wonderful slogan from New Zealand First, and let us all fix what is an anomaly in this Parliament. Let us not—and I do not think the public wants us to do this—go on a witch-hunt to find out who may have a passport, who may have made an inquiry about a passport for one of his or her children or his or her partner, or who may, in the secrecy of his or her home, have even cheered for an alternative team to the All Blacks. Who knows which Australian-born MPs here may hedge their bets until half-time in a game, and then change their support? If an MP changes backwards and forwards on a sporting matter, would we then say that he or she will betray New Zealand? Of course we will not. There are plenty of people with New Zealand passports who I would say have betrayed our interests in many, many ways. But it does not follow that because one is a dual citizen one will betray New Zealand’s interests. By accepting dual citizenship, I do not believe that previous Parliaments meant that expulsion would be the consequence of seeking a passport. Nor do I believe that this Parliament should sit by and make sure that we perpetuate a nonsense. We have in front of us a bill that will allow us to bring some sense to this law, and we will put it in front of the Electoral Law Committee and then remedy the problems. To use New Zealand First’s slogan, let us make sure that Parliament fixes the problem.

GERRY BROWNLEE (NZ National—Ilam): So far this debate has been full of red herrings from the Labour Party and its supporters, who must be deeply embarrassed about having to come to this Parliament in order to protect one of their own. I shall go through them. Mr Robson seems quite unable to recollect that just 3 years ago this law was reviewed in this Parliament, and he voted for it. So if the law was so hopeless, why did he not vote against it then? Why did Harry Duynhoven not vote against it then, and why did the mystery person in the Labour Party who is being shielded at the moment by the silence of that party also vote for it?

I want to talk about the comments made by Rod Donald. That man has inflicted more damage on the electoral system in this country than anyone else I know. Today he has come in with the great theory that there should not be a by-election, because the likely candidate is so popular that he will win it, anyway. In other parts of the world, a term is used for that sort of view of the electoral system. What Rod Donald is saying is that Harry Duynhoven is so popular he should be running the country, and nobody should dare to challenge him. That is utterly ridiculous. Then he advanced the preposterous suggestion that by not having a by-election, he is helping the National Party, New Zealand First, or ACT. A principle is at stake here, and it should be upheld. Mr Duynhoven has breached the law. He has been found by his colleagues to be in a situation where his seat is vacant, and there should be a by-election.

Then Michael Cullen came in here this morning and gave us a truly histrionic performance, as he went through the history of what he considered to be archaic pieces of legislation. That somehow related to a bill that this Parliament passed just 3 years ago. I say to Dr Cullen that if all the members surrounding him who were so excited by his speech truly believe what he said, then those who are Māori members will stand up and say they think that the Treaty of Waitangi is an archaic and hopeless document. They will stand up and say the treaty is a piece of work that should not be considered in the legislative sense, because it happened so long ago that it is no longer relevant. We know that that will not happen. That would absolutely destroy the argument that Māori have as they go about their business at the moment, taking over New Zealand.

I want to ask the Māori members, particularly, how comfortable they are with the idea that foreigners can sit in this Parliament and determine their destiny—because that is what they are voting for. Dr Cullen said that a third of the members in this Parliament are entitled to dual citizenship. I suggest the number is bigger than that. I am entitled to dual citizenship, but I do not hold it and I do not seek it, because this is the country I live in, this is the country I serve, and this is the country I want to be unambiguously committed to.

I have read the testimony of Harry Duynhoven to the Privileges Committee, and I have never seen such a snivelling load of crap—and I use that term very, very deliberately—in my life.

Mr SPEAKER: The member will be seated. I will not have that sort of language in here. The member knows that that is out of order. He will stand, withdraw, and apologise. He is very lucky that he is allowed to continue with his speech.

GERRY BROWNLEE: I withdraw and apologise. I have never seen such a load of drivelling nonsense in all my life. For that man to go to the Privileges Committee, apparently in tears, and to start saying that he did not mean to do what he did, and that he did not expect the consequence of that, is an absolute nonsense. For Harry Duynhoven to suggest that he did it for his children is an even bigger disgrace. What is wrong with citizenship of this country for his children? Why does he insist that he should be able to give his children European passports, when millions of New Zealanders do not have that opportunity?

Hon Damien O'Connor: What about all your colleagues?

GERRY BROWNLEE: I say to Mr O’Connor, who sits there and asks about all my colleagues, that the only party sitting in this House that will not confirm that all its members have one citizenship is the Labour Party, and the most eerily silent person on this matter is the Prime Minister.

Let us look at the Prime Minister’s situation. She is married to British citizen, and she is a Prime Minister who loves to travel.

Hon Richard Prebble: She’d get it on residence grounds alone.

GERRY BROWNLEE: That is a good point. The Prime Minster has not made comments about this issue, at all. I now ask this question: why will the Labour Party not confirm that all its members, other than Harry Duynhoven, are clean on this matter? It would be easy for the whips to stand up and say they have been around the Labour members to do a check, and have found they are clean. No, the whips cannot do that, because they know those members are not clean.

We know that that is the case because when we actually examine this bill, we notice that there is a reference in clause 4 to section 55(1)(b) of the Electoral Act. We know that we do not need that amendment to fix the “Harry problem.” What is needed is simply the amendment to paragraph (c), as we understand it. But section 55(1)(b) of the Act states that a member creates a vacancy in his or her seat if the member “takes any oath or makes any declaration or acknowledgement of allegiance or adherence to any foreign Prince or Power”.

When the Minister, Rick Barker, came to the House with a series of carefully prepared notes—large sheets of paper that he brandished in front of himself, so that he would not make a mistake in what he said—to begin the first reading debate, he told the House that simply because a member of this House swears an oath of allegiance to another country, that member should not lose his or her seat. That makes us incredibly suspicious about who the person is in the Labour Party who has taken an oath of allegiance to some other country, some other principality, some other Crown, or some other authority. We worry about the silence of the Prime Minster, who we know is in a situation where she could have a British passport. I think that the Labour whips should do this House a favour, and stand up and confirm that their team is clean. They will not do it—just silence is all that we get. They know who that member is.

Hon Richard Prebble: Ask them whether the Prime Minister has a British passport.

GERRY BROWNLEE: I suppose we could do that, and I think I will take this opportunity to do so. Mr Prebble raises a good point. I ask the Labour whip: does the Prime Minister have a British passport?

John Carter: Or any other passport?

GERRY BROWNLEE: Does the Prime Minister have a European passport? Is the guilty party who is being protected by the amendment to section 55(1)(b) of the Act the Prime Minister? No, one of the Labour whips keeps her head down. The other Labour whip shuffles about, and is frightened to answer. The Labour whip, of course, is part of the Māori caucus, but is quite happy to have a bunch of foreigners determine the future of Māori in this country—no problem whatsoever—and is happy to pass this bill today.

If the points raised by Matt Robson, Rod Donald, and Michael Cullen are correct, and if the suggestion from Rick Barker—that any member could swear allegiance to any other country and not lose his or her seat—is correct, then why is the legislation being altered only for this term of Parliament? There is an element here of protecting not only Mr Duynhoven but also some other unnamed person or persons.

I finish by saying that the National Party is completely disgusted by the way that this whole business has been handled. The Act is extremely clear. All those who have a responsibility to look at it have concluded that there is an unambiguous situation here, and, as a result, Mr Duynhoven should have his seat declared to be vacant.

JILL PETTIS (NZ Labour—Whanganui): I hope that as many New Zealanders as possible are listening to Parliament today. I know it is sadistic to wish that on my fellow citizens, but I hope people are listening to this debate today. It is an important debate, but the reason I hope many New Zealanders are listening is that this debate is further proof that National picks the wrong issues. New Zealanders think a by-election would be a complete waste of time. The people in Taranaki think that to hold a by-election would be absolutely ridiculous. I say to National members: “Keep on this theme. Keep at 20 percent and falling, because you’re picking the wrong issues.” Every time the National Party, ACT, and New Zealand First mention the word “principle”, the sale of Stemetil and other anti-emetics goes up. Those people over there would not know a principle if it came up and banged them on the back of the head. We need to progress this bill, and stop listening to all the ridiculous mouthings coming from that side of the House. We need to pass this bill, and get on with the real business of Parliament, which is about passing progressive social legislation.

JOHN CARTER (NZ National—Northland): I want to start my contribution in this debate by making one point very clear: no one in this country is above the law. No citizen in this country has a right to break the law and not be punished for it. No one can use the defence of not knowing, yet here today Parliament not only is passing a law that will put someone above the law as a consequence, but we are doing it for not just any citizen but actually one of our own. It is an absolute disgrace for this Parliament to think it can hold one of its members above the law, then pass a law to state that even though that person has breached section 55(1)(c) of the Electoral Act, we will forgive him and we will pass a law retrospectively to make sure it is OK. That is an absolute outrage, and the people of this country know that. It pours disdain on this Parliament. That is the first point I want to make.

Secondly, the Labour members and those others who will be supporting this bill should be held in absolute contempt for even thinking that we can put anybody in Parliament above the law, and can legislate to correct an inaction. I ask the House whether, if somebody had inadvertently breached some law or taken some action with regard to Work and Income New Zealand, and had been found out, we would be passing a law today to state that that is OK, that we are sorry that person did that inadvertently, that although that person caused a problem we will let him or her go, and we will pass a special law that is retrospective so that that person is deemed not to have broken the law. Would we be doing that? I ask the Labour Government whether it would pass that sort of legislation for anyone. Not on your nelly! I say again that no one in Parliament—particularly Harry Duynhoven—is above the law, yet here today I feel absolutely ashamed that I am involved in a debate that does just that. This is a black day for this Parliament and this Helen Clark - led minority Labour Government. It is a black day that will go down as a disgraceful blot on the history of this Parliament. I am appalled that I have to be here to witness it, and I am absolutely delighted that our party, with others, will vote against this legislation.

Why is this legislation so broad? Why is it as wide as it is? If the Helen Clark - led minority Government is determined to correct the issues around Harry Duynhoven’s eligibility, if Government members genuinely believe that they are right, then let them correct that one mistake. The legislation that they have introduced expires at the end of this term. They have done that, they have provided that it carry through to the end of this term only, because they intend to bring in other legislation to amend the anomalies in the Electoral Act. From my perspective, two things arise out of that. The first is they could bring that legislation in tomorrow and correct the anomalies—if there are anomalies, and I can see that there are one or two. They could make that correction. [Interruption] I will come to the senior Government whip in a minute. They could do that tomorrow.

I am glad the senior Government whip is starting to interject, because he is the person I want to talk about. What are labour members covering up? Why have they made this legislation so broad that it applies not just to Harry Duynhoven but to every member in the House? Who are they covering up for? I myself have gone through the National caucus, and I have also asked the other whips whether they have any problems with their members. They have all been able to assure me that there are no problems with their parties. The only whip who has not been able to tell me that is the senior Labour whip, David Benson-Pope. He is the only whip who will not say to me that his party is clean. He is the only whip who will not come to me and say that he has checked and there is no problem with his members.

David Benson-Pope: What a dirty little deceit.

Mr SPEAKER: That is enough. The member will stand, withdraw, and apologise for that comment.

David Benson-Pope: I withdraw and apologise.

Mr SPEAKER: There are too many interjections. This is a serious debate. Mr Carter is to be heard in relative silence.

JOHN CARTER: My colleague Gerry Brownlee raised the matter of whether the Prime Minister had a British or a European passport. I ask the same question of the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Phil Goff, because I have heard a rumour that he might be the one with a problem. Whether that is true, I do not know. Unless those members are prepared to stand up and say yes or no, how do we know? Does the House not have the right to know? Does the public not have the right to know? Maybe it is the Prime Minister, or the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, or somebody else in Cabinet. Surely it is easy enough for each Minister in Cabinet to stand up and say it is not him or her. Why can those Ministers not do that? Why can we not go through each Minister, starting with the Prime Minister, and ask him or her to say whether he or she has breached the law? I would love to know the answer to that. Why can the Labour whips not stand up and say they have checked with each Cabinet Minister, and none has breached the law? We do not get that answer. It is easy enough to say. I can say it for the National members. I know that the other whips can say the same for their members. Why can the Labour Party whips not do it?

Now we have doubt, and that is the worst part of this legislation. Not only are we saying today that somebody is above the law but also we now are worried about whether there is a cover-up. Seven of the 10 members on the Privileges Committee, including Matt Robson, said that there was a vacancy. The only three who said there was some ambiguity were the Labour members. They were the Deputy Prime Minister; Margaret Wilson, the Attorney-General; and the Minister of Immigration. One has to ask oneself what those three are covering up. I wonder about that. It has to be somebody in the Labour Party. This has a smell about it that we now need to have exposed. It stinks. This is a black day for this Parliament. No one is above the law. The minority Labour Government, led by Helen Clark, should not cover up these things. Labour members should come clean and tell the House what is actually going on, so that we do not have to sit here, double-guess, and cause anxiety amongst the people of this nation as to whether they are being misled.

Hon RUTH DYSON (Minister for ACC): That is the first time I have been disappointed in a contribution from John Carter. It does neither him nor his party any credit to have insinuations like that made in what should be a very serious debate. It was not clear from his contribution that the purpose of this bill—and other members should know this—is to ensure that no member of the current Parliament loses his or her seat merely because he or she swears allegiance to, or obtains the citizenship of, another country. The bill has been introduced on the advice and recommendation of a majority of the Privileges Committee, and I urge its speedy progress through the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 69

Labour 50; Green Party 9; United Future 8; Progressive 2.

Noes 48

New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8.

Abstentions 1

Hunt.

Bill read a first time.

Hon ROGER SOWRY (Deputy Leader—NZ National): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Because of the way we vote now, we are not able to determine the reason for parties voting below their number; we have a situation where votes are hidden by that process. With regard to the Labour vote I raise the issue of whether, on this legislation, the whip is carrying the proxy of Mr Duynhoven. It is important for the House to know whether Mr Duynhoven has a proxy vote. He has been reported in the media in the last few hours as being within the precincts of Parliament—in his office, but not coming to the Chamber while this debate is going on. That is a legitimate choice, and maybe a wise choice—for him not to take part in the debate. He did appear before the Privileges Committee. But given that this debate is centred on him, I seek through you, Mr Speaker, to find out from the Labour whip, who cast a lower number of votes, whether he is carrying Mr Duynhoven’s proxy on this legislation.

DAVID BENSON-POPE (Senior Whip—NZ Labour): I am very happy to oblige the member. I can assure the House that the Labour Party is at more than full complement in terms of its vote entitlement at this time. The vote being down by two is to accommodate the fact that the Speaker is abstaining on this question, and that Mr Duynhoven’s vote is not part of the 50 votes that I am exercising.

GERRY BROWNLEE (NZ National—Ilam): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. In the unusual circumstances that we are dealing with, where we know that there is a Privileges Committee report on the Table declaring a seat vacant, and we are now, in urgency—effectively, preventing the report of that committee from being dealt with by the House—retrospectively changing the law so that the conclusions of that report cannot be given any effect, it is arguable that with this bill we are being asked to elect an MP. There is no real question about that being the consequence of what we are doing. That would constitute a change in the method of voting as stated in the Electoral Act. That is one of the six or seven—I am not sure which—entrenched provisions in that Act that require the support of 75 percent of the House. It is not a frivolous question that I am asking; it is a serious one, and a number of Speakers’ rulings relate to this matter. I wonder whether you, Mr Speaker, might take whatever time is required to consult the Clerk and others, and to give us a ruling on why, in fact, this is not a bill—given the effect of it—that requires the support of 75 percent of Parliament.

Mr SPEAKER: The member has asked me to give thought to it. I will.

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (Leader—ACT NZ): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I now raise a different point of order, but a very serious one, which I believe you should give very serious consideration to, because it concerns the reputation of the House and, indeed, of yourself. You told the House—and I am not questioning it—when you were referring this matter to the Privileges Committee: “I will be guided in my actions under the Electoral Act by the committee’s report and the House’s conclusions on it.” I think that in doing so you were mindful of the fact that the way that vacancies in Parliament used to be declared actually required a resolution of the House. If you look at McGee, you will see that it sets out that the Speaker can do so only on being ordered by the House; the Speaker then issues warrants. That, of course, is a matter that caused some debate within Parliament, and Parliament decided to change the law. We decided that it was not appropriate that a vacancy be declared as a result of a party vote, and we changed the law so that it now is not a question for Parliament; it is actually a matter of statute law. The instruction to you in the statute is quite clear; section 129(1) states: “If the Speaker is satisfied that the seat of a member elected to represent an electoral district has become vacant, the Speaker must, without delay, publish a notice of the vacancy and its cause in the Gazette.”

Mr Speaker, you quite properly said that you, as Speaker, did not feel that you could do that until you had heard from the House. Well, you now have heard from the House. The Government cannot manipulate the Order Paper. It is not that you said you would wait until you had heard from the Privileges Committee debate; you said you would wait until you had heard from the House. We are now in a position where you, as Speaker, have heard that the Privileges Committee listened to this matter, and, after listening to it, every single member of that committee, I think, actually thinks the seat is vacant. The National Party members on the committee, Mr Carter and Mr Mapp, were quite clear in their minds. The Green member of Parliament, who actually turned up to the Privileges Committee saying she did not think Mr Duynhoven’s seat was vacant, listened to the submissions from the Solicitor-General and from the Clerk of the House—who you have told us is the best Clerk in the Commonwealth—who were quite unanimous that there is no ambiguity: the seat is vacant, and has been from, at least, 11 June. The United Future member of Parliament, who also arrived at the Privileges Committee saying he did not think the seat was vacant, listened to the argument and said that, yes, it was. I was of the view when I read it—

Mr SPEAKER: Will the member come to the point a little more quickly.

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE: I am making this clear to you, Mr Speaker, because you know all those facts. You know them from the House. They have been recorded; they are now in Hansard. Your statutory duty is to act without delay. It is not a matter that you do in the House, and I am saying to you that your duty, for the integrity of this Parliament and for your own integrity, is to go from this place to your office right now, declare the seat vacant, and issue the writs. Not to do so gives the impression that, in fact, you are colluding with the Government in trying to prevent this part of the Electoral Act from taking place. I just say, Mr Speaker, that I am concerned about your reputation, but I am also concerned about the reputation of this House. That is your duty, and you should go and do it.

Mr SPEAKER: I tell the member that I always listen to the points he makes, because he is a senior member. Of course, I want to say only one thing: I am certainly not colluding with the Government, at all, on this issue, and I make that statement absolutely. I will take note of the member’s point of order, as with Mr Brownlee’s, and I will report a little later.

Dr Wayne Mapp: Speaking to the point of order—

Mr SPEAKER: No. I have had the point of order, and I will go away and reflect on it.

Second Reading

Hon RICK BARKER (Associate Minister of Justice): I move, That the Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill be now read a second time. I take the opportunity to remind the House of the principle behind this bill. It is quite sound. This bill suspends the operation of section 55(1)(b) and (c) for this Parliament. It does so because those provisions have inappropriate consequences.

I want to take up the point that has been raised by the National Party on a number of occasions, and that is why the bill is restricted to this Parliament. There is a very good reason for that. I said in my first reading speech that I will be writing to the Justice and Electoral Committee to raise this issue with it, and to invite it to report back to Parliament, as it will do, on the electoral law as it applied to the last election. It is customary in this House to have a bill, after each election and before the next, to tidy up any areas in which there are deficiencies or imperfections. This matter will be one of them.

The law as it stands does have some unusual consequences. It is extraordinary that someone can come to this House holding dual citizenship, and can renounce his or her New Zealand citizenship with no effect, but, on the other hand, a person who is entitled by law and by birth to dual citizenship who comes to this House as a New Zealand citizen, but who signs some paperwork to confirm his or her entitlement to citizenship of another country, then has to resign. I do not think anybody would say that is a sensible thing.

Some speakers, and others outside the House, have commented that the actions of Mr Duynhoven were unlawful, but his actions were not unlawful at all. They were no more unlawful than someone signing a letter of resignation.

This bill properly confers entitlements on all members of this forty-seventh Parliament. It will not go beyond that because, prior to this Parliament coming to an end, this Parliament will hear a report from the Justice and Electoral Committee and will debate the law properly.

It has been widely accepted in this country that people can have dual citizenship. There has never been any doubt about that, and, personally, I think it is a good thing. It is not to be confused with the situation of Mr Duynhoven taking out what is his by right of birth and by the retrospective action of Dutch law. I commend the bill to the House for its second reading.

Dr WAYNE MAPP (NZ National—North Shore): The National Party is opposed to this legislation for two reasons. One, the law itself is clear, and, two, the principle of retrospective legislation is fundamentally wrong in this instance. I will firstly deal with the issues of law that came up, in part, through the point of order but also, obviously in a more general sense, through the Privileges Committee. It is about the application of section 55. I find it extraordinary that we can have the Solicitor-General and the Clerk of the House saying the law is clear and unambiguous, and we can have that consented and agreed to by the majority of the Privileges Committee, but who dissents? It is all the Labour members.

I will single out a particular individual for saying that the law was ambiguous, and that is the Attorney-General. She is a former professor of law. Her chief adviser is the Solicitor-General. Is she now saying to the country that she does not have confidence in—there really can be no other interpretation—her chief legal adviser? The Solicitor-General, after all, said that the law was unambiguous, and that the seat is vacant. We have yet to hear the Attorney-General speak in this Parliament on this matter. When the Attorney-General concludes, against the advice of the Clerk and the Solicitor-General, that the law is in fact ambiguous and uncertain, and therefore the seat is vacant, at the very least one would expect the Attorney-General to be participating in the debate. How can the country have confidence in the judgments of the Attorney-General when she disbelieves categorically the views of her chief legal adviser?

Section 55 is clear. The situation that Government members have raised, about dual nationality and so forth, is irrelevant. There is a different set of rules relating to members of Parliament. Those people in our community who seek to represent the nation and to pass laws have additional duties placed upon them, and that is right and proper because we are making laws for New Zealanders. Parliamentarians and Cabinet Ministers, of which Mr Duynhoven is one—or, at least, was one—make public policy for this nation. That is why there is a higher burden on us than there is on general members of the public. We are all here voluntarily. None of us had to come here. We chose to do so because of our views on what we think is right for our country. It is therefore proper that we should have one loyalty, and one alone.

I will now turn to the application of section 129, and the role of the Speaker. I know, Mr Speaker, that you are going to reconsider that properly, but I ask for your consideration on this—and I am sure you will be taking advice from the Clerk. The Privileges Committee, by majority, said that the seat became vacant on 11 June, so the question then becomes whether Mr Duynhoven is a member of Parliament now, or whether his actions as at 11 June created a vacancy at that point in time. The question then becomes how does section 129 apply: is it the Speaker making a decision, or is it the Speaker implementing the reality of the vacancy, which in fact occurred on 11 June 2003, as reported in page 13 of the Privileges Committee report? That is an important issue, and I know that the Speaker will be considering it seriously. If the situation is that the Speaker is simply making a declaratory act based on the Privileges Committee report, then the seat is already vacant, and Mr Duynhoven is no longer a member of Parliament.

I guess that, in some respects, was almost recognised by the Government in the last vote, when the Government did not cast a vote for Mr Duynhoven. It recognised the risk of Mr Duynhoven even casting a vote, because he may not actually be a member of Parliament at all. He is not sitting in the House. We heard him say on television that he should not be here. Again, that raises the presupposition that he is no longer a member of Parliament.

This matter then turns to the role of retrospective legislation. As a matter of constitutional law, this Parliament is supreme. It seems to me that what the Government is doing right now is actually saying that a person who is no longer a member of Parliament can be a member of Parliament—that Parliament itself, by a statute, is effectively electing a member of Parliament. Maybe that is what the Government should be doing, though most people would recognise it as a constitutional travesty. Although Parliament conceivably does have that power, surely we should not go around passing laws that say: “Joe Bloggs, who is not a member of Parliament, is now a member of Parliament.” Obviously, when put like that, it sounds like the absurdity it is, but it seems to me that is precisely what Parliament is seeking to do in this situation.

That is why National is so insistent on the by-election. We heard the absurd situations raised by Mr Donald about why a by-election was a bad idea, and they were all about the electoral result. They had nothing to do with principles or the law itself. We had the same situation from the Government, which should know better than to say: “Well, Harry will win, anyway. Why put people to the bother?”. In that case, why even have elections at all? Why not just go by opinion polls? Whenever the opinion polls changed we would just change the Government. It is self-evident that that is an absurd proposition. The decision as to who belongs in this Parliament and who does not belongs to the people, and all of us have to take the consequences of that decision on board, irrespective of the outcome.

It might well be that Mr Duynhoven, standing again—and no one has suggested that he cannot stand again—would be re-elected. Would I be amazed and surprised if that was the outcome? I suspect not. Would his majority go up? Who knows? Would it go down? Quite probably. That is irrelevant; it is completely beside the point. There is a proper procedure here, and that is a by-election. Is it an extraordinary event? No. Has this country had by-elections before?

Shane Ardern: Yes.

Dr WAYNE MAPP: I see Mr Ardern nodding his head. Yes, the country has had by-elections before. It is a reasonable thing to do. When a situation arises in Australia, that is always the result. No one in Australia would even conceive of putting legislation into the House to declare a person who is no longer a member of Parliament to be a member of Parliament. The result is clear, unambiguous, and obvious: there is a by-election, and the results of that by-election are whatever they are. That is how a democracy works.

So when you, Mr Speaker, take the advice of the Clerk and consider the application of section 129, it is obvious what the result should be: the seat is vacant, there should be a by-election, and the consequences of that are whatever they are. That is how a democracy works. Nothing could be plainer than that.

DAVID BENSON-POPE (NZ Labour—Dunedin South): I am pleased to rise briefly in support of this legislation. I find it astonishing, as will most of the listeners in this country, to have heard the sanctimonious, self-serving claptrap we have heard from the Opposition this morning. I cannot help but think that the National Party and ACT party are the parties that, in the case of ACT, have Donna Awatere Huata, the imaginary member, for the sake of the money she generates for the party’s funding, and, in the case of the National Party, have Maurice Williams, the man whom it suspends but whose vote it continues to cast. So those parties should not talk to us about smell. They should have a look in their own rubbish tins before standing up and embarrassing and disgracing themselves with that nonsense.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): It is hard to believe that someone with some brief experience in local government, who has now been in the House for a few years, could get up and make such an appallingly hopeless, incompetent, unfocused speech, then sit down and think he has done his duty by his taxpayers, by the people who elected him, and, might I say, by his party. That was a disgraceful intervention by that member, David Benson-Pope, and he should be thoroughly ashamed of himself. Could he address this most fundamental issue: why is the Labour Party not prepared to say that all its members, with the exception of Harry Duynhoven, are not in breach of section 51 of the Electoral Act? [Interruption] Of course the member, as the senior whip for the Labour Party, has had the opportunity. He has had the opportunity for the last 4 weeks, ever since this subject was known. He has had the opportunity for the last 48 hours, ever since some of his colleagues would have informed him of the outcome of the Privilege Committee’s deliberations.

For here is the real point: a majority of the Privileges Committee of this House finds that, inadvertently or otherwise, Harry Duynhoven breached section 51 of the Act. That means—if those members of the select committee were reflecting the position that their colleagues would take in the House—that a majority of this House now finds Mr Duynhoven in breach of the Electoral Act. That being the case, of course, and if that is the way the vote is cast, the Speaker is put in a very difficult position at that point in time, because he will have heard the House and he will have heard the select committee.

I think it is entirely appropriate that this matter went to the select committee, because it meant we were able to hear evidence from a range of submitters, including Mr Duynhoven’s counsel, the Solicitor-General, and also the Clerk of the House. In fact, I believed at the time that the defence put up by Geoffrey Palmer was simply likely never to succeed, because it minimised the importance of electoral law and the choice of a Government in any democracy, particularly a democracy with a British constitutional background.

What was amazing was this: on the select committee we had some lawyers—well, legally trained people—like the former Dean of the University of Waikato School of Law, Margaret Wilson. One has to wonder how someone with that supposedly expert background in academia, or so they say, could find that the law was unclear and ambiguous. The Solicitor-General did not see it that way.

Dr Wayne Mapp: Chief legal adviser.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Yes, the chief legal adviser. The Clerk of the House did not see it that way. In fact, if we read very carefully Geoffrey Palmer’s submissions, we see he knew it was not going to be seen that way, and that is why he had secondary pleadings all lined up to throw his client upon the mercy of his colleagues in this House. So how on earth could the Attorney-General, a former Dean of the University of Waikato School of Law, find that the law was unclear and ambiguous? And that tells us volumes, because the Waikato law school is all about Treaty of Waitangi stuff. It is not about law; it is about touchy-touchy, feely-feely Treaty of Waitangi stuff, so any issue of great constitutional moment is not likely to be carefully entertained by that faculty. That is the reason so many of its students in their last year shoot through to the law faculties in Auckland, Wellington, or Dunedin, to get a respectable closing part of their degree.

But I come back to my point. Lianne Dalziel, the Minister of Immigration, is also someone with legal training, we are told, and a staunch advocate of trade union laws. She also found the law—surprise, surprise—ambiguous and not clear.

Dr Wayne Mapp: She’s a lawyer?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: She is a lawyer.

Hon Murray McCully: They found in unison.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: It was sort of like pure intellectual serendipity. There was no combination, or covert, behind-the-scenes collusion, on how they might make up their minds; they just found in unison alongside Dr Cullen. We can forgive Dr Cullen, because, after all, he is a historian, and the big picture is what historians are interested in, not the finite detail or the humdrum of the ordinary existence of normal human beings like us. They are interested in the grand, huge picture and in the end justifying the means; that is what left-wing historians are all about. I can forgive Dr Cullen because of his propensity to come to that sort of conclusion, but it is very hard to forgive two so-called lawyers, unless, of course, one makes the usual compensation for where they last practised their trade.

That said, let me make this point very clear: we in New Zealand First are extraordinarily disappointed about this issue, because we do think that Harry Duynhoven, though he broke the law, did not breach the spirit of the law, and that in all the circumstances, as so often exercised in British and New Zealand justice, a way can be found around his paying the price for such a mistake. It is not a matter of protecting one of our own but of doing the right and fair thing. It is easier to do justice, in some ways—and this is what I would say to the National Party—but often the greater calling in Parliament is to do what is right, and in Harry Duynhoven’s case we in New Zealand First believe he should not suffer the ultimate punishment of losing his salary from 11 June, of losing his superannuation benefits.

And the effects are extraordinarily serious. Have members fought a by-election? Let me tell members, as someone who knows this personally, that if he was put to a by-election he would lose his benefits. He would come back having lost the same career opportunities as others who came in with him. I personally know that that stinks and is unfair, but as a matter of principle it had to be done. In Harry Duynhoven’s case it is just not right when we can avoid it, and I am prepared to defend that in front of any taxpayers all around this country. They are often not aware of the facts when they come to their talkback-show decisions.

But, my having said that, our commitment was to a person who owned up, whom we believed was telling the truth, and who had been through a significant agonising period whilst trying to wrestle with this present problem. We never made a commitment to have a blanket suspension of this important part of our law for the whole term. We are not going back on our word, but, sadly, this Government, a minority Government as it is, will not accept our amendment that the change be confined to Harry Duynhoven alone, and that its ambit cease the day after it is applied to him so that his situation is dealt with. In that circumstance, we have to oppose this legislation.

We ask at the end of our contribution to the second reading this very simple question: why can the Labour Party not face up to the fact that it is the only party not prepared to place its cards on the table? Who is the member or members it is trying to shield here now? Government members are abusing Harry Duynhoven as much as anyone else is. They have misused their colleague, they have misused his background, and they have misused his record of integrity, for their own deceitful ends. It is despicable. [Interruption] David Benson-Pope had a chance to make a full speech, but he could not. Even he could not defend his actions, and he seeks to make a speech now by way of intervention. Who are the people—is it the man from Christchurch?

Dr Wayne Mapp: Which man?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Tim Barnett—is he the one who is carrying two or three passports?

Hon Richard Prebble: Is it the Prime Minister?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Is it the Prime Minister? Is it Mr Goff? It has to be someone, because why would a political party in such a precarious situation, where Harry Duynhoven is concerned, go to these extraordinary lengths to offend the rest of the House and Parliament, and our constitution, were it not that there was something very serious not known to us, and that its members cannot have known because they will be embarrassed? Why do they not come clean?

Dail Jones: Is it a list MP?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Is it a list MP?

David Benson-Pope: It’s a conspiracy!

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Oh, Mr Benson-Pope, a conspiracy—yes, it is a conspiracy. Why do we need a blanket suspension?

Hon MARGARET WILSON (Attorney-General): I think it is important in this debate, which members have quite rightly said is an important debate in this House, to remind ourselves that it is not just about a parliamentary colleague, Harry Duynhoven. Certainly the events that surrounded Mr Duynhoven have been what has triggered us as members of this House, and specifically also the Speaker, to look at the precise effect of section 55(1)(c) of the Electoral Act, which is the subject of the bill that is before us. As one of the preceding speakers noted, when the Privileges Committee came to look at this matter it became, in effect, a matter of statutory interpretation as to the approach that would be taken on the basis of the facts that were presented before us. Those facts were that a member had reactivated what he thought was already his—that is, his Dutch nationality by birth. It was the act of filling out a form that was considered, by the majority and by the Solicitor-General, to bring him within the context of this legislation.

Some of us who have been looking at and teaching statutory interpretation, and who have made reference to the Legislation Advisory Committee’s report on the preferred approach to how one should interpret legislation, point out the importance of always looking at a single section, and particularly a part of a section, within the context of the overall intention and purpose of that particular part, as well as of the legislation in its totality. That was the basis upon which I approached this matter. It became apparent from the discussion in the committee that an event that could trigger that section, or that could be considered to be an act for the purposes of that section, could be merely making an inquiry—in the street, maybe—as to whether citizenship was a possibility, or having a conversation with someone in authority from the embassy of another country and saying that one may wish to pursue one’s right to a passport or to dual citizenship. That seemed to me to verge upon the ludicrous. That matter was raised by the honourable member Mr Prebble. Others thought—including the Clerk—that that would be a long bow to draw.

The point to be made, however, is that all those points had to be considered in the context of the purpose of the legislation. That was the basis upon which I believed and came to the judgment that if members looked at the total context, and did not take a strict interpretation—which members are not required to do in this legislation—then to argue that there was ambiguity in this particular factual situation when section 55 was applied to it was a valid, if somewhat courageous, position to take in the face of political prejudice.

What then emerged, of course, when we heard the testimony was that we were dealing with a situation that had absolutely no malice or ill will in it, at all. An individual had committed an act, for the purposes of this legislation, of the sort that any number of members could have committed, and probably did commit, in the past, and probably could have committed in the future if this event had not triggered debate about the issue. The event that was at risk here was, of course, the question of dual nationality. There is nothing unlawful or wrong about New Zealand citizens holding joint nationality. In fact, many of my profession have argued for it, because they were prevented on occasion from being able to practice in law because that sort of rather narrow interpretation was given.

There is a legitimate debate to be had on whether, in order to be able to be a New Zealand citizen, one can be only a New Zealand citizen and cannot hold dual nationality. In this age of globalisation, many countries have been reconsidering their approach to that. As we have heard, Australia, which is perhaps among the more chauvinistic of countries, has now decided to acknowledge that there can be dual nationality. It seemed to me that the event we were talking about, and the facts and the circumstances that arose from it, were those where an entirely innocent mistake was made, if one wants to put it like that—I do not even call it a mistake, but an event—to pursue what is a legitimate right in any other context except for the very narrow one of section 55 of the Act. In that context, then, we had to go on and consider, given that the majority of the committee had held that, yes, there was a technical breach of the Act—and I think everyone acknowledged that it was technical in that sense—the appropriate response. There was a division of opinion as to that.

We have heard much in this House about members being above the law and making laws for their own purpose, etc. I think it is important to remind the House that in other circumstances when a citizen breaches the law, the matter would not normally come to this Parliament but would go to the courts. In much the same way, this debate is, in effect, the equivalent of a court, in terms of determining the appropriate remedy in this particular situation. We all know that when citizens have broken the law, particularly when they have done so inadvertently, if they come forward, declare that there has been an error, and hide nothing, the court does not award the maximum penalty in those circumstances. Yet that, in effect, is what the Opposition is arguing for in the case of Mr Duynhoven.

This is essentially a technical breach, without ill will. When someone comes forward, owns up, and subjects himself to the judgment of the appropriate peers here, in much the same way as one does in court proceedings, then I think it is entirely appropriate to say that, no, the maximum penalty will not be awarded in those circumstances—the vacating of the seat—but it is appropriate that Parliament takes upon itself the responsibility to try to redress the anomaly that has been exposed in the legislation.

There has also been some discussion as to why the amendment is drafted to include the whole period of this Parliament. For me, the Opposition has presented an influential argument on that. I think there would have been some merit in taking the amendment just up to the present date, but we have the publicly declared position of a member of this House holding an honorary consulship. We have heard that nothing in the mere holding of that appointment would offend against section 55 of the Act. That member has not had Mr Duynhoven’s courage and has not subjected himself to the judgment of this House. So we have not heard whether he is in breach of that provision not by the mere holding of that appointment, but, as one sees if one goes on to read the provision, in terms of whether he does anything in that relationship that could be seen to offend against that provision. I, for one, will be seeking for that member, if we do not pass the amendment set out in this bill for the whole of this Parliament, to bring himself before the judgment of the Privileges Committee, so that we can look to see precisely the full nature of what he does and how he does it.

It seems to me it is only fair, if there is to be one form of citizenship, for everyone to put himself or herself within the possibility and the scope of it. The issue may appear to be simple on the surface, but I have no doubt that in the action—in the day-to-day working within that role—one could make a case that allegiance is being given to another country. We should have the opportunity to debate that in this House, and we should not see it hidden away. We are told we have to accept the word of the Opposition on that issue. We are told things are all right, and we must accept that. Certainly not! We have to have one standard for everyone, and everyone should subject himself or herself to it. The Government can see the nonsense of the Opposition’s position in terms of bringing this House into disrepute, which is why we have recommended that we address the fundamental issue.

Section 55 of the Act is a nonsense. It is a stupid provision, and we have to ensure it is made right. In order that in the future this House is not brought into disrepute by the speeches that we have been subjected to in defence or in support of this particular bill, we must go the heart of the matter and cure what is wrong in the legislation, and we must do so in the interests of all members of this House.

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (Leader—ACT NZ): In Britain the Attorney-General is not a member of the Cabinet, in order to make sure that he or she does not give party partisan advice. After listening to that contribution made by the Hon Margaret Wilson I think we ought to look at that, too. We have a bill to, in effect, elect a member of Parliament. It is a change to our constitution. We heard an extraordinarily partisan speech from the Attorney-General. Either she believes what she said, in which case the courts in New Zealand have a terrible Attorney-General, or, worse still, she does not believe it. I think that she does not believe it, because she had a go about honorary consulship.

Margaret Wilson voted for a section of the Privileges Committee’s report that stated that section 55 of the Act is not triggered by “appointment as an honorary consul or the acceptance of a foreign award or honour, nor to owing a ‘local allegiance’ which arises by virtue of temporarily residing in a foreign country.” She voted for that, and then she decided to make a cheap political point—not one that an Attorney-General should make, and certainly not with regard to a section as serious as that one. This bill is damaging a lot of reputations. It is damaging Parliament’s reputation, because for the first time ever we have decided to elect a member, rather than leaving that to the people of this country.

I want to address some remarks to Mr Duynhoven, and I hope he is listening to this debate. I have known him for a long time, and I do not think I have ever given him—consciously, anyway—bad advice. I believe that he has been given some appalling advice. This process is shredding his reputation. Mr Duynhoven is very proud of the fact that he has a majority of 14,000, or something like that. He is the highest of the high. I have had the position of having the biggest majority in Parliament. As MPs, we all know that it is a great feeling. Mr Duynhoven is proud of his majority, and he worked hard to get it. Yet by tonight he will have a majority of 21. He will be able to name every one of them. Some of the people whom he would not cross the road to support will put him in Parliament. He will have a majority of 21; he will be the lowest of the low.

That is Harry Duynhoven’s choice. He does not have to do that. The correct advice, in terms of the Westminster system, to have given to him was that he should resign. Harry Duynhoven can still do that. He can save his reputation by going from wherever he is and handing in his resignation. Why should he do that? We are told by his colleagues that if he puts his case in front of the people of New Plymouth he would be re-elected, and I think that if he trusted them he would be, too. He would be able to walk back into this House after being elected by the people of New Plymouth, rather than after being elected by MPs. Mr Duynhoven should ask himself whether he really wants to be elected by members of Parliament. That is the advice he should have received from everyone. The Lord only knows why he decided to go to see Sir Geoffrey Palmer for advice. If he had gone to see David Caygill, he would have said the seat was vacant and the honourable course of action was to resign. But instead, Mr Duynhoven went to see Sir Geoffrey Palmer.

I say to Sir Geoffrey Palmer that it is a matter of great shame that a former Prime Minister of New Zealand seems to think that the worst aspects of Washington lobbying firms and law firms are what he wants to spend his time engaged in. No doubt he is happy with his Mercedes-Benz. However, Sir Geoffrey Palmer should be more concerned about his reputation. The committee was shocked by the representations made to it. If members would like to read the section of the report on the de minimis non curat lex principle, they will see we decided to strengthen it when we rejected those representations, by stating we “unanimously rejected” Sir Geoffrey Palmer’s advice. I do not believe any member of the committee thought that Sir Geoffrey Palmer believed a single word that he said to us. He should be somewhat concerned about his reputation.

Sir Geoffrey Palmer actually said to us that Dutch law should apply in New Zealand. I thought he made the case as to why a member of Parliament should not pledge allegiance to a foreign State. Who would think that Dutch law should apply in New Zealand, were it not for the fact that an MP had pledged allegiance to a foreign State? New Zealand law should apply here. The moment that Sir Geoffrey Palmer walked out of the room, not one single member thought that Dutch law should decide who is elected in this Parliament. None of us supported the arguments he put forward.

We had a bit of a debate about whether Sir Geoffrey Palmer has ever won a court case. I live in west Auckland, where we are sprayed because of the painted apple moth. The people who live in the area around me are not wealthy, and they have asked me whether Parliament would change that programme. I have said that it would not do that. So they went to see Sir Geoffrey Palmer, who took a huge fee off them and said that he could fight it. Yet they are still being sprayed. The only case I know of that has ever been lost before the Waitangi Tribunal is the case where Sir Geoffrey Palmer told a group of poor Māoris that the kiwifruit was a taonga. Even the Waitangi Tribunal thought that that was a stretch. I say to Sir Geoffrey Palmer that the money is not worth it, and that he should think about his reputation.

Let me go on to see who else is being shredded. Our Prime Minister, who has been very silent today, learnt about this matter on 4 July. How long did she take to decide that she needed to act? That day—4 July—Mr Duynhoven’s warrant was suspended. We have known about the issue for a considerable period. The law states the Speaker must act “without delay”. The Prime Minister acted without delay, in taking 12 hours to suspend Mr Duynhoven’s warrant. Have we taken 12 hours? No, we have not. We all know that the seat was vacated on 11 June, and here we are on 7 August. Our reputations as parliamentarians are being shredded, because nobody believes that we are acting without delay.

But I want to go further than that, and say Mr Duynhoven has put the Speaker in an impossible position. When Mr Duynhoven’s colleagues said we should have a bill, were they actually trying to help him? Of course they were not. They know that he would have won a by-election. The reason that his colleagues are getting this bill through is to protect some MPs who were not prepared to be upfront and go to see the Speaker. Why is Mr Duynhoven lending his name to that? He should not do that. He should resign.

But I will go further than that, and say to Mr Duynhoven that, much as I like him, he was not as upfront as he has tried to pretend to be. When he turned up to the committee, I asked him for a copy of the application. He said he had it. Although I asked him for it, it has not arrived. I asked him when he really applied for the first time, but we have not had an answer from him. It turns out that Mr Duynhoven had a number of attempts to get Dutch citizenship, and one of them became lost in transit. The fact of the law is that the moment Mr Duynhoven filled out that form and sent it off, it triggered the application of section 55 of the Act. If he did do it earlier than he has said, his obligation to resign becomes greater.

Let us consider other matters. The most controversial bill this year—the prostitution bill—went through on Mr Duynhoven’s vote, and he was not validly a member of Parliament at the time. That ought to concern him, as well.

I say to the House that here is a member of Parliament who has said that he did not give the matter a moment’s thought. I accept his word on that. But do I think that is the right thing for a Minister to say? Of course he should have thought that citizenship was worth a moment’s thought. He did actually know it was important, because, an hour after he sent the form off, he thought perhaps he should tell the Prime Minister about it. If he had gone to see the Prime Minister an hour earlier, he would not be in this position. I say to Mr Duynhoven that we should not be in this position, either. He should tender his resignation today.

GORDON COPELAND (United Future): I had the privilege of being part of the Privileges Committee on the evening of 30 July, in the absence of Peter Dunne, and during that evening the committee received evidence from Terence Arnold QC—our Solicitor-General—on section 55(1)(c) of the Electoral Act, which is at the heart of this debate. Today I would like to talk about the background to that section, and the way in which it has been interpreted during periods of time over the years.

First of all, as we know, that section of the Act had its origins in 1852—151 years ago. The first point I make is that it absolutely beggars belief that over those 151 years this is the first time that section 55(1)(c) has been breached. Countless parliamentarians have gone through this Parliament since 1852. Many of them would have had dual nationality. In order to get dual nationality they would have had to apply, for example, for a British passport. Under section 55 of the Act, immediately they took that action—“immediately”, as Richard Prebble correctly says—their seat would have become vacant under the law. It is very, very clear that literally hundreds of MPs may well have breached the law over the last 151 years. Is it not remarkable that after all that time the first MP in history to put his hand up and say he thinks he may have broken that law is Harry Duynhoven? For the first time, someone has put his hand up.

By the way, the law was strengthened from 1975 onwards. From that time, people have not been able to become members of Parliament without having New Zealand citizenship. So there has been, shall we say, a higher responsibility on MPs since 1975, if they breach this law, to put up their hand and say so. We then go through the procedure that we face for the first time here today.

I would like to make the point, too, that the minority report of the Privileges Committee lays some weight on the fact that a select committee had another look at this law in 1993. If that is true, I can only say the select committee in 1993 did a very, very poor job of work, indeed. As I will mention in a moment, I believe the policy intent of this law has a loophole in it that is big enough to drive a bulldozer through. If any self-respecting lawyer had been in the House in 1993 and thought about the policy intent of section 55(1)(c) of the Act—which I am about to talk about—that lawyer would quite clearly have seen that the section is quite ridiculous.

I turn now to the policy intent of section 55(1)(c), which was explained by the Solicitor-General, Terence Arnold, to the committee. He said that the policy intent was to prevent a member of the New Zealand Parliament from having dual allegiance—that is, an allegiance to New Zealand and the possibility of allegiance to another foreign jurisdiction. That seems to me to be quite a reasonable point. Any member of this Parliament needs to give allegiance solely to New Zealand, and to no other foreign nation. Perhaps I can illustrate the issue by giving this example. Let us suppose an American member of the Senate becomes the honorary consul for the nation of New Zealand and continues to sit in the US Senate. Probably no one would be very concerned about that. But let us suppose a citizen of the US, who is a senator, is also the honorary consul for North Korea. In today’s environment, one would think that the US Senate could regard that as unpatriotic and as illustrating a divided allegiance—in that case, against what is, at this moment, one of the US’s prime enemies. Terence Arnold explained that that was the kind of situation that section 55(1)(c) anticipated. He gave the illustration of the Second World War. If, during that war, a member of this Parliament had applied to become a citizen of Germany, that would have been evidence of swapping allegiance from New Zealand over to a country that was, in those days, our enemy. The point I make is that if that is the policy intent of section 55(1)(c), then there is a great loophole.

Right here and now, and during the last election, any citizen of New Zealand who is also a citizen of any other nation has dual citizenship. I imagine that many of the MPs who contested the last election are in that position of having dual citizenship—of also being citizens of other countries. I myself, for example, am eligible for both an Irish passport and a British passport. I have not activated that, but my father was born in Northern Ireland, a jurisdiction that is recognised by both Ireland and the United Kingdom. So I am eligible for three citizenships, here and now. I could easily have activated that before the last election. Had I done so, I would be in Parliament owing allegiance, from that point of view, to three different nations, but I would not have broken any law. There would be no basis on which anybody could ask me to vacate my seat in Parliament.

That is the huge loophole in this whole thing. [Interruption] Mr Prebble is trying to interject, but he has had his say, and I want to have mine. The Solicitor-General, in response to my specific question, said that what I have said is exactly right. We all know it is right. We can be elected as members of this Parliament if we hold dual citizenship. There is nothing to stop it, and we are not obliged to reveal that to the electorate. The Solicitor-General said that maybe a person in that situation could tell the electorate. For example, in Harry Duynhoven’s case, if he had taken this action before the last election, he could have told the electorate that he had Dutch citizenship in addition to New Zealand citizenship. That was actually the fact of the case. Harry Duynhoven, in effect, was a citizen of the Netherlands at the time of the last election—and he broke no law. On that basis, we have no justification for asking him to vacate his seat in the House. Therefore, that is a considerable loophole.

Let us look at the issue in another context. Let us suppose that, at the time of the Second World War, a person was elected to this Parliament who was a citizen both of New Zealand and Germany, and that person had a malicious intent in entering Parliament. Therefore, the member did not reveal during the election campaign his or her dual nationality, and nobody knew about it, because the member did not bother to tell anybody about it. It is not as though we have a police force that goes around looking for these offences, because this is the first time there has been a so-called offence in 151 years, despite it being obvious to me that the provisions of this law have been broken time after time. The individual whose situation I have outlined would have been perfectly validly elected to the Parliament of New Zealand. He or she could have served in it while giving his or her allegiance in various ways to the nation of Germany during the Second World War, and, in terms of this particular section, there would have been no grounds whatever for asking that member to vacate his or her seat in Parliament. I think that is a major contradiction in this law. I think that this law, in both its policy intent and its legal interpretation, is obscure.

There is one thing that I am very, very satisfied about, and it is this. Harry Duynhoven has not broken the spirit of the law or of section 55(1)(c) of the Act—he has not broken the spirit of that. In fact, he has done the honourable thing for the first time in 151 years, put his hand up, said he may have broken the law, and asked for it to be looked at. I think we should praise him for that, and in no way criticise him.

At the Committee stage of this bill Peter Dunne will move an amendment to limit the exemption we are making to the law to the period from 14 August 2002 to 6 August 2003. That is designed to ensure, obviously, that Harry Duynhoven retains his seat in this Parliament—and that is, obviously, the intent of the bill that we are looking at and also of Peter Dunne’s amendment. But it does mean that between today and the next election, if anybody else in this House wants to renew a passport, get another nationality, or become a consul or whatever else for a foreign power, he or she will have to come back to the Privileges Committee, just as Harry Duynhoven did.

METIRIA TUREI (Green): First, I want to say that I am a member of the Privileges Committee and had the advantage of hearing all of the evidence and submissions surrounding this matter, and the different legal views of Sir Geoffrey Palmer and the Solicitor-General. The discussion in the committee was certainly rigorous. In the end the Greens were part of the majority that agreed that Mr Duynhoven’s action has led to the vacancy of his seat. There is no doubt that the law, as it is written, applied in this case, and that Mr Duynhoven’s actions triggered it. But equally, the Greens were part of the majority that agreed that the law needed to be changed because the public policy behind it is flawed. The law does not cure the mischief it was designed to cure, and the consequences are disproportionate to the action. The Green Party supports this bill and will do so through to the final reading.

The Greens accept that Mr Duynhoven, whose actions have brought this issue to the fore, has done nothing illegal or wrong. He has not breached or offended any law. His actions of confirming his entitlement to Dutch citizenship have simply triggered an automatic legislative consequence. For Mr Duynhoven this is a serious issue about the affirmation of his heritage and his genealogy, and his obligation to protect that heritage for his descendants. We have every sympathy for that personal desire and we would staunchly defend his and anyone else’s right to protect that heritage.

With this particular circumstance Mr Duynhoven had only a small window of opportunity to reaffirm his citizenship, between April of this year and March of 2005. That period sits fully within the parliamentary term. In effect this provision requires Mr Duynhoven to choose between his job and his heritage. In our view that is an unacceptable consequence of this provision.

I strongly believe that because of the citizenship laws in this country that allow for dual citizenship for individuals, and that MPs are able to stand for re-election and election while holding dual citizenship, this archaic provision does not, in effect, prevent the mischief it was originally designed to cure. It is a stupid law, and like other stupid laws it should be changed.

In the New Zealand context this provision dates back to 1852 but, in fact, is sourced in very old law, well before the unjust colonisation of this country. The primary purpose of the provision is to protect against an MP making an allegiance with a country with which New Zealand is at war. The MP’s seat becomes vacant but the MP can stand again immediately so that the electorate can reassess the importance of an MP’s acquired allegiance and choose whether to reaffirm his or her representation.

This raises two concerns for me. It is only an electorate MP who can stand again to seek another mandate. In an MMP environment, list MPs will lose their seats permanently and be replaced by the next person on the list. While the position of list MPs is different from electorate MPs, and the list process does have its own peculiarities, it must be remembered that we are talking about a very serious consequence—losing one’s job permanently and with no recourse to resume one’s seat. I believe that a party’s list vote is indicative of both support for the party policy and support for the list candidate as representatives of a community of interest rather than a locality. The community of interest that supports that party and those representatives should not, in my view, be accorded a lesser status. This provision does not take into account the specific needs of an MMP environment.

The second concern is the implication that a simple affirmation of citizenship or nationality to another country, which does not require the abrogation of New Zealand citizenship, presumes that a person is inherently untrustworthy or suspicious. One reason given for the provision was that, for example, in 1940 we would not have wanted an MP who affirmed his or her citizenship to Germany. I am not compelled by that reasoning, and I believe that it has some serious negative implications. In particular, as I say, I am very concerned that circumstances may arise where an MP is presumed a potential threat to the nation, simply because of his or her citizenship and not as a result of his or her actions.

New Zealand law has taken a very liberal approach to dual citizenship, particularly since 1977. Section 16 of the Citizenship Act says that a person may be deprived of his or her New Zealand citizenship where the person has, first, acquired the citizenship of another country and, second, acted in a manner contrary to the interests of New Zealand. That second part of the test is open to very wide interpretation, but it is at least predicated on some overt act by which a person may be judged, and not simply the fact that a person has, or acts on, his or her dual citizenship. The Citizenship Act has moved this country away from the paranoia and prejudice of the past and into an area where a person is entitled to acquire and exercise dual citizenship so long as he or she does not do anything contrary to New Zealand’s interests. Section 55(1)(b) and (c) is inconsistent with that approach and should be reviewed, which is one of the opportunities that this bill makes way for. The Greens have no problem supporting the changing of a stupid law that is not effective in preventing the harm it is designed to cure and has unjust and disproportionate consequences that far outweigh the harm caused.

I want to make a plea to the members of this House who support the legislation, because of harsh and unjust consequences, and ask that they take the words of the Leader of the House to heart that when the law is an ass the law should be changed. That same principle must apply to the laws that affect the New Zealand public. The public are quite right in questioning why it is that a law that is unjust and disproportionate and affects, at most, only 120 MPs can be quickly changed, but similar laws that are manifestly unjust and cause massive, disproportionate harm to thousands of New Zealanders are not accorded the same priority—like, for example, the cannabis prohibition law whereby 22,000 New Zealanders every year are arrested and convicted, simply because they smoke a joint or two. The law is applied unfairly.

Gordon Copeland: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: The member can make a point, and she related it to the bill, but now she is to come back to the bill. I presume that that was the point of order that was being raised.

METIRIA TUREI: There are, as I have just explained, examples of laws in this country, which affect thousands of people in this nation, that are similarly applied unfairly and where the law is similarly proven to fail to cure the mischief it was designed to cure. In my view, any MP who does not apply the principle, that an unjust and unworkable law should be undone, to other laws such as cannabis prohibition is rightly subject to public criticism of duplicity and self-interest.

The Greens take a consistent and rational analysis of the efficacy of the laws in this country—an analysis based on what is just, appropriate, and right. That is why we work for the review of cannabis laws, and why we support the repeal of section 59 so that adults can no longer beat children legally. We support this bill simply because—

Gordon Copeland: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr SPEAKER: The member had just returned to the bill in the sentence she was developing. I am allowing her to carry on.

Hon Richard Prebble: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I want to support the member. She is explaining why the Green Party is voting as it is. Just because the rest of us might not think that that is logical, it is not a reason for her not to be able to do that. We have not stopped any other member giving his or her views. I am actually interested to know how the Greens have reached their conclusion. I think the member should be allowed to give her speech. If she can see a connection between the Electoral Act and marijuana, I totally accept her word.

METIRIA TUREI: The Greens support this bill as simply dealing with one unworkable and unjust law on a spectrum of unworkable and unjust laws that must be changed. It is clear that until we as parliamentarians deal with other irrational, inconsistent laws, we will be accused only of self-interest at the expense of the rest of the community.

JILL PETTIS (NZ Labour—Whanganui): Sometimes some of the most amazing things that have happened around this place have been when parties that are in trouble on a range of issues—particularly legislative issues—try to deflect attention away from themselves, because the ice they are skating on is very, very thin. They are spreading the net, looking at who they can blame and attack so that they can deflect attention away from themselves, and that, most certainly, is happening in this case. This is a very important and very interesting debate. I suggest that we move on and get on with passing it through the House.

DAIL JONES (NZ First): This is a very important and very interesting debate. It has been brought about by the actions of a member of the Labour Party who, according to the advice given to the Privileges Committee, and therefore this House, by the Solicitor-General, has done, concurred in, or adopted an act whereby he became a subject or citizen of a foreign State or power, or became entitled to rights, privileges, or immunities of a subject or citizen of any foreign State or power. That is the clear advice of the Solicitor-General, who analysed the position, as outlined on the facts of Mr Duynhoven’s case and based on the facts supplied by Mr Duynhoven. Page 2 of his report states, and I quote: “Applying the analysis just outlined to the facts of Mr Duynhoven’s case, the position is as follows: 1. Mr Duynhoven was not a Dutch national when he was elected to Parliament in 2002. 2. In order to become a Dutch national, Mr Duynhoven had to take certain actions within a defined time frame. If he did not take that action Mr Duynhoven would have lost the opportunity to acquire Dutch nationality. 3. After, and because Mr Duynhoven took the necessary action—that is, filing this completed application on 11 June 2003—he became a Dutch national with retrospective effect.” Paragraph 5 states: “On this analysis, it seems clear that Mr Duynhoven’s act of filling his completed application created a vacancy within the terms of section 55(1)(c).” That is an unequivocal, clear statement, with no ambiguity about it, on the facts supplied by Mr Duynhoven.

On the face of it, looking again at section 129 of the Act, one would say that there were clear grounds for a decision being made without delay, but that is not a matter for me to decide, and I leave it at that point.

The Solicitor-General advised us, and New Zealand First does not hold the views of the Solicitor-General very strongly, and that point has been made by the leader of this party. However, the statement has been made, and it has been accepted by the select committee, and I believe that those views have been accepted unanimously, and that includes New Zealand First in the final analysis.

In this case New Zealand First had offered the Labour Party its support in allowing Harry Duynhoven to retain his seat on a retrospective legislation basis. We said to the New Zealand Labour Party that Harry was a good bloke and we were pretty sure he would have done this absolutely without any malice, by accident, and in a blameless way. It is clear that all those views apply to Harry Duynhoven. We were, and still are, ready to support an Act that will reinstate Harry Duynhoven to this Parliament and apply to section 55(1)(c). However, in front of us is a breach of that offer made by New Zealand First to the minority Labour Government. We gave it an inch and it took a yard. We offered to help it. It has thrown back our offer in our face, slapped us in the face and said “You can offer these things, but we’ll do what we like, and you don’t count.” We made the offer, and obviously it has not been accepted, and the Government is now saying that the Act should apply not only to Harry Duynhoven but to anybody else who may have come within the sphere of section 55(1)(c).

Furthermore—and this does not even apply to Harry Duynhoven, because he did not swear allegiance to another power; he only filled out an application form to have his Dutch citizenship restored—the Government is saying that despite the fact that Harry Duynhoven did not swear allegiance to anybody else, it will amend section 55(1)(b) of the Act as well. That section states that the seat of any member of Parliament shall become vacant “If he or she takes any oath or makes any declaration or acknowledgment of allegiance or adherence to any foreign Prince or Power;”. The Labour Party is saying that despite the fact that Harry Duynhoven did not do that, it will amend the legislation for this term of Parliament so that it applies not only to Harry Duynhoven, but to anyone else who may have applied for Dutch or British citizenship—not even Dutch citizenship, because usually to get citizenship one has to swear allegiance. Harry Duynhoven just filled out a form. But in addition to those just filling out a form, this legislation will apply to people who have sworn an oath or allegiance to another foreign power.

Brent Catchpole: Why would they want to do that?

DAIL JONES: Exactly. One does have to ask, why go beyond what Harry Duynhoven has done? I am a lawyer. I am automatically suspicious. I get paid for being suspicious. I have won many, many court cases—unlike, I am told, Sir Geoffrey Palmer, with whom I was compared. There is no comparison between me and Sir Geoffrey Palmer. I win court cases. I am told that Sir Geoffrey Palmer only loses them. That is why I was able to continue—

Hon Richard Prebble: But he charges a lot more.

DAIL JONES: He does charge a lot more. That is why he is probably the better lawyer as far as the public is concerned. As far as this particular case is concerned, who in the Labour Party is being protected here? No one in New Zealand First is being protected by this legislation. I have spoken to members and I have looked at passports to see whether they have been renewed.

Hon Chris Carter: Check the American Embassy.

DAIL JONES: I have looked at the passport. Members know that when a passport is renewed, the top right-hand corner is ripped off. I have seen the passport. That has not been done, so no passport has been renewed. Mr Carter can try. I am concerned about Mr Carter’s comment, when he asked whether I had rung the American Embassy. I am concerned about whether the Labour Party has been colluding with the United States Government to find out the allegiances of New Zealand members of Parliament. Mr Carter laughs and says they are his friends. Has the American Ambassador been contacted by the New Zealand Labour Party to find out whether New Zealand members of Parliament have been taking any actions? I find that to be a gross abuse of the Government’s power. I believe that it is a breach of the Privacy Act at the very least. I ask the American Ambassador, in this House, to report to New Zealand First, and perhaps even Mr Speaker, on what collusion there is between this Labour Government and the American Ambassador. That point has been put to me not just by Mr Carter but also by Mr Cullen, making accusations about a New Zealand First member of Parliament on the basis of having been in collusion with the American Government and the American Embassy. I am sure that the American Ambassador will reply, having made an investigation in his department on what collusion there is between Labour Ministers, the American Ambassador, and his staff. As a Parliament we need to know what is happening.

A lot has been said about how far this legislation goes back, and Dr Cullen jumped up and down about it going back to 1701. Really, if we want to take this legislation back to its source, we might even go back to 1215, because this legislation is all about our countrymen judging us, and our countrymen being the people who should be in Parliament with us. As we know, the Magna Carta was all about being judged by one’s peers. This legislation is all about being judged by one’s peers and being governed by one’s peers. That is what the Magna Carta was about. I think it is a real red-herring smokescreen to go back to 1852, 1701, the peninsula war in the late 18th, early 19th centuries—we could go back to the Magna Carta if we liked. We could probably go back to Roman law if we wished.

The point is that this Act was considered in 1981. I understand that this Act was considered as recently as 10, if not 3 years ago. This Act is relatively new on our statute book. It is relatively new legislation, and Harry Duynhoven broke it. New Zealand First is most concerned that the Labour Party has slapped us in the face. I tell the people of New Plymouth that New Zealand First thanks them for all the party votes it got in the last election. We did extremely well in New Plymouth at the last election. We are only too pleased to help Harry Duynhoven. He has done a good job in New Plymouth and we do not want the taxpayer to go to the expense of a by-election. But if this minority Labour Government is not interested in taking up New Zealand First’s genuine offer, well, then, I am sorry but what else can we do but take the view that the Labour Party is hiding someone, and we want to know just who the guilty person is.

GEORGINA BEYER (NZ Labour—Wairarapa): I will take a brief call, really to say only this: it is disappointing to hear some of the churlish remarks that have come from around the House. It is the right of members to say how they feel about this matter, but perhaps members might like to think for one moment that there but for the grace of God go I, as that could be applicable to a number of members who are sitting in this House. Section 55 as it is currently drafted has inappropriate, surprising, and unexpected consequences. A member in Mr Duynhoven’s situation should not lose his seat. Dual citizenship is not unusual in New Zealand. There is no reason to believe that members of Parliament with dual citizenship cannot put New Zealand’s interests foremost. I commend this bill to the House, and I hope it progresses swiftly.

JOHN CARTER (NZ National—Northland): I am pleased the member made that contribution, because that is exactly the point that needs to be clarified. She talked about dual citizenship; this issue is not about dual citizenship—that is not the issue. It seems that she and the Labour Party are confused now about what we are debating.

The point is that members of Parliament are elected by people who vote for them on the basis of what they are. Some candidates will stand as citizens of New Zealand. Some will stand as dual citizens, being citizens of New Zealand who have the right to hold an English or an Irish passport, or a European or an American passport. The people have the right to know what allegiance a candidate has; then it is up to the people to chose whether they want to support that person. In my case, I have New Zealand citizenship and a New Zealand passport only—that is all I have. Other people in this Parliament have New Zealand citizenship and New Zealand passports, and have British or other passports. The people have a right to know that. The people decide whether they think it is appropriate that such a person should be elected to Parliament—it is one of the many factors they will take into account. When those people have made that decision on the basis of that person’s allegiance to whomever he or she has sworn allegiance to, that is fine—the public have decided. That is democracy.

The issue here is that if a member of Parliament, having been elected to Parliament, decides to change his or her status, decides not only to retain allegiance to New Zealand but also to offer allegiance to another body, a foreign body, then the public have a right to know, and the public who voted for that person should have the right to decide whether, given that extra allegiance that the member has now given to some foreign body, they want that person to continue to represent them. That is the issue. Harry Duynhoven, having got New Zealand citizenship—in fact, he was born in New Zealand and has it as of right—also was eligible, because of his parentage, to apply to another foreign body to get the passport, nationality, and privileges of that country, and, in doing so, gave allegiance to that country. That is not the issue; the issue is that he now has changed his status, and the public have a right to know that his allegiance now is not only to New Zealand but to some other country, and therefore they have a right to decide whether they still wish him to represent them. That is the issue here. Harry Duynhoven, by taking the course of action he did—by applying for Dutch nationality—changed his status, and the public in New Plymouth then have a right to make a decision as to whether they think he is the appropriate person to represent them. That is democracy. Today we are debating the issue of democracy in this Parliament.

A point that has been made before, but is well worth making again, is that it is very likely that if a vacancy were created and Harry Duynhoven stood, he would be re-elected. We do not know. We will never know that now, because the Government has taken away from the people of New Plymouth that democratic right to decide. The Government has decided that 120 people will cast their votes for or against Harry Duynhoven. We are going to end up with a situation whereby it is not the good people of New Plymouth who make a decision as to who is to represent them; instead, 118 or 117 people in New Zealand will decide whether Harry Duynhoven is the appropriate person to represent New Plymouth. I say that we have an absolute, fundamental breach of our constitution. This issue is all about democracy. Why should just a handful of people make a decision on behalf of the people of New Plymouth, and take away their democratic right to make that choice? In doing so, the Government is absolutely trampling right across democracy in this country. I say, as I said earlier, that that is absolutely appalling.

Of course, the Government will say that the reason it does not want a by-election is that it costs too much money. It is estimated that it might cost $200,000, $300,000, or $400,000 to hold a by-election. I ask the House to reflect on the fact that we are going to be debating this bill for 9 or 10 hours today, and the likely cost of that to the taxpayer is somewhere between $2 million and $4 million. That is what it will cost to pass this legislation to save Harry Duynhoven, as opposed to a by-election cost of $300,000 to $400,000. I wonder whether taxpayers think that is good use of their money. I doubt it. I would love to be on a stage with a Labour member of Parliament, and to ask that member to justify why it is better to spend $2 million to $4 million, rather than to spend $300,000 to $400,000 and, on the way through, let the people of New Plymouth have their say.

That is the first issue. The second issue is that this whole debate is about Harry Duynhoven and the fact that he took an action that caused him to vacate his seat. On the way through, there are issues around whether, given that he has vacated his seat, he should have received the remuneration he has accepted, which is probably about 20 grand, but that is a bit irrelevant. The issue is this: why is the bill so broad? That is the issue that is now of concern in this Parliament. If this bill is about Harry Duynhoven, why does the bill not focus only on him? If the majority of the people in this House decide that he should retain his seat, then why does the bill not focus only on Harry Duynhoven? Why is the bill not worded so that it saves just Harry Duynhoven in his seat of New Plymouth. [Interruption] That is the point. Winston Peters is asking who else is guilty on that side of the House. We do not know.

What is worse is we, the Opposition collectively, have been asking who the person or people in Labour are who have the problem. At least Harry Duynhoven had the decency and the honesty to put his hand up and say he had a bit of a problem. What the Government is doing now is sheltering somebody or some people in its caucus who are hiding behind Harry Duynhoven. That is a disgrace. Mr Duynhoven should be embarrassed by that. He should be saying: “Hang on a minute. I don’t want to have to carry the full weight of this and cover up for somebody else.” Why does the Labour Party not come clean? Is it the Prime Minister who has a problem? Is it the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade? We do not know. Somebody over there is hiding behind Harry Duynhoven. I do not like that, Parliament does not like it, and I bet that Harry Duynhoven does not like it. The whole country should be asking why the Government is trying to cover up for somebody. Is it Chris Carter?

Hon Chris Carter: It could be me; that’s right.

JOHN CARTER: I do not think so, but I will ask him. I wonder whether he will stand up on a point of order and say that it is not him, so that we can cross one off. I do not think he will. He is sitting there smiling. The point is—

Hon Richard Prebble: He actually said it could be him.

JOHN CARTER: If it is him, he should be honest enough to stand up and say that it is, and then we would know what Labour is covering up.

Hon Chris Carter: I qualify for a Dutch passport, too.

JOHN CARTER: That is true; we do not expect that from Chris Carter, but the fact is there may be others in the House who need to stand up and declare themselves. We challenge them today. Indeed, I challenge the senior Labour whip to stand up and come clean. He had a chance to do that not so long ago. He took a call, made a poor contribution, and never once said that, by the way, he had checked the members of the Labour caucus and they were all clean.

Hon Richard Prebble: Of course he has checked.

JOHN CARTER: Richard Prebble makes that point quite rightly; the whip has checked and found something, and now is not saying. That is the problem. He has the opportunity to tell us; even now, he could do it by taking a point of order. He could stand up and say: “I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. We’re clean now.” It would be outside the Standing Orders, but at least it would solve the problem, and we could get on with this bill. But the fact is the Labour members will not do it, and they cannot do it, because they know they are covering up for someone. The public of New Zealand have a right to know that this Government is prepared to spend up to $4 million of their taxpayer dollars to cover up for someone who will not come clean. That is an absolute disgrace, and this is a black day for Parliament.

Mr SPEAKER: I promised the House that I would report back to it on two points raised with me at the commencement of the second reading debate.

The first relates to those provisions of the Electoral Act that require a 75 percent majority before they can be amended. These provisions are identified in section 268 of the Act. Section 55, which is amended by this bill, is not one of the reserved provisions. The 75 percent majority requirement therefore has no application to this bill.

The second point is a more complex issue, and it is right that I should give a full response to it. The Electoral Amendment Act 2002 has reposed a duty on the Speaker, when the Speaker is satisfied that a vacancy exists, to notify that vacancy in the Gazette without delay. I do take Dr Mapp’s point that the Speaker is not necessarily the person who decides that a vacancy actually exists. Rather, the Speaker is taking the consequential action to fill a vacancy that has already occurred, and that could be established as a matter of law independently of any action of the Speaker. After all, the Speaker is not given a role under section 55, the vacancy provision. The Speaker is given a role under section 129, the by-election provision.

It is clear that the Speaker could take a decision to call a by-election without consulting the House at all. This would be contrary to all precedent but it is legally possible. I do not think for one moment that members would feel that any Speaker should act without consulting them, if there was a real doubt about whether a vacancy actually existed. I ask members to reflect on whether they would be comfortable about a Speaker doing that. After receiving advice that I should consult the House first before arriving at a decision, this was the course that I took. I think that it is reasonable on a Speaker’s behalf for me to defer taking action under section 129 for a short period, to hear what the House has to say on such a critical issue as a member’s right to sit in this House. I believe that in doing so I am acting completely within the scope of the duty cast on me by the statute.

Of course, the Privileges Committee inquiry is the most detailed examination of this issue. But select committees report to the House. They are not independent decision-making bodies. My consultation with the House will involve the House’s consideration of the committee’s report. I made this point in my ruling on 23 July, and I note that it was endorsed in the committee’s report when it stated on page 5: “... it is still appropriate for the Speaker to refer a question to the Privileges Committee and for the House to consider the committee’s report, if there is a real doubt as to whether a vacancy has occurred. The Speaker then makes a judgment that is informed by that parliamentary consideration.” The House’s Standing Orders do give priority to consideration of a Privileges Committee report, unlike all other reports, and in these circumstances I do not consider that it is unreasonable for me to wait for that consideration to occur before I take action.

Mr Prebble argues that the House’s consideration of this bill provides sufficient feedback for me to act. Other members have warned that the Speaker should not defer a decision so as to give the Government time to bring in legislation to avoid the consequences of the vacancy. I agree with this latter point. I will not delay for that purpose. But I point out that it has been open to the Government to bring forward this legislation at any time since Mr Duynhoven’s situation became known. There is nothing that peculiarly permits such legislation only now. My actions have proceeded quite independently of the Government’s legislative plans.

I do not accept Mr Prebble’s suggestion that a debate on this bill substitutes for the House’s consideration of the Privileges Committee’s report, especially where that report is guaranteed priority for debate at the House’s next sitting. I have consistently said that it is at that point that I will decide under section 129 whether a vacancy has arisen. I have never hidden this from the House, and intend to maintain that course.

In view of the fact that this is a lengthy ruling, I am ensuring that a copy of it will be placed in every member’s bill box, and members might like to study it carefully.

Hon ROGER SOWRY (Deputy Leader—NZ National): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I thank you for the ruling. I want to raise one issue from the ruling you have given. You made the point that you asked members to reflect upon whether they would be comfortable with the Speaker making a decision as to whether a vacancy had occurred, without consultation with the House. I put it to you that the law was changed exactly for that purpose; that members decided that it was not appropriate that the majority in the House determined whether there was a vacancy. We see the exact reasons for that decision occurring here today, where the Privileges Committee has made a decision that there is a vacancy, where the Clerk of the House has given his advice to the committee that there is a vacancy, and where the Solicitor-General has given clear and unambiguous advice that there is a vacancy.

For you then to say that members should reflect on whether they are comfortable that you make a decision on that rather than wait for the House to make its decision is, I put it to you, stretching beyond the point where the House wanted you to be. The House, in its decision to legislate to give the Speaker the power to make the decision, was sending the Speaker a signal that it did not believe that a Government using its majority in the House should be able to subvert Parliament and, in fact, make a decision that there was not such a vacancy. That is not what MPs expected, and that is what we are now seeing occur. For the very reasons that we are seeing now, Parliament gave the Speaker the power to determine independently whether there was a vacancy.

The fact that you choose not to use that power—and that is your choice—is certainly of concern, and I want to take you up on the point you made about members reflecting on whether they would be comfortable about your making that decision. I say to you that, yes, we are comfortable about your making the decision, and it should be made, rather than your letting a Government use the weight of its majority to subvert the whole process.

Mr SPEAKER: No, the Speaker was made the decision maker. Nothing precludes consultation. This is dealt with in the report and in my ruling. Independence does not mean no consultation.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 69

Labour 50; Green Party 9; United Future 8; Progressive 2.

Noes 48

New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8.

Abstentions 1

Hunt.

Bill read a second time.

Instruction to Committee

Hon RICK BARKER (Associate Minister of Justice): I move, That it be an instruction to the Committee of the whole House on the Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill that it take the bill part by part and consider any schedules as one question.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the motion be agreed to.

Ayes 69

Labour 50; Green Party 9; United Future 8; Progressive 2.

Noes 48

New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8.

Abstentions 1

Hunt.

Motion agreed to.

DAIL JONES (Junior Whip—NZ First): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It has just occurred to me: I am sure that the House is very grateful that you are abstaining, but what happens in the Committee stage? Will your abstention be recorded in some fashion?

Mr SPEAKER: That is up to me, but I intend—

DAIL JONES: I know that you will not be present.

Mr SPEAKER: I intend to maintain that position.

DAIL JONES: We really appreciate that.

Mr SPEAKER: I actually have the right to be present during the Committee stage—in the voting lobby.

In Committee

Clause 1 Title

Hon ROGER SOWRY (Deputy Leader—NZ National): I want to start by saying a couple of things. Firstly, I hope that during the coming hours those who are in the Chair will have full regard to the fact that this bill has not been to a select committee. There is no chance for anyone to make submissions on this legislation. We want to spend some time on working through the individual parts of the bill. I also hope the Government does not carry forward the approach it has taken so far today, which has basically been for its members to sit there—apart from the Minister with responsibility for Auckland issues, who sits and knits— and ignore the issue, and not to take calls other than to use up a little bit of time. [Interruption] I welcome the Minister with responsibility for Auckland issues taking a call later on, when she has de-tangled her wool.

The title of this bill does not reflect what it really does, which is save one particular member, Mr Duynhoven. We are changing the law to ensure that Mr Duynhoven is deemed never to have broken it. Nor does this title reflect the fact that there is another Labour MP who is caught by this. Parliament has not been given the courtesy of knowing who that is, but we know that the Labour whips have steadfastly refused to state in the House that every other Labour MP is clean, and that no other Labour MP has carried out the same offence that Mr Duynhoven has been found to have carried out. So one can only draw the conclusion that there is another Labour MP in this situation. The senior Government whip knows it, and he is part of the code of silence in this Parliament on this issue. I hope the journalists in this country put some effort into finding out who the other Labour MP is. We can guarantee that every National MP is clean, but can the Labour whip guarantee that every Labour MP is clean? No, he cannot—

Simon Power: He won’t.

Hon ROGER SOWRY: —and he will not, because he knows that that is not the case. I flag that we will be voting for the amendments put by other parties that limit this bill to being for just Mr Duynhoven, although we will, of course, be opposing the bill. Given that the Government will have a majority to force the bill through—which is outrageous in itself—the bill should at least, in those circumstances, apply only to Mr Duynhoven. I hope that if the Government keeps this bill as wide as it is, other parties will, in the course of the debate, decide that it would be best if this bill were not passed in its current form—in fact, not passed at all. A number of amendments will be put by the National Party, as well as by other parties, as we work through the process, and we will certainly be looking for opportunities at the appropriate time to talk on those issues.

I want also to pick up the issue that this bill effectively pre-empts a decision that has been required of the Speaker. It would be far better if that were also referred to in the title of the legislation—that this bill is pre-empting a decision that we believe very, very strongly should have been made independently of this process. The ability to make that decision has been there for about 24 hours. We regret, with a huge amount of sadness, that that decision has not been made.

DAIL JONES (NZ First): We are now rushing, under urgency, into the discussion of this legislation in the Committee of the whole House. Members of the public have not had the opportunity to make submissions to a select committee. All they know is that late last night in this Parliament a bill called the Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill was introduced by the minority Labour Government. We have had its first and second readings, and now, in the Committee stage, at this point we are looking at the title of the bill. This bill should not be called just the Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill; it should be very, very specific legislation and be called the “Electoral (Harry Duynhoven Inadvertent Error) Amendment Bill”, because, really, that is all it is. We have a lot of respect for Harry Duynhoven, and this bill should be limited to Harry Duynhoven’s inadvertent error. But there are other clauses.

Unfortunately, by the way in which the Government has drafted this bill, it has taken into account not only section 55(1)(c) of the Electoral Act, which is a clause involving Harry Duynhoven’s inadvertent error, but it has included section 55(1)(b), which has got nothing to do with Harry Duynhoven, whatsoever. Hence the Government’s desire to call it the Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill.

Is there not something interesting about the use of the word “vacancies”? The word is not “vacancy”. We believe that there is a vacancy, but the Government in the title to the bill suggests there are vacancies. Is that not a nice distinction? We think there is a vacancy; the Government tells us there are vacancies, and uses the plural form. It is admitting it in the legislation, which is not legislation just for Harry Duynhoven; in the name of the legislation, the Government itself is admitting that there is more than one vacancy, hence the use of the plural word, “vacancies” in this amendment bill. Surely in Parliament we are entitled to know who these other people are, because the Government, on its own admission in this title, tells us that there is not a vacancy, but there are vacancies.

I ask the Minister Rick Barker which other members have created other vacancies. Who is the other vacant member? So far he or she has been very vacant in his or her attitude to this legislation—totally vacant; the member has gone away on holiday or something. The Government is admitting in this legislation that there is more than one vacancy. It is saying that there are vacancies. Who are the other people?

Clayton Cosgrove: Look at your own party.

DAIL JONES: We have looked at our own party, and we are not vacant here. That member is very vacant most of the time, but as far as New Zealand First is concerned we know exactly what is happening. We are concerned that this vacancy—the additional vacancy making that “vacancies”—might perhaps even be a list member. If it were a list member like Kelly Chal, that member would be gone; there would be no thought of a by-election or whatever. Kelly Chal went, for one reason or another, because she was a list member, and if this other vacancy—or further vacancies; there could be two or more—involves a list member, that person is history. It is quite possible that a list member who is unfamiliar with the law, as was Kelly Chal, might have done something that resulted in the renewal of a foreign passport, and not even a British passport.

The Government has admitted in this debate on the title that there are vacancies. As a Parliament we surely cannot allow legislation that so blatantly and openly supports vacancies. This is really ramming through legislation without consultation with the public. The bill was introduced late last night, and it will be put through its first and second reading today. The bill is talking openly about vacancies, and the Government is not telling us who the other people are.

New Zealand First was happy to support Harry Duynhoven because of a vacancy in the New Plymouth electorate, but we were slapped back by the Labour Party. It told us: “No, we don’t want to accept your offer to support Harry Duynhoven.” It is telling us in the title of this bill that there are vacancies—it is not just Harry Duynhoven involved here, and we are very much entitled to know who the other people are. On the face of it, this bill should be entitled “The Harry Duynhoven Electoral Error Amendment Bill”—that is what we were told it was going to be. The Privileges Committee reported on only one person, and now there seems to be more than one.

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (Leader—ACT NZ): I rise to speak on clause 1 of this important constitutional measure, which is going through under urgency, and which is introducing retrospective changes. The public has not had an opportunity to discuss it. I hope that the Chair will recognise that fact. I give notice that the ACT party is putting down a series of amendments—firstly to the title, but there will be others further through. We do not want the law to apply to ourselves. We pledge allegiance to this country, and we do not want the ability to give allegiance to anyone else, so I hope the House will allow ACT members of Parliament to be exempt. We looked at a number of other MPs who we think might be covered, and I give notice to the Rt Hon Helen Clark, Jim Sutton, and other MPs that I have put down an amendment regarding each one of them, and I challenge them to support my amendment to show that they give allegiance only to this country.

Simon Power: Interesting tactic.

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE: Absolutely. Members might like to add some other people to the list. The rumours that are now going around regarding the real reason for this bill should be a matter of great concern to them. On the question of the title of the bill, I think it is wrong. First, I think we should just change the title to the “Elect Harry Duynhoven Bill”, because that is what we are doing. That is a proper title; there is nothing frivolous about it. Alternatively, I think the bill should be called the “Allow the Rt Hon Helen Clark to Have a Foreign Passport Bill”, because that will be the effect of this bill. This bill will allow Helen Clark to have a foreign passport, through her spouse, so let us put that in the title.

I challenge members opposite to vote for my amendments, and to be upfront. What we are doing is saying as a Parliament that any member of Parliament can now give allegiance to any foreign power. On behalf of ACT New Zealand—that is our full title—I can say that we have no doubt about whom we support, and I hope that members will at least allow ACT MPs to exempt themselves. We are quite happy to do that. We do not think this law is ambiguous; we think it is quite clear. We support the law and do not want to be exempt from it. If other parties do not want to be stained by the suggestion that they serve two masters, I suggest that they should move amendments to exempt themselves. I challenge those MPs whom I have named to vote for my amendment to show that they have not taken out foreign passports, and that they do not serve anyone else except the people of New Zealand.

Barbara Stewart: Who paid them?

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE: That is a very good question. Things are getting worse and worse. I just say to members that this is a serious bill, and those are serious amendments. This is not a bill about electoral vacancies. As Mr Jones said, we do not know of any vacancies. This is a bill to elect Harry Duynhoven, so let us be upfront: that is what we are doing. That is the first proposal I am putting up.

The second one is that this will allow an MP like the Prime Minister to have a British passport. Do we think that is right? [Interruption] The member should support my amendments if she is shocked at the thought that we have a Prime Minister who may have a foreign passport—and one can imagine Helen Clark not wanting to queue up; I mean, she is overseas so often.

Hon Chris Carter: Have you got one?

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE: I assure the member that I have never taken out a foreign passport as a member of this Parliament—never in my whole career. Can the member give me the same assurance about his colleagues? That is interesting—there is silence. Does the member not think that the Parliament and the public of New Zealand are entitled to an answer to my question? Mr Carter is silent on that, too—talk about contempt! He is not even prepared to tell the public of New Zealand whether the Labour Party serves this country or some other country.

GERRY BROWNLEE (NZ National—Ilam): I will take a moment at the start of my contribution to follow on from what Richard Prebble has just been talking about. This morning I raised the issue of the Prime Minister’s status in relation to this bill, and I simply asked whether she has dual citizenship, and whether she has applied for another passport in recent times. I am reliably informed that that has been put to the Prime Minister by members of the media, and she has described that as a scurrilous lie.

No lie was ever told, because no allegation was made. A question was asked, and could not be answered by the whips. So I am very pleased that the Prime Minister is now out there saying: “It’s not me.” However, it leaves open the question, who is it? I say to the person who was described earlier today as the Philby of the Labour Party that he or she should come clean. The member should put his or her hand up and say, “It’s me.”, so that we do not have to go through the ignominy of having every other member of the Labour Party besides Harry Duynhoven put in a position of having to defend him or herself when the media asks that question.

Hon Roger Sowry: Some will refuse to answer.

GERRY BROWNLEE: That is a very good point. When the media asks those members, “Are you one of the vacancies referred to in the title of this bill?”, some will refuse to answer. They will say: “Sorry, I can’t answer you. I don’t want to answer. I can’t answer.” What will happen is that people like Clayton Cosgrove will have to stand up and say: “It’s not me.” But then I think, well, the name “Cosgrove” is very Irish. He has probably got an Irish passport. [Interruption] Oh, he said he has an Irish passport. How long has he had it, and has he renewed it since the last election?

Hon Member: Yes.

GERRY BROWNLEE: There is someone who straight away is a little bit dubious. Then there is our friend over at the back of the Chamber, the great white hope for the Labour Party, the Hon David Cunliffe, who spent many, many years in the United States. Did he get residence while he was there? Was he granted the right to hold a US passport? Is he on the phone to the ambassador now, as he was the other day, checking on New Zealand First members? Is he on the phone to the ambassador now, saying: “Listen, just keep quiet about my arrangements, would you?”, and saying to the media here in New Zealand: “I can’t comment on whether I am one of the vacancies.”?

Then there is the Hon Chris Carter. Most of us would have said he is one of the great vacancies in this Parliament, particularly in respect of some of his handling recently of the Auckland Regional Council situation. Is he able to tell us for certain that, due to his relationship, he does not have a right to another passport somewhere else?

Hon Chris Carter: I do have a right to another passport.

GERRY BROWNLEE: There we go! He has just confessed. He is another person who is entitled to dual citizenship. Has he been in the bottom drawer, reading up the manuals to see whether he could receive one of these passports? That would make him, under the law, one of the vacancies. It will be very interesting later in the day when Mr Prebble’s amendments are put up one by one, and Labour members are asked to back themselves or tell the truth, and come up to the Parliament and say: “It’s me.”

This bill, in its title, is quite explicit: “Electoral (Vacancies)”. It is not the “Electoral (Fix it up for Harry Duynhoven) Amendment Bill”; it is the “Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill”. Perhaps the Minister in the chair might tell us why it was necessary to have both paragraphs (b) and (c) of section 55(1) of the Act changed, when to change just paragraph (b) would do it.

Dr WAYNE MAPP (NZ National—North Shore): I want to pick up a theme developed by my honourable colleague Gerry Brownlee—“vacancies”. I have read the dictionary on the word “vacancies”, which means more than one vacancy. It is plural. I think the media of this country have a duty to phone all Labour Party members and ask them whether they have applied for a passport since the last election, whether they have been granted a passport since the last election, and whether they have sworn allegiance to a foreign prince or power since the last election. Those are straightforward questions that are easy to answer.

Simon Power: Ask Matt Robson.

Dr WAYNE MAPP: The Hon Matt Robson, a former Minister—

Hon Roger Sowry: He said he didn’t. He’s on the record.

Dr WAYNE MAPP: He is on the record. Clayton Cosgrove said he is eligible.

Clayton Cosgrove: No I didn’t.

Dr WAYNE MAPP: He said he is eligible. The confession is there.

Hon Roger Sowry: He’s clean.

Dr WAYNE MAPP: He is clean. What about the Hon Chris Carter? What is his answer?

Hon Chris Carter: I neither confirm nor deny.

Dr WAYNE MAPP: Well, there is an opening. We should remember what the situation is in this Parliament. We must take the word of each and every member on the face of it; otherwise they would be misleading Parliament and it would be a matter of privilege. Mr Carter might see that as a frivolous matter. Given that his interjection—which is on the record—was that he could neither confirm nor deny, he now has a serious obligation to the Parliament, and to the nation, to say which is true.

Obviously, this piece of legislation, using the plural word “vacancies” in its title, was intended to cover Mr Carter. I asked him a simple question about whether it applied to him—and his interjection, which is on the record, has left us uncertain. I think it is clear in this situation that Parliament and the country are entitled to know what the facts are.

In the course of our contributions we will be asking that question of every single Labour Party member. We will pause and give them the opportunity to reply, because they have a duty to do that. That is what the law says. If the Government genuinely believes that it wanted to fix up one particular situation, it could have done that. Mr Peters, along with Mr Dunne, is on the record as saying he would have supported a narrow provision. Actually, it is unclear with Mr Dunne; he may well support a wide provision—I see he is shaking his head in denial. So, as I understand it, he will be voting against this legislation. I know that New Zealand First will be voting against it.

National is clear that there should be a by-election, irrespective of the outcome of that election. It is irrelevant; the law takes its course. The Government should have called the bill the “Electoral (Vacancies and By-election) Amendment Act”, because that is the normal and proper consequence. That would be the Government’s proper duty.

I refer to the Speaker’s ruling on this issue. It states that the Speaker is not necessarily the person who decides whether a vacancy actually is a vacancy. Well, I have news for the Speaker: the vacancy exists, and has existed since 11 June. In my view, the proper course for the Speaker was to immediately recognise that fact. That would then lead to the consequence of a by-election. The Government could have done something it said it could not do: bring in retrospective legislation for Parliament to elect Mr Duynhoven to the seat. Even the Government would have said that that would be going too far. In principle, what is the difference? Is that not what we are really doing here?

Mr Peters himself said he has been through a by-election and knows what a difficult process it is, and there are costs. I can understand the psychology of that. But we are not here for that; we are here to implement the law. That is the test.

Hon RICK BARKER (Associate Minister of Justice): The last speech forces me to make a presentation, because it shows how little respect the National Party has for intellectual property. It was Dail Jones who spied the word “vacancies”, not Gerry Brownlee. Mr Mapp did not correctly attribute the idea. I say to Mr Jones and all the other members of the Committee that there is no conspiracy here about “vacancies”. The law is drafted as a general provision, and because it is a general provision it would be wrong to use the word “vacancy”. The point about the drafting is to be grammatically correct. It is a general provision, as it should be, and therefore the plural word “vacancies” has to be used. There is no drama there, at all.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): I do not know where Mr Barker got that advice from, but it is nonsense. It is utter drivel to say that the law is drafted as a general provision and therefore must be worded in the plural. This is a bill for Harry Duynhoven—for one member—that is, a “vacancy”. Mr Dail Jones is quite right that the suggestion of “vacancies” is a clear indication that the Labour Party is not admitting that it has members other than Harry Duynhoven who are caught by this provision. We want to know who the Philbys, the Burgesses, the Macleans, and the Blunts of the Labour Party are. Who are these people who cannot be trusted to behave in the national interest in their own country? Who are the Philbys, the Burgesses, the Macleans, and the ones who most resemble Blunt? Do members know who Blunt was? He was the artistic adviser to the Queen, and he had certain proclivities, which they all had. I cannot mention that fact, of course, but they had certain proclivities that made them susceptible to serving foreign agencies. So who are those people in the Labour Party? That is why the word “vacancies” is there.

That is why we have in brackets a clear admission without the names, and it surely behoves the Labour Party to front up today in this important part of the Committee stage and tell us what is going on. If it does not, we will find out eventually anyway. Mr Prebble is right to put up a series of personalised amendments, and we will find out, one by one, whether Labour members are prepared to admit it at the time.

When members think about the importance of this issue in our constitutional law, they cannot surely argue anything other than that this Government has been absolutely frivolous with our constitution. I want to say this to them—[Interruption]—and I want to tell the member for Waimakariri, because it is very important, that this sort of arrogance and pride goes before a fall. In my rather extensive political career, I have seen parties on the rise, and I have seen them on the fall. That member’s party is on the fall.

Rodney Hide: Even your own party has gone up and down a bit.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Yes, but right now we are going up, and nothing will stop us now. Pride goes before a fall, and arrogance is what usually befalls members of Parliament who think that because they have “MP” after their names or “Minister” before their names, they are somehow now of a special species, and above the ruck of a human existence that requires certain standards and decencies to be met.

So I say again—please let us know who these other members are. Let us know what their offence might be, because it is certainly far greater than Harry Duynhoven’s. We ask that the title of this bill be narrowed to Harry Duynhoven—the person whom we had a select committee hearing about, and the person whom this bill is all about. Accepting that the plague that beset MI5 and the British Secret Service seems to have beset us as a country via the Labour Party’s Cabinet and back-benchers, who are these people who are not prepared to tell us what they have been doing about swearing allegiance to their own country?

SIMON POWER (NZ National—Rangitikei): I feel it is necessary to respond to the Hon Rick Barker’s comments about the wording of the Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill being a general provision, and therefore not requiring the tense in the title to be singular. What a load of rubbish! Do we call it the “Income Taxes Act”, or do we call it the “Income Tax Act”? The simple fact of the matter is that whether the title is in a singular or plural fashion is extraordinarily pertinent in this case. To refer to the “Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill” makes it quite clear that somebody else is sitting on the Labour Party benches who has done exactly what poor Hon Harry Duynhoven has done.

My colleague Mr Jones, who pointed out the “s” on the end of “Vacancies”, made a fine contribution to this debate. It has enabled the Committee to focus on the fact that more than one vacancy is occurring at present. Rick Barker’s contribution—that the general provision is a drafting technique—is the most ridiculous contribution this House has had from him, and that is quite a big ask.

Gerry Brownlee: You mean since his second reading speech?

SIMON POWER: Since his second reading speech. I see that Mr Barker must now be back in his office, signing off some JP nominations.

What is clear from the title to this bill is that somebody is sitting on the Labour Party benches who is not clear of the mud in this instance. I know that many of my colleagues have asked the whips to confirm which of their colleagues are in this position. I see Lynne Pillay and Helen Duncan have come down and joined us in the Chamber. Have either of those members created a vacancy in the terms of this bill? There is no response from those members. They had an opportunity to put themselves in the clear—to make it clear to the New Zealand public that it was not them who made the mistake, but that it lies at the feet of another member of their caucus.

The ACT party, I have to concede in a clever manoeuvre, has now required each of those members listed, by way of amendment—

Hon Ken Shirley: Why are you surprised?

SIMON POWER: It was a bit of a surprise. Each of those members will now have to vote for or against an amendment as to his or her specific residency. I think that will be a very interesting procedure for the Committee to watch, because at that point those members will be personally declaring, by way of their vote, whether they themselves have created a vacancy in terms of this bill.

I just want to say that introducing retrospective legislation into this House requires us to leap a pretty big hurdle. It has to be an issue of such seriousness to the country that most parties are prepared to support it—a high-level constitutional principle that for some reason has been overlooked, or has created a bizarre circumstance. This is not one of those situations. Be it on purpose or by accident, Harry Duynhoven has broken the law. It does not matter how old the law is. It does not matter whether his intentions were well placed. It does not matter what his majority is. It does not matter whether he would win the seat. What matters is the fact that the law was broken.

Matt Robson got to his feet and said: “Actually you should be able to apply for dual citizenship. What a stupid rule.” If that is the case, do not limit the bill to this Parliament. If, as the Hon Matt Robson says it is, dual citizenship for MPs is a sound idea, then by all means the Government can pass legislation—if it can muster the numbers—to say that that is the case. It should not limit it to one term, because that raises the suspicions of the New Zealand public to the fact that there is somebody else in this Chamber that this legislation applies to—they can see that the title is plural—and that the Government wants to limit it to one term of Parliament. That is a gross abuse of the parliamentary process.

I see that the Hon Marian Hobbs has joined us in the Chamber. Is she the member who has created the other vacancy? There is no answer there, either.

METIRIA TUREI (Green): I want to make just a few short comments in the title debate. In my view, the title should refer to the equal treatment of both list and electorate MPs. The mischief that the bill is attempting to cure impacts directly on the ability of list MPs to retain some modicum of security in their seats, should they also be subject to section 55 as it currently stands.

MMP provides for two kinds of MPs, one of whom is an electorate MP, who represents a community of locality. Those communities have specific interests that arise out of their residing in a particular area and within a particular community. It is the traditional form of representation, and it is quite right that we continue to have that representation in this Parliament.

But MMP also provides for the representation of communities of interest, whereby groups of people who span across the whole of the nation, who are equally committed to various issues, are able to have those issues represented in Parliament. Many of those issues are, and still remain, locally focused—for example, the pumping of sewage into the sea is both a local and a national issue. Those issues often cross communities, but as part of this process it is nonetheless very important that we have a system that enables the representation of communities of interest, as well.

This provision treats those different MPs differently, and it treats the representation of communities of interest and communities of locality differently, as well. The Greens consider that to be a very serious unintended consequence of this provision, and an indication that it has simply not kept up with changing times.

The other major issue for us is the general consideration of New Zealand law regarding dual citizenship. Dual citizenship is supported and recognised as acceptable in this country. We live in an increasingly diverse society. All of the diverse interests in our communities deserve to be recognised and represented in this Parliament. The representatives of those people and interests should also be entitled to serve in this Parliament if they themselves come from diverse backgrounds.

In the 150 years of this Parliament we have been through the various debates about the representation of interests—for example, women’s interests by women, Māori interests by Māori people, Island interests by Pacific Islanders. But we are still at a very early stage in that process, indicated by the fact that we still have only one Muslim MP. That MP has only recently come into this Parliament in the last election. We are still in the process of trying to work through how to best represent the various diverse backgrounds and interests of the people who live and contribute to our country. There needs to be a sensible approach in the law for recognising that diversity within this Parliament as represented by the various MPs. While this bill takes a rather dramatic approach to doing that, none the less it makes space for a proper debate and consideration of the way in which diversity—and dual citizenship, in particular—is represented in this Parliament, and the effect and acceptability of dual citizenship.

We must protect Parliament from the treachery that section 55 is trying to preserve us from, while at the same time protect every citizen’s right—including the rights of MPs as citizens—to hold, openly acknowledge, and exercise their genealogy and heritage within their dual citizenship. The Greens consider that this is an appropriate way to do that, and reflect that the bill opens the capacity for that discussion to happen where it might not otherwise.

Hon KEN SHIRLEY (Deputy Leader—ACT NZ): This is a very small bill. It is printed on one sheet of A3 paper folded in half. On the front we have the explanatory note.

The title clause actually has two subclauses, which is unusual in itself; we have two subclauses in the title clause. The first states: “(1) This Act is the Electoral (Vacancies) ...“. The point has been made that the title has the plural “Vacancies”. We know that the bill is all about “Saving Private Harry”, that that is what drove it, but why put the plural there? Who else does this bill apply to? Is it Clayton Cosgrove with his Irish heritage, or is it Phillip Field, the Minister in the chair? Do members remember that when Phillip Field joined this Parliament he changed his name? He became Taito Phillip Field. Why?

Simon Power: Ask him!

Hon KEN SHIRLEY: I will ask him, and I want him to take a call. His family in his homeland of Samoa made him a chief—a taito. Whether it was on Upolu or Savaii, I am not sure, but perhaps he will tell us. Did he have to sign or take allegiance to the village that he has responsibility for? Actually, a taito’s role relates to more than a village; it is not that of a matai. I think he has an extensive regional governance role in Samoa. Does he have a Samoan passport? Is he prepared to tell the Committee whether he has a Samoan passport? Is he prepared to support and vote for Richard Prebble’s amendment, so that the whole Committee can know what his status is? When we see “Vacancies” in the title, we realise it is not a technical drafting matter; it is deliberate use of the plural.

There is nothing more important than the Electoral Act in a representative democracy. It is the basis of our democracy. What the House is doing here today makes this possibly one of the most shameful days in this Parliament’s proud history. It is what we would expect of Mugabe’s Zimbabwe or Moi’s Kenya—when people fiddle with the Electoral Act to accommodate themselves. That is what this Government is doing; it is using the tyranny of its majority, supported by its lapdogs, United Future and the Greens, to drive through a disgraceful measure that defies the Electoral Act.

It is very clear. When the Solicitor-General and the esteemed Clerk of the House, who is recognised as the best in the Commonwealth, give the clear and uncomplicated advice that section 55 is clear, and that a vacancy does exist, then the Speaker should act forthwith. We had a statement from the Speaker today explaining that if in doubt, he must consult the House, but there was no doubt; the advice he had from his own Clerk, the best in the Commonwealth, and the Solicitor-General of this country was that there was no doubt, so he did not need to worry about that. He had protected his proverbial, which he is prone to do; he had taken advice, and the clear advice was that he should act. He failed to act. It has been obfuscated, and now the Labour Government is furthering that obfuscation, and trying to cloud the issue. It is a disgrace.

We may not like the measure in the Act that has triggered this matter, and it may not be fair; sometimes the law is not fair. But if we, as representatives who are charged as legislators with making the law, are prepared to fiddle the law when it is inconvenient or does not suit us, what signal does that send to the country? That is what the principle is all about.

Hon Georgina te Heuheu: It’s terrible.

Hon KEN SHIRLEY: It is a terrible signal. I see we have another Minister in the chair—Mr Rick Barker. When he was in the chair a few moments ago he had the temerity to accuse the National Party of lacking principle. When he led off he accused the National Party of lacking principle. I ask Mr Barker where the principle is behind this. The Clerk of the House and the Solicitor-General say that the law is clear, yet the Government uses the tyranny of its majority to change the Electoral Act in order to cover an inconvenience and an embarrassment. It may not be fair, but that is not the point. People up and down this country are hit with the law every day.

Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future): The debate on this bill arises out of the particular situation that relates to Harry Duynhoven. When the Privileges Committee considered the Duynhoven case it made certain conclusions in respect of him. The way in which the bill is drafted extends the provisions far beyond Harry Duynhoven. I will put an amendment to Part 1 to limit the application of this bill to the period that commenced on 14 August last year and ended on 6 August this year. In the event that that amendment is not accepted, United Future will not support the third reading.

The way in which the bill is crafted at the moment potentially creates an absurd situation. At one level the bill deals with the particular situation that relates to Harry Duynhoven, and validates his eligibility to remain a member of Parliament. But by being prospective for the balance of the term of this Parliament, the bill does two things. Firstly, it states that anyone else—and we have all heard the rumours and the speculation about whoever else might be involved—in the same situation is protected, but it actually goes further than that. It implicitly issues an invitation to all members of this House to proceed to make the telephone calls, make the inquiries, and check their eligibility, and to do so with impunity, secure that their actions are protected until the next general election.

I do not think that was actually what the Privileges Committee intended or considered when it examined this matter. I also do not think it is what the Government intended or considered. We have an apple and a pear here. We do not have a consistent flow of the same situation. One could call the apple “Harry”, and call the pear someone else, but the point at issue that provoked this debate and led to, firstly, the matter going to the Privileges Committee, and, secondly, this bill, was Harry Duynhoven’s eligibility to remain a member of this House. That is what the issue ought to revolve round. The way in which the bill is crafted—I suspect it is probably reflected in the title it has been given as a consequence—broadens the scope so that it does not just cover other people who might be involved but creates the absurd situation where everyone is invited, by implication, to engage in the very activity that led to this bill in the first place.

Gerrard Eckhoff: One would be crazy not to.

Hon PETER DUNNE: That is probably true. People are now given not just a legal protection but a legal encouragement to do so, because they have a 2-year window of opportunity. That is why I will be putting forward an amendment to Part 1, to deal with the intent of the legislation. The intent was to refer to the circumstances relating to Harry Duynhoven, and a limited application that ceased at 6 August this year would deal with that situation. But to move beyond that creates a situation that is absolutely and utterly absurd, and that is not acceptable as far as we are concerned.

Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU (NZ National): I am so pleased to hear the previous speaker, the Hon Peter Dunne, make it very clear to this Committee that unless the Government agrees to his amendment to limit the scope of this bill to the circumstances that gave rise to it—that is, the Harry Duynhoven case—then United Future will not support it. I am very pleased to hear that, because I was deeply disappointed to hear last night Peter Dunne still vacillating. I have always regarded Peter Dunne as one who would uphold the constitutional integrity of this House. So I am very pleased to hear he will not support the bill, if his amendment is not accepted.

However, that does not make any difference to National’s position. We do not agree with the bill, in any event. That is no reflection on Harry Duynhoven, who acted innocently. But, unfortunately, whether or not he acted innocently, the fact is he broke the law. The circumstances giving rise to this bill are very simple. In applying for Dutch citizenship he breached the law. The moment he did that, his seat became vacant. It was a breach of section 55 of the Electoral Act. The moment that happened, certain actions should have flowed. The Speaker should have declared that seat to be vacant, and this House should have gone into recess. There should have been a by-election. It is just not credible for the Government to say to National: “Well, your party wouldn’t do very well anyway, if there was a by-election.” Who cares that that would be the case, quite frankly? There is a principle here that is far more important than who would win or lose a by-election, and it is the principle that parliamentarians should uphold the law. The fact we are here debating this bill shows the absolute cynicism of a Government that would use the law to benefit itself. I am absolutely outraged by the actions of this Government.

I also disagree with Metiria Turia suggesting that because the demographics of our country are changing—and they are—and numbers of our population have citizenship of more than one country, somehow that makes a difference to what we ought to uphold in this House. It is not an unreasonable constraint on members of Parliament to expect that when they swear allegiance in this House to this country, when they seek to manage the affairs of this country, they must bear allegiance to one country only, and that is this country—New Zealand. For those outside this House, fine! They can hold as many passports as they like, and bear allegiance to whomever. But from the way this bill is drafted, and Peter Dunne, I think, traversed this very clearly a few minutes ago, it seems to send an invitation to all of us in this House to make the calls, to start resuscitating, or applying for, other citizenships that we may be entitled to. I might consider now applying for a Tino Rangatiratanga passport. I probably will not, because I do not think that is acceptable. If I am going to stand in this House as a Member of Parliament, then I should bear the allegiance I have sworn to bear, and that excludes my applying for any other passport, even if I am entitled to do that.

But that is the impact of this bill, and it is wrong. It is outrageous that a Government would use its power—its numbers—to inflict this kind of legislation on this House, and to send a message to the public at large that if the law does not suit the Government, it will change it anyway. Even worse, the Government will put the House into urgency to do it. The Government talked about the cost involved in a by-election; well, what about the cost of putting the House into urgency? It is outrageous.

RODNEY HIDE (ACT NZ): What we have is a very, very misnamed bill. If it were properly titled, it would be called the “Saving Harry Duynhoven from the Voters of New Plymouth Bill”. But that would not be correct, either. From the way the bill is drafted, it is not just a matter of “Saving Private Harry”. It should be titled the “Saving Harry Duynhoven (and Unnamed Members of the Labour Party) from the Voters Bill”. We on this side suspect that a list member or two are caught up in this bill. The significance of that is that those members are gone; there is no by-election—they are gone! I look across to my colleague and friend the Hon Peter Dunne—

Hon Peter Dunne: You’ve never said that before!

RODNEY HIDE: When the Hon Peter Dunne of United Future had the unfortunate and sad circumstance of one of his MPs being caught up in the Electoral Act—which could happen to anyone—did he say to the Government: “Oh, you need our vote, Prime Minister, so change the law. Because Kelly Chal has been elected, change the law.”? No, he did not. I do not think it would ever occur to Peter Dunne that the Government would change the Electoral Act to accommodate a member of Parliament. It would not occur to him. So what is the difference now? The Labour Government has introduced a measure that should be titled the “Saving Harry Duynhoven (and Unnamed Members of the Labour Party) from the Voters Bill”. I point out that if it were a list member, that person would be gone, and the next person on the list would come in.

Gerrard Eckhoff: Who is it?

RODNEY HIDE: Who is the next person on the list? The Government obviously does not like that individual, and also does not like the thought of another by-election. But, again, as my friend and colleague the Rt Hon Peter Dunne pointed out—

Hon Peter Dunne: Now you’ve promoted me. It gets better and better!

RODNEY HIDE: Well, I have never before heard so much common sense in 5 minutes. This bill is not just about saving the Labour Party MPs who are in trouble and do not even have the courage to front up; it is actually about saving, as Peter Dunne pointed out, every MP in the House in the future who decides to sign up to a foreign power. Is that seriously what this Parliament wants? We could have Nandor Tanczos, Rastaman, signing up to Jamaica. We could have Helen Clark signing up to the UN. We could have my colleague Richard Worth signing up to Monaco as a bolt hole after the next election, to hide his face. He could be signing up to that one. We could have Clayton Cosgrove, after Ron Mark has beaten him, declaring himself a political refugee, throwing himself on the mercy of a country that has even slacker immigration rules than we do, and floating in a boat somewhere, but in the meantime saying under this bill: “Actually, I can sign up to a foreign power.”

Richard Worth: Where would you go?

RODNEY HIDE: Oh, I would go straight to Epsom as the member for Epsom. I tell Mr Worth that ACT members do not need to sign up anywhere; we are New Zealand citizens with New Zealand passports. We do not sign up to any power overseas, unlike the Labour Party. Think about it: what sort of ministry is Helen Clark running when the Hon Harry Duynhoven, as far as we can figure out, has not signed anything this year as a Minister except his allegiance to the Dutch Government? He is getting paid big bucks as a Minister, and the only thing that he has done as a Minister—and let us be clear about this—of the Crown is to sign his allegiance to a foreign power.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (NZ National—Nelson): I join this title debate wanting to refer to this bill as the “Double Standards Bill”, and I have some questions for the Minister in the chair. Six weeks ago the Solicitor-General alleged that I had broken the law with regard to the Guardianship Act. The Attorney-General said that if I had broken the law, then, regardless of whether the law should be changed, I had to face the music. I had to take the consequence of breaking the law as it stood that day. Furthermore, one of the Government Ministers, Damien O’Connor, went even further. He said that any member of Parliament who breaks the law has to face the full consequences. Well, I want to know what is different about this. Now we have the Solicitor-General saying that a member of the Government—a fellow Minister—has breached the Electoral Act.

In both instances, I think that a majority in this Parliament would prefer that the law were changed. A majority of the House actually supported the introduction of the new Care of Children Bill, which would have made it plain that my actions did not, in any way, breach the law, because those new provisions allow publication of proceedings of the Family Court, provided that one does not mention names, and that was clearly the case in my instance. So in both instances it is probable that a majority of Parliament would say that the law was outdated and needed to change.

But I want to know from the Minister in the chair, the Hon Rick Barker, why the Government’s top law enforcement officer will drag me before the highest court in the land and put me in the dock, put me to huge private expense to defend myself, but a different set of rules apply for Harry Duynhoven. I would like to know from the Minister, Rick Barker, why there is a different rule for Harry Duynhoven compared with myself. Can any member on the Government benches please explain to me why, when the Solicitor-General alleges that I broke the law—even though the Government has introduced a bill to change it—I have to face the music, but when it comes to Harry Duynhoven the Government has a different standard? The silence from the Government benches says it all. I know and every member of this Parliament knows in his or her heart of hearts why it is different. Because Harry Duynhoven is in the Government and I am in the Opposition.

Hon Matt Robson: No.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: That is the reason. I challenge Mr Matt Robson to get to his feet and explain to this Committee why, when the Solicitor-General alleges that I broke the law, I have to face the music in the High Court, but Harry Duynhoven is going to be saved by an Act of Parliament. I ask the Government members whether they would support an amendment—I am not asking for it; I am happy to be accountable for my actions— that would have me retrospectively saved. If it is good enough for Harry Duynhoven, why is it not good enough for me?

Rodney Hide: We should all have a clause!

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Rodney Hide wants a retrospective provision so that anybody who has ever done anything to breach the law is exempted. Well, that might be the sort of thing they would do in Zimbabwe, but not the Parliament of New Zealand. I say to the Minister in the chair that we should have a standard that is higher than this sort of politics, which says there is one rule for Government members and a different set of rules for the Opposition. That is an awful commentary on this Parliament. It is two standards of citizenship. It shows the double standards in this House, and we deserve some explanation. I want to hear from the Attorney-General and from Damien O’Connor, who were saying so loudly just 2 months ago that Nick Smith has to answer the law—that the Solicitor-General has said that, so that is what has to happen. I want to hear from a Government member why, when it comes to Harry Duynhoven, things are different. I will be taking call after call to ask for that explanation because I believe this Committee deserves an answer.

LYNNE PILLAY (NZ Labour—Waitakere): I move, That the question be now put.

GERRARD ECKHOFF (ACT NZ): After listening to the debate today, it does seem from the Opposition side of the Committee that we have had, yet again, little—or indeed, no—contribution or justification from the Government side with regard to this particular bill. This is yet another day of shame for this Government, especially. But it is worse than that, because it is a day of shame for Parliament. The television cameras and the Hansard record of the proceedings of this debate will show the public, yet again, that the Government and Parliament are seen to be looking after one of their own. Whereas members of the public down on Lambton Quay, or in the farms and valleys of New Zealand, are left to their own devices to face the full force of the law, parliamentarians, it would seem, do not.

Some years ago a rather honourable gentleman by the name of Lord Carrington stood in the House of Commons when the Falkland Islands were invaded by Argentina, and said words to the effect that he had not known of that event, but he should have known. We have a Minister of this Government, Harry Duynhoven, who is a nice chap and all the rest of it, but who is not actually doing what I think is the honourable thing. He should be saying he did not know, but he should have known. How often do we see, right throughout the parliaments of the Western democratic countries, honourable members standing in their parliaments and saying those things? They say they did not know about something, but they fall on their sword, resign, and then ask the people—it would be the people of New Plymouth, in this case—to make a determination as to whether they were right or wrong, and whether their behaviour was right or honourable.

What I think is so wrong about this bill is that it takes away from Mr Duynhoven the opportunity to do the honourable thing. Harry Duynhoven could come down to the Chamber at any stage, even in 2 minutes time, and say to this Committee that he has just handed his resignation to the Speaker because he is an honourable man. But this Government has denied Harry Duynhoven the opportunity to do that. The question is why that is so. My answer is that it is because there are other members of this Government who are less honourable than Harry Duynhoven, and who are hiding behind Harry Duynhoven’s proper move in recognising that he has broken the law. How often do we hear the people of this country say that they demand one standard and one law for all people in this country? Yet again, we see nepotism. We see the Government looking after its own, because Harry Duynhoven is a decent chap.

I cannot help but reflect on the fact that for the first time in about—well, in my time in this Parliament, the polls are starting to show that this Government is not as popular as it thought it was. The opportunity for the public, or, indeed, the people of New Plymouth, to express their opinions to this Government on things like the “flatulence tax” and the foreshore and seabed issue is an opportunity that this Government will run a mile from. That seems to me to be why this bill is proceeding. I am perfectly sure that the Government would have polled on this issue. It would have been flat out on the phones over the last week or so to determine public opinion, and it does not want to test that public opinion.

So we will not have a by-election, and Harry Duynhoven is being denied the opportunity to behave in an honourable fashion. According to the Speaker, each one of us is an honourable member of this House. Yet, in my view, Mr Duynhoven has been denied the opportunity to express that honour in a very overt and upfront way.

HELEN DUNCAN (NZ Labour): I move, That the question be now put.

RICHARD WORTH (NZ National—Epsom): Thank you, Madam Chairperson, for the opportunity to speak to the title of this bill. I start by saying that title debates clearly provide an opportunity to consider two issues. The first is the factual accuracy of the title, and the second is its legal accuracy. The point has already been made that in the context of this title, it is significant that the bill is called the Electoral (Vacancies)—with a plural on that nominal—Amendment Bill. Clearly, it is contemplated that others in the House have crossed the line that Harry Duynhoven has unfortunately crossed.

The reality is probably that about 30 people in this Parliament are entitled to the citizenship of more than one country. Whether they actually carry passports—and some of them do—issued by other countries is perhaps not the point. But we face a setting where there are possibly multiple breaches of the provision set out in section 55(1)(c) of the Electoral Act. I believe, as others have urged, that we are entitled to know whom those people are. This bill is being promoted to deal with one alleged irregularity, that of Mr Duynhoven, but it masks the activities of other members.

I have listened with a degree of bemusement to the personal attacks on me in the last few days, which have ranged from the childish to the stupid, over my role as an honorary consul. As members of this House will know, there have been a number of honorary consuls in this Parliament over a considerable period of time. There was a Cabinet Minister who was apparently in such a post. I simply say—and it is a statement of the obvious, in the context of this title debate—that honorary consuls are not subjects or citizens of foreign States or powers. They do not take oaths of allegiance to the sending State, and they are not entitled to any of the rights of the subjects or citizens of that sending jurisdiction.

I was disappointed in the comments that the Attorney-General made before. We contemplate that the chief legal officer of the Government is the Solicitor-General. That is not strictly correct. The chief legal officer of the Government is the Attorney-General, the so-called parens patriae. So it has been interesting to hear Margaret Wilson’s comments that she has considered there is doubt as to whether a breach of the relevant legislation has occurred. She has taken that view in the face of contrary advice from a competent legal adviser—in this case, the Solicitor-General—contrary to the clear views of the Clerk of the House, and contrary to the views of a clear majority of the members of the Privileges Committee. If I had doubts about the competence of the Attorney-General to evaluate issues of legal concern, I would have to say that those doubts are mounting at an increasingly alarming rate.

In looking at the title of the bill, I have made the point that we should know whom the other persons are who are affected by the impact of the legislation. The title of the bill should spring from the issue that was the subject of the report to Parliament, which is headed Question of privilege relating to the application of section 55(1)(c) of the Electoral Act 1993 to Hon Harry Duynhoven. Report of the Privileges Committee, Forty-seventh Parliament (Hon Matt Robson, Chairperson), August 2003. When one looks at the title of this bill, one sees that the second point that Mr Dunne made is also particularly compelling, because what has occurred is a clear mandate, a clear invitation, to seek dual citizenship.

CLAYTON COSGROVE (NZ Labour—Waimakariri): I will take a very brief call, and in response to Mr Worth’s contribution simply say that, as we debate the title of this bill, I think it is worth getting on the record this concept. Someone who holds a passport or citizenship of a foreign power is not an official representative of, or an official advocate for, that foreign power. I ask the member who has just spoken to reflect on that, with regard to his position. I think there should be a higher standard for official representatives. He is an appointed diplomatic advocate who holds a warrant for a foreign power, and he is charged with representing and advocating for a foreign nation, as well as with being a member of this Parliament. On that point, I conclude.

RICHARD WORTH (NZ National—Epsom): I raise a point of order, Madam Chair. My speech is being misrepresented. I would be grateful if the member, who was present when I made the speech, accurately represented its content.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): That is a debateable point.

RICHARD WORTH: No, it is not. With respect, it is a question of fact.

STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT NZ): This bill, labelled the Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill, is more correctly described as the “Electoral (Dispensation) Amendment Bill”—a bill that should be seen as having significant constitutional effect. It is a bill that I expected the Greens to take a principled position on, given the high-minded attitude they took on the Electoral (Integrity) Bill. It is very obvious that the only integrity they were concerned about, the only integrity that might have had any interest for them at all, was the integrity of their relationship with the Labour Party, and the prospect of Labour dumping the doormats and replacing them. That is what is happening here.

This is greasy sucking up from a supercilious prat. I listened to the speech of the Green co-leader, and I heard four reasons in it. First, an election is expensive, so do not hold it! The very idea that we do not hold elections because they are expensive! Quite apart from the balance of expense—in this situation we are spending more money on this debate than would ever be spent on the election—to hear Rod Donald for the Greens opening by saying we do not need it because it will be expensive, was despicable.

Second, that the member was very popular! Well, we all like Harry Duynhoven, but most of us probably like most of our colleagues—at least we do in this party, and I think they do in most parties; I hope they do. If this was about popularity, there would not ever be elections—we would certainly dispense with them. That was Rod Donald’s second reason that we do not need to allow the Electoral Act to work. So when I look at the title and see the word “vacancies” instead of “electoral greasing” and all the other behaviour that this situation has brought out, I find myself compelled to get to my feet.

I have to say that if this bill were truly being described, it would show the disgracing of our principal officers. This bill, in my opinion, should have something in its title that mentions what a disgrace it has made of our Speaker. Our Speaker has a clear duty, under section 129 of the Electoral Act, to, without delay, publish a notice of the vacancy. It is a purely mechanical act. It does not require anything, after being satisfied of the vacancy. The vacancy, as the Solicitor-General has told us, occurred more than a month ago. We watched yesterday while our Speaker demeaned his office and demeaned himself by pretending that there was something that could be read into that section—something that says it means “satisfied … without delay, after the House has debated the issue”. There is nothing in that section about a House debate. It is a purely mechanical function vested in the Speaker because it was thought that the Speaker would have enough respect for the conventions to be non-political and simply carry out the function.

The other one is our chief law officer, the legal conscience of Cabinet, the Hon Margaret Wilson. I heard her suggesting that we did not need to follow the law, because it was ancient. Well, the law against murder is ancient, too. The law against murder is very, very old. In fact I cannot think of one that started earlier than: “Thou shalt not kill.” Because that law is old, does that mean we scoff at it, as the Hon Margaret Wilson and the Hon Michael Cullen do? No, we abide by laws and we uphold laws in this House. This bill’s title should not say something bland like “vacancies”. To be correct, this bill should have used the words “besmirching of the constitution” or “trashing of convention”. This bill is besmirching the House. It is certainly besmirching some of our senior officers.

When I hear that the Greens support the bill because they want dual citizenship to be recognised, I say that the law already recognises that. There is nothing wrong with dual citizenship. The law says that the people decide who sits in Parliament, that they are entitled to elect someone with two passports, and that they are entitled to elect someone like Taito Phillip Field, who is openly representative of a group with a significant representation in New Zealand. But they also should get another chance to say whether they want to keep that person when the person signs up allegiance to a new prince or authority, and takes a step that is beyond the status with which they came to the House, and says, instead: “I am now signing a new obligation.” Although this may have been a borderline case, and although, as the Hon Margaret Wilson said, it is a technical breach—it is not even a breach of course; it is just an automatic consequence—it is the people who should decide who stays in this House.

GEORGINA BEYER (NZ Labour—Wairarapa): I move, That the question be now put.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the question be now put.

Ayes 69

Labour 50; Green Party 9; United Future 8; Progressive 2.

Noes 48

New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8.

Abstentions 1

Hunt.

Motion agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Dail Jones to clause 1 be agreed to:

to omit from subclause (1) the words “Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Act 2003”, and substitute the words Electoral (Harry Duynhoven Inadvertent Error) Act 2003”.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.

Ayes 48

New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8.

Noes 69

Labour 50; Green Party 9; United Future 8; Progressive 2.

Abstentions 1

Hunt.

Amendment not agreed to.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): The next amendments, two amendments in the name of the Hon Richard Prebble, are ruled out of order. I refer members to Speaker’s ruling 15/2 (Supplement).

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (Leader—ACT NZ): I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. I am intrigued to find that an amendment moved by Mr Jones to have the bill called the “Electoral (Harry Duynhoven Inadvertent Error) Amendment Bill is regarded as a valid amendment but that my first amendment, which was that the bill be called the “To Elect Harry Duynhoven Amendment Bill”—which is the effect of the bill—is somehow frivolous. My second amendment, which also describes an effect of the bill, “To allow the Prime Minister to have a foreign passport”, has also been found to be frivolous. How can it be that Mr Jones’ amendment is not frivolous but that my amendments—both of which describe results of the bill, and may be the real reason for it—are frivolous? How can that be? I do not follow. What is the difference?

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): Speaker’s ruling 15/2 (Supplement) states: “An amendment to the title of a bill must be a serious description of the bill rather than an attempt to criticise its contents.”

Dr WAYNE MAPP (NZ National—North Shore): I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. When I read the words “To Elect Harry Duynhoven” and when I consider that there has been a Privileges Committee report on the issue—not on all of us but on one particular individual—I cannot see how you can possibly rule that such an amendment is frivolous. The proper course for you is to put the issue to the vote, and the result will be the result. After all, that is why the issue was referred to the Privileges Committee, and this bill is a consequence of the Privileges Committee’s report.

STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT NZ): I think that there may be a test that would help decide whether an amendment is frivolous, and it is this question: how will this be known colloquially; how will it be known in years to come when people are trying to distinguish this amendment from other amendments to the Act? I have no doubt that it will be known as the “Duynhoven amendment”. That is the way it will be identified, and therefore I fail to see how an amendment could be seen as frivolous if in fact the amendment is an attempt to call the bill what it will probably be popularly called for the rest of time.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): The point is that the bill is about how the seat became vacant; not the election of the member.

A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 1 be agreed to.

Ayes 69

Labour 50; Green Party 9; United Future 8; Progressive 2.

Noes 48

New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8.

Abstentions 1

Hunt.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Sitting suspended from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.

Part 1 Preliminary Provisions

Hon ROGER SOWRY (Deputy Leader—NZ National): This part—which has two clauses, one being “Commencement” and the other “Expiry”—is important because it shows the nonsense that this House is putting through today because of the Government’s desire to make sure that the law as it applies to everyone else does not apply to one of its own. That is the simple issue here.

The Government has started off by spending 15 minutes, of the 4 or so hours we have spent debating the bill, by justifying it, which is a pretty half-hearted justification. The justification has centred around the fact that the law was so archaic that it needed to be done away with, and that Mr Duynhoven broke an old, archaic law, so it does not really matter and we should just change it.

So where do we change it? We change it in this part, and we do not change it for ever but just for the course of this Parliament. Once the election has been held, that is fine. We will go back to the old, archaic law. Presumably, if another Labour MP breaks it, the Labour Party will try to change it again for the next Parliament. If the law is so bad, I ask Mr Barker why it is not being changed for good. Why not do that in this bill? Why just change it for this Parliament? Because that simply does not make sense if the law is as archaic and as bad as Mr Barker has said. The two principles do not add up, I say to the Minister. Mr Duynhoven will get his Dutch passport out of this.

Gerry Brownlee: New passport.

Hon ROGER SOWRY: A new passport, perhaps. Who knows? What happens in the next Parliament, presuming that he is an MP, if he reapplies? Will we have to come back to debate another bill? Will we be back here, changing the law for him again?

Hon Richard Prebble: No we won’t; they won’t be in Government.

Hon ROGER SOWRY: That is right. The Labour Party will not be in Government, because New Zealanders—and Labour members should listen to the radio at the moment—are outraged at this.

Government Members: Ha, ha!

Hon ROGER SOWRY: Government members laugh. Labour has the view, which is the height of arrogance, that Mr Duynhoven broke the law, but the Government will change the law for him and it will be OK, because Labour is the Government and it can do that. It is above all that nonsense of having to live by the same rules as everybody else. It is so tiresome, is it not, when one is caught out breaking the law? It was fine when there was an allegation that Mr Smith broke the law. The Government let him go and fight his one in the court. We had Labour Ministers saying that he should be held responsible for his actions. That is what Margaret Wilson said. Damien O’Connor said: “The law is the law and it should apply.” Then, about 2 weeks later, Mr Duynhoven broke the law. Where is “The law is the law and it should apply.” then? Oh, no, we have a different standard of citizenship for Mr Duynhoven. He is allowed to have Parliament spend 10 to 12 hours of its time changing the law to suit him.

Dianne Yates: Can the member sit down?

Hon ROGER SOWRY: The member for Hamilton East, who is sitting there knitting, asks me to sit down. I say to Dianne Yates that people in this country expect us to be here debating. They do not expect us to be sitting here knitting away and making decisions that change the way parliamentarians are elected. At the end of this day, Mr Duynhoven will not have been elected by the people of New Plymouth but by the knitter from Hamilton and her Labour colleagues. That is who will have elected him, not the people, because this report has found that he should have already gone.

DAIL JONES (NZ First): New Zealand First has given a clear indication to the Committee that we will be moving an amendment to Part 1, “Preliminary provisions”, with regard to the expiry date of the Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill. By the Government’s decision, the Act comes into force on the day on which it receives the royal assent. That could be today, 7 August, or it could be tomorrow, 8 August. We want to limit the damage created by this bill to the very shortest time possible. We will therefore move an amendment that the Act will expire, not—as the Government wishes—with the close of polling day for the first general election held after the date on which this Act comes into force, but on the day after the day on which it comes into force. If this bill comes into force on Friday 8 August, we want the law to expire on Saturday. That will protect Harry Duynhoven, which is the promise we made to him, but it will not protect anybody else from breaching the law in the future. However, the position of others who are in the same position as Harry Duynhoven, and who have not come forward and admitted their guilt in breaching the Electoral Act, will still be protected.

There are other amendments before the House that New Zealand First will be giving close consideration to. New Zealand First is prepared to cooperate with amendments that are reasonable. For example, if our amendment happens to be unsuccessful—and though I hate to broadcast that it might be unsuccessful, one has to face reality sometimes—we would have no hesitation in supporting United Future’s amendment, which is along the same lines. In fact, it provides specifically that the bill expires on 6 August 2003. It is important that all members of Parliament behave reasonably and ensure that there is some cooperation, so that, in one way or another, a majority of the House—and hopefully we can get the Greens along on this one, as well—can bring the “mischief” to an end, either on 8 August, as New Zealand First suggests, or on 6 August, as United Future suggests.

If the Greens are at all sincere in the speeches they have made in the House about identifying a “mischief” and remedying the evil that might have been created, I say to them that we know what the “mischief” is, and we can end it for sure by passing either the New Zealand First or the United Future amendment on the expiry date. That is the clear situation. If the Greens do not vote for either amendment, or any similar amendments—and I suspect that the United Future amendment might have the best chance of going ahead because of the way it has been presented—and still insist on not supporting an amendment to limit the damage to a date in August, we will know for certain that all the Greens are trying to do now is take over the role that United Future has had in this House—as we have said, of being the lapdogs of the Labour Party.

I am being as fair as I can to United Future, as I am sure Mr Dunne and Ms Turner will agree. The Greens will be lapdog 2 in this House, and United Future might be happy with that. The Greens will definitely become lapdog 2 in the way they will vote on this legislation, and in the way they have voted in recent times to support the Government at any cost whatsoever. The Greens are no longer a Green party. They are purely a survival party. That is all. Their interest in the environment has long gone. There are many members in this House, including members of New Zealand First, who have a greater regard for the environment than the Greens ever had, and, certainly, more concern than the Greens have today.

In the light of this legislation we are concerned that the present member, Harry Duynhoven, is flying the Dutch flag in his ministerial office, or so I understand.

Dr Wayne Mapp: Saw it on TV.

DAIL JONES: I believe it, but I find it very hard to believe. I ask where his allegiance is.

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (Leader—ACT NZ): I rise to speak to what members have pointed out are very unusual commencement and expiry dates in Part 1. The bill basically comes into effect on its passing, and then we have this procedure; I have not seen a date like that given in a bill before. The legislation expires at “the close of polling day for the first general election held after the date on which this Act comes into force.” I have been trying to think why an expiry date of that sort would be picked, and I think I have an answer to Mr Jones’ amendment and to Mr Dunne’s. They both want the bill to expire, one on 6 August, and the other on a similar date after the bill is passed.

It is my view that that does not save Mr Duynhoven, because if the bill comes into effect, he will be an MP, and then when the bill expires, the whole effect of the bill will be removed. He has still committed the act; he is still out. I am still going to vote for it, because I think that that is what should happen to him, but I feel obliged as an MP to draw it to the attention of other MPs who have a more benign view towards Mr Duynhoven’s activities.

I have put forward two alternative dates, both of which I ask the Committee to support. Because I am totally opposed to this bill, the first says that instead of the bill coming into effect on the day it receives the royal assent, the commencement date should be 1 January 2006—which would not assist Mr Duynhoven. My second amendment says that the bill will expire on 1 January next year. I do that because the Government has said that it is referring this matter to the Justice and Electoral Committee. If the Government really thinks it is a problem, and then gives it urgency, we could have the whole matter resolved by 1 January, but the Government is saying in fact that it is a terrible anomaly, a dreadful thing, which it never knew had happened, and which should not be in the law—but, by the way, the bill is going to expire.

Why is that? If the Government really does think that it is perfectly OK for New Zealand members of Parliament to swear allegiance to foreign States, then why is it OK to do it in this Parliament but not in the next? If the Government really believes that this is a good measure, then why does the bill have an expiry clause in it, at all? If the Government is now saying that the Justice and Electoral Committee will consider this matter, why have we not given an instruction to that committee and put a reasonable close-off date on the bill? It is an interesting question.

The Holmes Show rang ACT—and I guess they will ring other parties—and commented that if the bill goes through as it is, it will not only help Mr Duynhoven but give approval for MPs to take out dual citizenship. I was asked how many MPs in our party could do that. That was a new question for me, so I had to go around and find out. Interestingly enough, four ACT members of Parliament could, if this bill went through, take out a foreign passport. They might have to go through a few processes, but they could do it. I ask the Committee whether we are really serious about that. That would be more than 30 MPs, overall.

Ron Mark: It’s New Zealanders first.

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE: I would have thought so. I am happy with that. Are we serious about passing a bill with this expiry date, which really says to every MP who could take out, say, an Irish passport—which is quite a common one that many people can qualify for—that they should do it, because after this election, if they think they will be re-elected, they will not be able to do it again? Some passports can be taken out for at least 10 years, and for 10 years Mr Clayton Cosgrove, if he qualifies, will be able to have an Irish passport, so he will not have to queue up when he goes to the EC, as New Zealanders have to queue up. Do we think that is desirable?

The ACT party does not, therefore we are putting up alternative closure dates. The first one I have put up—if we support it—would mean that this bill is a nullity. The second says let us have an expiry date that holds the Government to the statements being made here. If the Government really thinks that there are anomalies that ought to be fixed, then it ought to be able to do that by 1 January 2004. But, of course, what Government members are really doing is giving themselves—and the rest of us in Parliament without our asking for it—not just a licence but an encouragement to go and get a foreign passport.

Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future): I want to come back to the point that has been raised by earlier speakers in this debate about what the purpose of this bill is. It is a matter I raised during the title debate in the first reading last night. This bill arises out of the Privileges Committee’s report on the case of Harry Duynhoven, but the way the bill is crafted takes it far beyond the case of Harry Duynhoven.

Part 2, which we will deal with shortly, is the retrospective provision, which, in my view, is acceptable. But because of the absence of a clear expiry date other than the date of the next general election, Part 1 not only condones any future behaviour by members seeking to acquire foreign passports during the life of this Parliament, as I said earlier, it also goes further and encourages them to do so. It actually says that Harry Duynhoven’s position is being protected retrospectively because we are not certain of the circumstances that gave rise to his breach.

In any case, even if we do consider that he breached the law, we are now going to encourage others to do so with the full protection of the law. We do not just say that the way the bill is drafted protects people who might inadvertently stumble into the same situation in the future, by having a 2-year window between now and the date of the next election, we send to even the meanest intelligence in this place the clear signal that if members possibly think they have a chance of qualifying, they should get in there now, get their passports, and take their chances, because they will not get another one.

We think that is totally contrary to the intention of the bill. That is why I have moved an amendment to add a new clause, clause 3A, to Part 1 to indicate that this bill applies from the period of 14 August 2002 to 6 August 2003 only, so that it captures that retrospective aspect entirely and solely. It closes the door on the possibility of either of two things happening: the general invitation I spoke of a moment ago for everyone to go for broke because they now had a legal sanction to do so, and those who might be sitting in the Chamber in silence, knowing that either they had undertaken, or were about to undertake, an action that could put them in a similar situation, but had chosen not to reveal their identities.

To me, the most reprehensible aspect of this whole process is that I suspect that a number of people have been quite happy to see Harry Duynhoven take the rap, and quite happy to see that this is a case about him, knowing that there but for the grace of the proverbial, they might go also. So the amendment I have moved is designed to make it clear that the intent of this bill is honoured, and to prevent what I think would be the most absurd, cavalier, and insulting invitation to members of this Parliament to flout not so much the law with impunity, because it would be the law at that point, but the intent of the law. That would be the case if the bill went ahead in a way that said that members now had a 2-year opportunity to do no wrong in respect of foreign citizenships, nationalities, renewals of passports, or the like.

That is not what this issue is about, but if these provisions stand, that is what it will become about. That is why we have made it clear that if those provisions are not amended, we will not be supporting the bill further.

Hon RICK BARKER (Associate Minister of Justice): I want to respond to a couple of points. Firstly, to pick up the point raised, and to amplify the point touched on by Mr Prebble, I want to say that it is my intention to write to the Justice and Electoral Committee, and to give it time to consider this issue. I do not think it is as simple and straightforward as Mr Prebble indicated. If we were to set an expiry date in the very near future, it might not give the committee sufficient time to consider the issue.

There are also contradictions in respect of the position put forward by Mr Dunne. If somebody stands at the election who holds a passport other than a New Zealand passport, and no one in the electorate knows about it, then that is perfectly acceptable. If someone picks up a passport he or she is entitled to after the election, that somehow is not. That seems to me to be a paradox.

If Mr Prebble’s point is that no one should hold a passport to another country, or hold alternative citizenship—which is the point he is making—then the law does not reflect that. If that is the view Mr Prebble has, and if the majority of this Parliament agrees with it prior to the next election, then those will be the rules, and they will be well understood. But it is an issue that the Justice and Electoral Committee should have an appropriate amount of time to go through and think seriously about.

As for the dates in this bill, they are simply to say that this legislation will come into effect when the Governor-General decides, and will expire at the time the polls close on election day. I am very confident that the Justice and Electoral Committee will have had a report to the House by that stage, and that we will have considered the legislation and determined a completely fresh set of rules.

GERRY BROWNLEE (NZ National—Ilam): The last two speeches, from Peter Dunne, a supporter of the Government, and the Minister Rick Barker, show just how tatty this whole process is, and how disgraceful and despicable it is that the process of this House has been drawn into something that should never have happened.

In discussing Part 1, I call the Committee’s attention to New Zealand Parliamentary Practice, written by David McGee. A number of people have said in the course of this debate that David McGee is recognised as the best Clerk in the Commonwealth. He says that the House and its members are subject to the law of the land as promulgated by Parliament, in the same way as everyone else in the State, and that they must comply with any statute that applies to the House’s proceedings, notwithstanding any Standing Order or practice of the House to the contrary. Well, we are seeing a practice of the House that is contrary to all the things about our parliamentary democracy that are good.

Peter Dunne stood up and said this bill flows from the report of the Privileges Committee, but that cannot possibly be true, because the report of the Privileges Committee has not been dealt with by the House. So what are we expected to believe: that the Privileges Committee’s report, which was tabled at 1 o’clock yesterday, was raced off in some haste to the drafting office, which, without reference to anything Parliament might have said, produced this bill and had it ready for its introduction at about 8 o’clock last night? It never happened.

This bill is all about a Government scrambling to protect one of its own. The Government is scared witless at the possibility of a by-election—no matter what it says about Mr Duynhoven’s huge majority. As has been pointed out by other members, by-elections throw up strange results. This just happens to be a seat surrounded by seabed and foreshore—by foreshore, in particular. New Zealanders think they can walk freely over foreshore, but the current Government is about to excise that freedom.

This bill has a reasonably generous provision in it that, from the commencement date of this bill till its expiry, will allow members of the New Zealand Parliament to consider their options and, possibly, take up dual citizenship and get a passport for another country, and to do so quite lawfully. It has absolutely nothing to do with a desire to protect Harry Duynhoven alone. It is all about Labour having a number of members in its caucus who are being a bit sneaky about this, and are not telling us everything they might about their circumstances; Labour wants to protect them, and it also wants to cover Harry Duynhoven because it wants to avoid a by-election. So the idea is to make the bill much bigger than just Harry Duynhoven; to open it up and tell the whole of Parliament that here is an opportunity for members to turn their backs on the privilege of being elected to this House, of standing in this House and speaking, and swear an oath of allegiance to another country.

I see the Chair suggesting that I narrow the content of my speech. Perhaps the Minister in the chair will tell me if I am wrong. If the intention behind this bill is not as I expressed it, perhaps the Minister will say why the commencement and expiry dates are so far apart. Why could there not be some compromise? Why would the Government not make it a “Save Harry Duynhoven’s Seat Bill”, rather than the huge electoral vacancies bill that it has turned out to be, which lets every MP have a go at getting dual citizenship?

Another point of interest will be some of the provisions that are suspended during that period of time. Although we should not stray into those now, I tell members that that will be a very long debate, because I think the Government has made a quite significant number of mistakes here.

This is a sad, sad little exercise on the part of the New Zealand Parliament. If this bill were truly a bill to cover the situation Mr Duynhoven finds himself in, the period covered by the dates would be much narrower.

Dr WAYNE MAPP (NZ National—North Shore): The point that has been made about every single member of Parliament applying for citizenship of another country is why this bill is so wrong. Why on earth would the Government put legislation into this House that enables every member of Parliament to apply for citizenship of another country, if he or she is entitled to do so, in the next 2 years? What on earth could be the public policy reason behind that?

It is actually even worse than that. If the Government is hiding someone, that person probably was involved in that action between the last election and now, so why does the bill not have a closure date of tomorrow, as Mr Dail Jones has suggested? Even that would be too wide because it would still protect that secret person whom we know is out there who is not willing to confess.

The Government is going even further than that. For some absurd reason, Labour wants all members of Parliament, irrespective of their parties, to be able to go out there and get any passport they want, if they are entitled to do so. What could be the public policy reason for that? It is even worse than that, because if one looks at the suspension of section 55(1)(b), one sees that it also enables every single member of Parliament to take an oath of allegiance to another country. Many passport applications do not require that, but this Government is going further. So we would have the extraordinary spectacle over the next 2 years of members of Parliament—who are purportedly representing the interests of the people of this country, having sworn allegiance to the Queen of New Zealand when they took office as members of Parliament—taking oaths of allegiance to other countries. That is the effect of suspending section 55(1)(b). It is truly extraordinary. What on earth is the public policy reason behind doing that?

The previous Minister in the chair, Rick Barker, who is a man who is not learned in the law, demonstrated that by saying that we have to suspend the section for that period to protect Harry Duynhoven; that if we do not do that, we save him now but he would not be saved thereafter. That is a complete misapprehension. We would not agree with this legislation in any event, but if it related only to Harry Duynhoven, for instance, he would be covered for the balance of this Parliament—that would be the effect of the legislation. To have these provisions go forward to the end of this Parliament is to cover people prospectively, in the future, for future applications. There can be no logic in that, at all.

The Government will say that the existing legislation is old-fashioned and quaint, that it is a kind of weird notion that members of Parliament should solely have allegiance to our country and to the people of our country, and that that ought to be subject to review. Perhaps the Government does believe that. It could put that provision to the Justice and Electoral Committee, as, indeed, it intends to do, but none of that has anything at all to do with Mr Harry Duynhoven. If there were any case at all for this legislation, which there is not, then it should be tightly circumscribed, and the Government—if it has any integrity in its understanding of oaths of allegiance and the taking out of passports—should, at the very minimum, be voting for Mr Dail Jones’ amendments.

I turn now to our fundamental objection. The people of New Zealand decide who is in this Parliament. They do that by voting at elections, and when there is a vacancy, the proper course is to have a by-election. That is what happens in other Parliaments. Parliamentarians in other Parliaments do not rush around spending 1 percent of all parliamentary time on special legislation to save the bacon of not only someone like Harry Duynhoven but some unknown person or persons. What happened to Ms Chal of the United Future party? She came in, disappeared, and another person came in. That is what the law is supposed to be.

PITA PARAONE (NZ First): I am delighted to take part in this debate. Notwithstanding what this bill does, which includes, not least of all, questioning the integrity of members of Parliament, it will be responsible for electing—or should that be “selecting”—the next member of Parliament for New Plymouth.

I refer to the issue of the commencement date: “This Act comes into force on the day on which it receives the Royal assent.” That date is unknown. I wonder whether, unlike a whole lot of other legislation that this Government has recently introduced, the uncertainty in terms of the date is related to the issue of the Treaty of Waitangi. I have no compunction in mentioning the Treaty of Waitangi, because that was the first visa to be issued for this country, and it allowed many of us to be here in this House today.

I refer to immigration and the question of allegiance to our country. What is the symbol we all face when we give allegiance to anything, particularly to our country? It is the flag. If that is the case, then why does the subject of this bill—and we say that his allegiance is not in question—have a Dutch flag in his office, which I suggest, if I can go even further, was paid for by the taxpayers of New Zealand?

Hon Ken Shirley: As a Minister?

PITA PARAONE: As a Minister. I have to ask myself where the allegiance of that member lies.

The other issue is that Māori members on the Government side of the Chamber have been very silent in this debate. A number of them have talked about the importance of tino rangatiratanga. Does that mean that the time it takes before the royal assent is given to this bill will allow them to question the issue of tino rangatiratanga and where they stand in this debate? Do they agree that, as a consequence of this bill, one of their fellow members will have his position as an MP legally restored—someone who has shown allegiance to another power? Those Māori members, who support the notion of tino rangatiratanga, are quite happy to see that responsibility given to someone who has already shown his allegiance to another country. If that is tino rangatiratanga, I would like them to go out on to the marae of this country and explain to the very people whom those members represent how that is tino rangatiratanga.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): There are too many people walking around the Chamber. Under Standing Order 82 members must be seated.

PITA PARAONE: If it is OK for members of this House to break the law, then why do the same rules not apply to many of my relations who break the law? Is it because they are Māori? I have to ask myself that. How will I be able to go out of this Chamber today and explain that to my relatives in the far north who try to lead a lawful life? Do I have to say: “No, we’re all waiting for the royal assent. When the royal assent is give—I am sorry Joe Public, Joe Marae, Hohepa Public—one can’t break the law.”? That is not to say that I promote the idea that our people should go out and break the law, but this is all about tino rangatiratanga.

RICHARD WORTH (NZ National—Epsom): I rise to speak to this debate on the Electoral (Vacancies)—plural—Amendment Bill, in particular with reference to Part 1. This is cunningly contrived legislation, on any view of it. Whatever my personal views on this legislation—and I hope it fails—I can nevertheless admire the skill of the parliamentary counsel who, by obfuscation and deception, has produced an outcome that I am sure none of us truly intended.

I am glad that we have seated in the rear of the Chamber senior parliamentary counsel, because I would like the Minister in the chair, Mark Burton, to take a call on what is a remarkable aspect of Part 1, and I am not talking about clause 3; I am talking about clause 2. It seems at first blush to be innocuous. It states: “This Act comes into force on the day on which it receives the Royal assent.” So I went out to the Noes lobby, picked up New Zealand Statutes 2002, Volume 3, and idly glanced through the first six statutes in that volume. Five of the six state, in terms of their commencement, not: “This Act comes into force on the day on which it receives the Royal assent.”, but instead: “This Act comes into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent.” I ask the Minister why that is. What is the need for that significant change from clear parliamentary practice when there is retrospective legislation in this bill?

I looked at the Education (Tertiary Reform) Amendment Act, at the Animal Welfare Amendment Act, and at another one that was different—it came into force on a set date. The next three I looked at were the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Act, the Antarctic Marine Living Resources Amendment Act, and the Bail Amendment Act. Then I stopped looking. But why is clause 2, the commencement provision, drafted in this most unusual way? We are lucky to have a Minister in the chair whom I do not doubt may well grace the office of Speaker in the term of this present Parliament. This is a great opportunity for him to stand and indicate why it has been seen as necessary, with retroactive legislation—retrospective in character—to depart from standard parliamentary practice in connection with the drafting of clause 2.

Part 1 is a short part. It contains only two clauses. The second clause, clause 3, states: “This Act expires with the close of polling day for the first general election held after the date on which this Act comes into force.” So, what clearly is intended is that the expiry date is to be referable to the expiry of a parliamentary term. That leads me to urge this Committee to think carefully about what it is doing if it decides to lend support to this legislation, because it is effectively usurping the role that the public have to determine the entitlement of members to sit in this House, and, from a voter’s perspective, the entitlement of an individual voter to cast his or her vote.

I was impressed by the comments the Hon Richard Prebble made that if this bill is intended to be limited to Mr Duynhoven, his very substantial majority of something just under 15,000 votes is to be shredded. He is now going to continue in office as an MP with the minimal margin that is the result of the voting process later in the day—a margin that may be as low as just three or four votes. So here he is, a man who has had in the past a substantial mandate to represent the people of New Plymouth, now reduced to holding on in office with the narrowest of majorities.

JILL PETTIS (Junior Whip—NZ Labour): I move, That the question be now put.

Hon KEN SHIRLEY (Deputy Leader—ACT NZ): I was most impressed with the speaker from New Zealand First who has just resumed his seat, Pita Paraone. He raised some interesting new matters in this debate. He gave the Committee the information that we have a Minister of the Crown, Mr Harry Duynhoven, with a Dutch flag flying in his office. He put that in a different context, by asking what the symbol is that we swear allegiance to. It is the flag, yet here we have a Minister of the Crown, carrying a ministerial warrant granted by the Prime Minister, who has a Dutch flag flying in his office. Now what message does that give to people, when they come to see him? It is like a ship sailing under two flags.

Ron Mark: A flag of convenience.

Hon KEN SHIRLEY: A flag of convenience, perhaps?

Hon Richard Prebble: Two-flags Harry.

Hon KEN SHIRLEY: “Two-flags Harry”—that could be his new nickname. The point has been made that the suggested amendment to bring the expiry date of this legislation forward would not work. I agree with that analysis, given the reason that we have got into this mess. A member of our Parliament, Harry Duynhoven, clearly breached section 55(1)(c) of the Electoral Act. The rules are quite clear; that does create a vacancy. The advice to us from the Solicitor-General and the Clerk of the House was that that was clear. The Speaker chose to ignore that advice. There is provision that if the Speaker is uncertain as to whether there is a vacancy, he can consult with the House. But he should not have been uncertain on this occasion, because the advice he received, as I have said, was very clear. But setting that aside, it was convenient for the Speaker to take the course of action he did, which gave the Government time to scramble together this disgraceful legislation. But the point has been made that bringing the expiry date forward will not work, because the breach has been made. If we do not have the expiry date that is stated in the bill—after the next election—and bring it forward to next month, next week, the end of this year, or whatever date may be decided, Mr Duynhoven will still be out because he has made that breach.

There is only one way that Labour members can save Harry Duynhoven, if that is what they want to do—and the ACT party says it is wrong in principle for this Parliament to play around with the Act for the convenience of Parliament, or, in other words, to change the law on a self-serving principle. The only way to save Harry Duynhoven is to redraft the provision on the basis of a clean-slate principle. In other words, the law must state that anyone who has transgressed section 55(1)(c) of the Act to date has immunity. There would be a clean slate, and from X day henceforth—whether that is next week, next month, or at the end of the year—anyone who transgresses section 55(1)(c) then, knowingly and consciously, would breach that section, but all misdemeanours up to this point would be exempt. Now that would be equally wrong in principle, but at least it would address the issue. So I offer that to the Committee, should members want to persist with some of the amendments that had been suggested. Members really need to change them to a clean slate - type principle, rather than just bringing the date forward, because that would still trip members up.

The other interesting point raised by Pita Paraone was in relation to the Treaty of Waitangi. He made some very interesting points about that. Moreover, there are elements in our society that challenge sovereignty, and this issue is all about the sovereignty of New Zealand. We know some radicals within Māoridom say they want to have dual sovereignty. Georgina te Heuheu gave a very good speech about upholding the law, and I totally concur with her. But other flags have been suggested, and there have been suggestions of indigenous groups of people issuing passports. Where do we go to from there? Many people passionately believe they have the right to issue an indigenous person’s passport in this country. If Parliament is to play around with a clear provision in the Act like section 55(1)(c)—

Stephen Franks: And the flag doesn’t matter.

Hon KEN SHIRLEY: As my colleague Stephen Franks says, the flag does not matter. Ministers of the Crown used to be issued with New Zealand flags as a symbol, and most responsible Ministers were very proud to have the flag on a stand in a corner of their office, as a symbol of the warrant that they hold. The flag is a symbol of our nationhood. That is the point that was made; that is what it is all about. We have learnt in the debate on this part that the member who transgressed the Act flies a Dutch flag.

CLAYTON COSGROVE (NZ Labour—Waimakariri): I move, That the question be now put.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): I cannot help but reflect, in relation to the last speaker’s address, that there are people out there who are dishing out indigenous passports at the moment. In the land of the Tūhoe, people are actually dishing out dog licences on the basis that they have not seen the local council in a blue moon, so why should they pay licence fees in the Whakatane District?

Having been defeated on the title of the bill, New Zealand First now intends to serve a writ of habeas corpus on the Labour Party. We want Labour to show us the body. We know it is not Harry Duynhoven. We want Labour to show us the people who will be protected by this legislation, if it will not support our amendment that states that the only person to be protected in reality will be Harry Duynhoven, and no one else.

Dail Jones: More than one body?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: If there is more than one body, what is it? Is it “habeas corpi”?

The Government cannot get away with this. It has been asked now for over 48 hours about the people whom it is seeking to protect with this legislation, and it will not mutter a sound, a syllable, a murmur, nor a word.

Dail Jones: Does it know?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: The Government must know. It must know that other members are being protected, but such is its obsession with power that it has appeared to abandon any principle, just to maintain power—even the simple principle of public disclosure of the group of people who are to be protected by this legislation.

The Government has no reason to come to Parliament with a plan to protect its colleague Harry Duynhoven, and then to abuse him and the rest of us by covertly not telling us who else comes within the ambit of this legislation. More important than that, I ask what sort of legislation suspends the application of section 55(1)(c) of the Act for the full term of Parliament? The day after this legislation receives the royal assent, every parliamentarian with a right of dual citizenship can go overseas and apply again to become an American citizen, an English or Britain citizen, or a citizen of some other country—

Ron Mark: Nigerian.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: They could become Nigerians, Tongans, or Samoans.

This bill is so typical of this Government. Under Labour, we are a nation of hyphenated New Zealanders. We are no longer one people—New Zealanders first, second, and third. No, we are Samoan New Zealanders, Dutch New Zealanders, and Māori New Zealanders—anything but one people.

Jill Pettis: What about Italian?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I do not know of anybody here who is of Italian extraction, but I do know that every time that some people here open their mouths, they remind me of an Italian fish market. It is not just the sounds, but the visual appearances, as well, that remind me of a fish market.

Dail Jones: Sophia Loren?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I know that Sophia Loren would be turning in her grave, but let us not mind that.

The truth is that a country that is divided cannot stand. A House that is divided cannot stand, and nor can a country. A country with no sense of social cohesion will not be successful. No country, since the Great War, has entered and stayed in the First World that did not have a highly developed sense of social and economic cohesion. However, here in this Parliament today Labour is passing a law that, the day after it receives the royal assent, will enable members of Parliament to sign up for any country they feel like signing up for, with impunity. Mr Robson will be able to rejoin his Australian cousins again. The two members from Samoa will be able to rejoin the Samoan nation again. The paradox, of course, is that those people will all say they are New Zealanders again. It really is ridiculous.

I ask the Labour Party to please come clean. Who are the secret members it has who have knowingly done far, far more serious things than Harry Duynhoven? Why is the Labour Party protecting them? Will Helen Clark’s CV look far better, when she is tipped out after the next election, if she goes for a UN job as the holder of dual passports? Helen Clark has actually run this country on the basis of an advanced plan that one day she will be in a UN job. She has sold the country down the drain, so that one day she will get a UN job. Is she one member who has made an application for a dual passport?

Simon Power: She wants a diplomatic passport.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: That is right. Helen Clark’s country has become too small for her. Frankly, the people will tell her all about that whenever she flies the white flag before the next election.

GEORGINA BEYER (NZ Labour—Wairarapa): I move, That the question be now put.

JOHN CARTER (NZ National—Northland): I want to raise two matters. The first is that clause 2 states: “This Act comes into force on the day on which it receives the Royal assent.” The honourable member who has just resumed his seat, Winston Peters, said it was the day after that. In fact, the wording is, “… on the day on which it receives …”. I want to explore that just a little bit. It is most unusual to have those words; it is normally the day after that. I can only assume the reason that the Government is doing this is that if this bill becomes the law on the day after it receives the royal assent, then it very likely that by the time it does, the Parliament may well have debated the Privileges Committee’s report, and, as a consequence, the Speaker will have had to make a decision to declare a vacancy. So the Government has stated the legislation will come into force on the day on which it receives the royal assent. That puts it ahead of the timing for this Parliament to be able to debate the Privileges Committee’s report.

Here again, the Government is manipulating the parliamentary system. I do not recall—other members here may recall this—ever seeing a bill go through the House that stated it came into force on the day on which it received the royal assent. Certainly, in this particular case, whether or not there has been a precedent, the Government should take extra care with regard to that sort of thing. However, when I think about it, why would the Government bother to take care? Why should the Government not have another go at abusing the system, when it is abusing the system anyway by passing this bill? So when we think about it—

Ron Mark: It’s a communist state!

JOHN CARTER: Absolutely! Why would the Government bother to worry about whether it will set a precedent? It just wants to get on and do it, without worrying about the people or about democracy. It does not matter a toss to this Government that we are doing things that normal Parliaments around the world do not do.

What happened in Australia, when events like this arose? The people vacated the seat and resigned. That is what happened in Australia, and it should happen here. They are honourable people over there, and not like the Labour Government here in New Zealand. This is a black, sad day for Parliament. This bill really is a disgrace.

The second thing I want to talk about is that it is becoming more and more evident that this bill is just a big cover-up for at least one other Labour member of Parliament, possibly the Prime Minister, Helen Clark, who has made a mistake.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Tim Barnett!

JOHN CARTER: No, I do not think it is Tim Barnett. I think it is the Prime Minister, Helen Clark. This point fits right in with clause 3. I believe that the Government has put this bill through with a provision that it will expire at the end of this term in order to cover up for somebody. I believe that person is Helen Clark.

Simon Power: Ask someone!

JOHN CARTER: I will ask whether it is Tim Barnett in a minute, but I do not think it is. I believe it is Helen Clark, because of what happened around “paintergate”. Helen Clark was quite happy to abuse the system, and to avoid being had up for fraud and all those sorts of things, so this issue will not make any difference to her, at all. Here we have Parliament ripping something else up, in order to cover up for the Prime Minister. That is just absolutely disgraceful.

David Benson-Pope: Get on the phone!

JOHN CARTER: I challenge the senior Government whip to stand up and deny that. I bet he cannot. Clause 3 will allow that to happen.

I bet the senior Government whip cannot stand up in this Committee, speak on behalf of the Prime Minister, and say that the other member who will benefit from this legislation is not the Prime Minister. I challenge him to do that; I bet that he cannot. He has had plenty of opportunities. The senior Government whip could take the next call, and say that the member for Northland is wrong and the Prime Minister is all OK. I bet he does not do that. Does any member want to take the bet up? Of course the senior Government whip will not take the challenge up. I ask the member Tim Barnett whether he is prepared to stand up in this Committee and say that the other member who will benefit from this legislation is not him. I wonder whether he will do that. I bet he will not.

The problem is that this bill now casts suspicion on all the members of the Labour Party, and, indeed, it casts suspicion on a whole number of people.

DAVID BENSON-POPE (Senior Whip—NZ Labour): I move, That the question be now put.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the motion be agreed to.

Ayes 69

Labour 50; Green Party 9; United Future 8; Progressive 2.

Noes 48

New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8.

Abstentions 1

Hunt.

Motion agreed to.

LINDSAY TISCH (Junior Whip—NZ National): I raise a point of order, Mr Chairman. I have tabled an amendment and I seek leave that it be put before the Hon Peter Dunne’s amendment, as the dates are different and it would be appropriate that my amendment be put first.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Is there any objection to that course of action? There is objection.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Richard Prebble to clause 2 be agreed to:

to omit the words “the day on which it receives the Royal assent” and substitute the words “1st day of January 2006”.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.

Ayes 48

New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8.

Noes 69

Labour 50; Green Party 9; United Future 8; Progressive 2.

Abstentions 1

Hunt.

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Dail Jones to clause 3 be agreed to:

to omit the words “with the close of polling day for the first general election held after the date on which this Act comes into force” and substitute the words “on the day after this Act receives its Royal assent”.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.

Ayes 56

New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8;United Future 8.

Noes 61

Labour 50; Green Party 9; Progressive 2.

Abstentions 1

Hunt.

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Richard Prebble to clause 3 be agreed to:

to omit the words “with the close of polling day for the first general election held after the date on which this Act comes into force” and substitute the words “1st day of January 2004”.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.

Ayes 48

New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8.

Noes 69

Labour 50; Green Party 9; United Future 8; Progressive 2.

Abstentions 1

Hunt.

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Peter Dunne to insert new clause 3A be agreed to:

to insert, after clause 3, the following new clause:

3A Application

This Act shall apply for the period from 14 August 2002 to 6 August 2003.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.

Ayes 56

New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8;United Future 8.

Noes 61

Labour 50; Green Party 9; Progressive 2.

Abstentions 1

Hunt.

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Lindsay Tisch to insert new clause 3A be agreed to:

to insert, after clause 3, the following new clause:

3A Application

This Act shall apply for the period from 11 June 2003 to 6 August 2003.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.

Ayes 56

New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8;United Future 8.

Noes 61

Labour 50; Green Party 9; Progressive 2.

Abstentions 1

Hunt.

Amendment not agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 1 be agreed to.

Ayes 61

Labour 50; Green Party 9; Progressive 2.

Noes 56

New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8;United Future 8.

Abstentions 1

Hunt.

Part 1 agreed to.

Part 2 Change to vacancy rules

Hon ROGER SOWRY (Deputy Leader—NZ National): I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. It has been a convention that, when a bill has not been to a select committee, the debate in the Committee stage is wide ranging and more time is given. In respect of Part 1 you gave the standard amount of time we have become accustomed to for a part by part debate on a bill that has been to a select committee. We are about to debate Part 2 and I am wondering whether we will be tied into those sorts of timings or whether you will follow the tradition—certainly in my time in Parliament—of allowing extra time, because the bill has not been to a select committee. That has been the convention, for the very reason that members have not had a chance to scrutinise the bill in a select committee.

Hon MARK BURTON (Deputy Leader of the House): It is fair to say that it has been a convention that extended time is given for the debate on the title of a bill that has not been to a select committee, and certainly that has been the case with this bill. As to the rest, it is a matter that has always been, and should quite properly be, the province of the Chair, because many factors come into play—the importance of the issue, the size of the part, and, most important, the relevance of the debate.

Hon KEN SHIRLEY (Deputy Leader—ACT NZ): I fully concur with the comments made by Mr Sowry. I was somewhat surprised when the debate on Part 1 was closed down. I am not relitigating that matter, but I did observe that the co-leader of the Greens, Mr Rod Donald, had been anxiously seeking a call. I was equally surprised when he voted for the closure motion, having sought a call, but be that as it may.

My concern is that we spent a very short period on Part 1. This bill amends the Electoral Act, but the bill has not been to a select committee. We are sitting under urgency, and I just point out that we spent more time on the title than we did on Part 1; and by no means did we spend too much time on the title. Some very interesting facts were given and points made by members, but the debate on Part 1 was truncated compared with the time we spent on the title. I support Mr Sowry’s point of order and urge you to give the Committee sufficient time to debate fully these very important provisions, which are causing so much concern.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I thank all members who made a contribution. It is the custom for the title to be a long, wide-ranging debate, and that was permitted. It is not necessarily that way when it comes to debates on the parts. I have taken on board what members have said, and I will attempt to give everyone a fair go at taking part in the debate.

Hon ROGER SOWRY (Deputy Leader—NZ National): I thought the Minister might well wish to start off the debate on this part, but that is probably asking too much. Part 2 is as reprehensible as Part 1. It is the retrospective part of the bill. In clause 5 this bill is deemed to have come into force on 14 August 2002—just on a year ago. That is when this Parliament commenced. So any member of Parliament who has broken the law with regard to foreign citizenship, or sought to have a foreign passport or dual citizenship whilst being a member of Parliament, is now deemed to be covered by this retrospective clause. We know that Mr Duynhoven has done that. We have no understanding why the Government has decided to go back to 14 August, because we know that Mr Duynhoven told the Privileges Committee that he sought to have his Dutch citizenship come into force this year. So there is no reason to go back. He sought to do it this year.

One would have thought we could have gone back as far as the dates Mr Duynhoven gave the Privileges Committee, and that would have covered him. So why did the Minister decide to go all the way back to 14 August? Could it be that the Minister decided to go back to 14 August because of another MP? Could that be the case? Can the Minister assure us that no other MP broke this law prior to the date Mr Duynhoven gave—I think July this year? Can he assure us that that is not the case? The Minister sits silent. It is interesting, because members of the Committee might want to know that members of the press gallery have talked to all political parties about this issue today. Every party has given an assurance bar the Labour Party. The Labour Party is saying—

David Benson-Pope: What about the ACT party?

Hon ROGER SOWRY: Mr Benson-Pope should just keep his hair on. The Labour Party is saying to the media: “No comment”. Dr Cullen’s official comment to the media at the moment is: We won’t comment on it—end of story.” So we ask the Minister why he insists that this bill go back nearly a year earlier than the date Mr Duynhoven sought to have his Dutch citizenship ratified. Why did he do that? Does the Minister have any reasons for that? Will he take a call and explain to the Committee?

Hon Rick Barker: I will.

Hon ROGER SOWRY: That is good. Can the Minister assure the Committee that he, personally, has no knowledge of any member of Parliament who has also been caught up in this issue? Can he assure the Committee of that?

Hon Rick Barker: I will take a call.

Hon ROGER SOWRY: Can the Minister assure the Committee that he has no knowledge of any other member being caught up in this?

Hon Rick Barker: I will take a call.

Hon ROGER SOWRY: The Minister said he will take a call, and I hope he does. I want to flag with you, Mr Chairperson, my intention to take another call following the Minister, or later on in the debate, to make sure he does answer those questions. All I want from the Minister is answers to two questions. First, why did the Minister choose to go back to when Parliament was sworn in? Secondly, does he have any knowledge of any other MP who has been caught up in this issue, and is that why he has gone back so far? If the Minister does not have any knowledge of any other MP being caught up in this issue, and we are to believe all other parties in the Committee—except for Labour—that says it is not them, then we want to know why he has gone back as far as that.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I call the honourable Minister Jim Sutton. [Interruption]

Hon ROGER SOWRY (Deputy Leader—NZ National): I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. You may not have seen the Minister in the chair seeking the call. The Minister indicated several times during my speech that he would take the call. He was moving, and I just wonder whether you missed that. Ministers usually get the call, even if one of their own colleagues seeks it. The Minister certainly moved. It was slow, but he did move.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): If he did move, I am sorry but I did not see him.

Hon JIM SUTTON (Minister of Agriculture): Members opposite raised the question of why we are doing what we are doing. I would say that, from my point of view, we are here to save “Private Harry”. Harry Duynhoven is an outstanding parliamentarian who, as we all know, is very proud of his Dutch heritage and his New Zealand citizenship. His parliamentary majority is bigger than the total personal votes of almost every member opposite. As such, he is the object of much spiteful envy and petty jealousy from members opposite—[Interruption]

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I refer members to Speaker’s ruling 51/5—a running commentary of interjection is not permitted. If members want to make a speech they can seek the call next time.

Ron Mark: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Could you give us a little guidance. This is a House of debate, and it is quite complimentary if someone’s debate is robust enough to invite reaction. That is part and parcel of debate in the House. The Minister is engaging in a robust debate and making very controversial statements. I ask you to consider that such controversial statements invite, as a matter of course, robust interjection.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I have already ruled on that, and the ruling stands.

Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Perhaps it would be helpful if you gave the Minister some advice about the constraints that come on any speaker in the Committee stage of a bill. Making reference to Mr Duynhoven’s significant majority, which no one disagrees with, is totally irrelevant to this debate, unless members are simply saying that, because he was so well elected last time, we should not bother to have an election in New Plymouth again while he is around.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Point of orders should be short. The Minister was coming to the point.

John Carter: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. You have just advised the Committee that interjections should be fewer, and that is fine. That is a ruling we would expect from the Chair, but I ask that it be consistently applied. There have been occasions, certainly when I have been on my feet, when members have continually interjected but have not been called to order. I do not mind interjections myself. They do not worry me. In fact, I am very happy about it. But if we are to have that ruling, let us have some consistency.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I refer the member to Speaker’s ruling 64/3(1) and say that we take note of what happens in the Chamber, and each case is judged on its merits.

Hon JIM SUTTON: I am addressing the issue raised by members opposite of why we are here debating this matter. I would say this. In a small-minded, malicious way members opposite have seized upon the absurd technicality of a long-obsolete remnant of ancient legislation to try to force Harry out. That is what they are doing. In so doing, in their ridiculous pomposity, they are revealing their contempt and complete disregard for the very clear preference of the good people of New Plymouth. They have chosen Harry by a bigger margin than any other sitting member of Parliament.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): The Minister cannot use a person’s first name. That is the third time he has done it. Could he please refer to the member by his full name.

Hon JIM SUTTON: The people of New Plymouth have chosen the Hon Harry Duynhoven as their representative in Parliament by a greater margin than any other sitting member of Parliament. The National Party—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. With respect, it is not befitting the Government to send down to the Chamber a Minister who knows nothing about Part 2 of this legislation. He has not referred to it in any specific sense but has tried to commence a general argument. That may be appropriate at the introduction, the report back, or the debate on the title, but it is not appropriate now. Which part of Part 2, or any part of Part 2, is the Minister focusing his mind on? This is the widest debate of this subject that I have heard today. To send down a tired old Minister and have him slash around the Chamber and beat his gums, is not good enough.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I would like the Minister to come to the point.

Hon JIM SUTTON: I am specifically addressing clauses 4, 5, and 6 of Part 2 to explain why we are here debating this issue. We are involved in this prolonged debate because the National Party, ACT, and New Zealand First—the self-satisfied, self-important Tories—who could not defeat the democratic will of the good people of New Plymouth by fair means, are trying now to do it by foul means. That is what this debate is all about. It is time we closed it down and got on with the real business of Parliament.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. You have asked the Minister to focus on the legislation. Just reciting the clauses that he thinks he is referring to is not good enough. He has immediately gone back to expressing his bile and venom about the next Government of this country, knowing full well that he does not understand the subject he is addressing right now. If he cannot address the subject, then stop his speech and we will get back to the bill.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I might add that that applies to all members.

Hon JIM SUTTON: I have made the point I wanted to make. I suggest we close down this time-wasting debate and get back to the real business of Parliament—something we were sent here by the electors to get on with.

DAIL JONES (NZ First): One of the matters mentioned by Dr Cullen at the very beginning of this debate was in reference to clause 6. When he was told that it is possible for a New Zealand citizen to lose his or her New Zealand citizenship, a sudden light dawned on him that we should therefore have a provision, in terms of section 55(1) of the principal Act, which he proposed should read: “the seat of any member of Parliament shall become vacant if he or she, being a person who is a New Zealand citizen, ceases to be a New Zealand citizen.” The reason we have not had this provision in the past is that a person born in New Zealand never ceases to be a New Zealand citizen. That is just the way it is. Such a provision is not needed. If one is born in New Zealand it is not possible to cease to be a New Zealand citizen.

The classic examples were in the Second World War. The first involved Japanese Americans who were born in the United States but felt they were more Japanese than American. So they went over to Japan and fought for their beloved country, Japan, in the Second World War, as pilots and soldiers. After the war they were not treated as prisoners of war but as traitors. Although they went back to their homeland and fought for the country they sincerely believed in, for their flag, the Americans took the view that, at law, they were always citizens of the country they were born in. No matter what they did with their lives they were always citizens of that country, and, if they fought against the country in which they were born, they were traitors and could be executed. And they were shot—they might have been hanged, but they were killed, executed, by the Americans. So this provision is not worth the paper it is written on, and that is why it has never been in legislation before. The Government, in bringing in legislation with this provision in it, has highlighted the whole fallacy—the whole falseness—of it. It is useless legislation. It is legislation totally without thought. It has not been given full consideration. The provision is absolutely meaningless.

The other example was Lord Haw-Haw, Joyce v DPP —the House of Lords in one of the most appropriate, but worst, decisions it ever made, if one looks at it as a lawyer. Lord Haw-Haw was a Northern Irishman who had a passport—

Hon Richard Prebble: Applied for a passport.

DAIL JONES: He applied for a passport. Then he was in England. His passport, or whatever it was, lapsed. He went over to Germany and became known as the infamous Lord Haw-Haw. He was never really a citizen, but Britain—and I agree entirely with what it did to Lord Haw-Haw—decided he remained a British citizen, and he was executed. Even if one is not warned, losing one’s citizenship is an almost impossible thing to do, whether or not we like it.

This provision, which appealed to Dr Cullen and some members of the Labour Party during the select committee, is utterly useless. At the very least what it shows is that it should not have been in this bill. If there is ever to be any consideration of this matter, that is when this provision should be considered. It highlights what a waste of time this Labour Party has been exercising us all in. We should have had a very simple bill supporting Harry Duynhoven, which New Zealand First wanted to do at the beginning. Our offer was rejected. The Government has tried to protect everybody under this legislation in terms of section 55(1)(b), referred to in clause 4. We will not support anyone who has taken an oath of allegiance to a foreign country and give him or her the right to be a member of Parliament after the last election. That is what section 55(1)(b), referred to in clause 4, is doing. We ask the Labour Party: who is the person who has taken an oath of allegiance? He has done more than Harry Duynhoven—

Opposition member: She.

DAIL JONES: —she has done more than Harry Duynhoven. Was it my friend Dr Ashraf Choudhary, the list member who was born in the Punjab in Pakistan? Did he unknowingly, innocently, or somehow or another renew his Pakistani passport? As a list MP he would have been gone, like Ms Chal, without there being any thought of a by-election or whatever. He should stand up and let us know. I look at Tim Barnett. What about him? It may be other members in this House, but I will not go through the entire list. However, section 55(1)(b) does not apply to Harry Duynhoven, yet we are being asked to give effect to a matter about which we have absolutely no knowledge whatsoever. We are being asked as an Opposition blindly to support someone in this situation—and, of course, we are being asked to support someone who might become an Iraqi after this bill is passed.

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (Leader—ACT NZ): We are coming to the operative clause of the bill, clause 4, which states that section 55(1)(b) and (c) of the principal Act—that is the Electoral Act—do not apply to any member of Parliament. That is a remarkable clause, when one thinks about it. It just says that those parts of that section of the Act do not apply. What is that section? It is the section that says a member of Parliament cannot swear allegiance to a foreign State. I have a series of amendments. I will quickly go through them because I think the Committee ought to study them.

The first one is to replace “any member of Parliament” with just “Hon Harry Duynhoven”. Then we would be doing exactly what New Zealand First wants, because the bill would apply only to that member. I think the Greens ought to look at that.

I really do ask the Committee to support the next one. The ACT members of Parliament do not want to have this exemption; we want to remain bound by the law to give allegiance only to New Zealand. So we have asked that every ACT MP be exempted from this bill. I am asking Parliament not to apply it to us.

Then I have amendments listing a number of MPs who, it is rumoured, are the MPs concerned who are affected by this law. Why have I chosen those MPs? Because they are the ones about whom rumours are going around. There might be others. I want those MPs to know, because they have an interesting question: if it is not them, then they should make sure they do not vote for this clause. I have started off with the Rt Hon Helen Clark, then Tim Barnett, Dr Ashraf Choudhary, Michael Cullen, Taito Phillip Field, Hon Mark Gosche, Winnie Laban, and the Hon Jim Sutton. Then, as the Greens seem to be quite extraordinary in their support for this bill, I have Sue Bradford and Nandor Tanczos. There may be others. I invite other MPs to put them up.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: What about Keith Locke?

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE: No, I think Keith Locke is actually a New Zealand - bred Kampuchean supporter. Let me make this point. I have been listening to people who are not on the Privileges Committee saying that the National Party and the ACT party turned down the Privileges Committee doing a survey. Not so! Those members should go and look at the minutes of the committee. They will not see any proposal to do a survey. It was discussed, and we realised that, as a select committee, we did not have the power to do it. My party and others said that we would do it through the whips, and we came back to the committee. I gave such an undertaking, having taken this issue so seriously that I had gone back to every member of our party—although I did not contact Donna Awatere Huata, because I know where she comes from; I wish this bill did catch her, but it does not. The National Party came back and made its statement. Mr Peters said at first he had not done it, but when he came back to the next meeting he had. Every single party, except the Labour Party, gave an undertaking to the Privileges Committee, many of which have been repeated here under privilege. The only party at the Privileges Committee that would not state that it did not have members of Parliament who have sworn allegiance to foreign powers was the Government—the Labour Party.

I find that quite extraordinary. It is unprecedented—frightening—that we have a Government putting through a change in the law, and it is not prepared to be upfront with this Parliament. Government members are so arrogant that they do not think they have to answer, and they are, apparently, telling the media and the public of New Zealand “No comment.” That is not good enough. I want to see whether Helen Clark is prepared to vote in this House to exempt herself from the law. I want to know that our Prime Minister is not going to travel overseas on a foreign passport, and I want to know that members of Cabinet are not travelling around the world on foreign passports.

I would like to hear from every one of those MPs I have named. Let me apologise to any of them who are not in that position, but their names have been put there by their own party. In fact, if one of them gets up here and says in front of the whole Committee—so that it is subject to privilege—that he or she is not in that position, I will withdraw the amendment applying to that member. That is a pretty fair offer. Having questioned them in this way, I say that that is what I would do; I would be taking a point of order and saying that I do not have an overseas passport, that I give my allegiance purely to New Zealand. In fact, I have had members call out to me and ask me that, and I have repeated that I give my allegiance to this country.

Hon RICK BARKER (Associate Minister of Justice): I want to start with clause 6, and follow on from the comments made by Mr Jones. I do not agree with the interpretation he put to the Committee. My advice is that people can in fact renounce New Zealand citizenship. There is, on occasions, a requirement that one does so, if one takes out the citizenship of another country.

The point I want to make is that the advice the officials gave us, and the advice that was given, as I understand it, to the Privileges Committee, is that it is possible for someone to come into this House with two citizenships—that is perfectly legal—and that it is perfectly legal for that person in that circumstance then to renounce his or her New Zealand citizenship. The law is silent on that. That is one part of it.

I come back to the question—raised initially by Roger Sowry—as to why we have determined that the bill shall come into effect on 14 August, and go right through to the end of the electoral cycle. The reason is, quite simply, to cover the whole election period, the whole of the Parliament, and all members of Parliament. That is why we have not put the bill in the name of an individual MP.

That brings me to the other question that Roger Sowry asked me, which was whether I personally have any knowledge of another person in this situation. The answer to that question is that, no, I do not. But it seems to me to be sensible, in drafting this legislation, to make it a piece of law that applies to all members for the term of this Parliament.

I restate my advice, which I am giving to members now for the fourth or fifth time, that after this bill is passed, and, certainly, within the next few days, I will be writing to the Justice and Electoral Committee, and I will be drawing this matter to its attention. I will be asking the select committee to undertake some work on this particular area, as members of Parliament are obviously very concerned to make sure that the rules are correct, that we have the right balance, and that we have not simply incorporated old legislation without giving it the careful consideration that we should, therefore leaving ourselves open to unintended consequences. I would have thought that a thorough, sensible review by the Justice and Electoral Committee would be a good thing, and that it would be supported widely by this Parliament.

It is the intention that, prior to this Parliament rising, another bill will be introduced, and the law will be changed. It will be clear to all, and we will have a consistent set of logic applying to it. At the moment, it is perfectly fine for a person to come into this House with dual citizenship, but if that person somehow, during the term of the Parliament, simply acknowledges, as Mr Duynhoven has done, that he or she is entitled to another nationality or citizenship, he or she is suddenly sprung from it.

I have to say that nobody in this country would have any doubts about Harry Duynhoven’s origins. His name is a very good indication of that. All have known that he has been a Dutch national. He has been very proud of that. He has advocated for that community because of his historical links to it. There is no doubt about that, so there is no question about the public being duped in any way.

GERRY BROWNLEE (NZ National—Ilam): What a sad apology of a speech that was from the Associate Minister of Justice! Why can the Minister not stop this nonsense of pretending that this bill somehow does every member of Parliament a favour? The Opposition parties have all said they do not want it and do not need it because it does not apply to any of them, but the Minister and his colleagues continue to say they have gone for that 14 August date because they want the provisions set out in Part 2 to apply to all members during this Parliamentary term. If there is just one member who is in trouble, then why can the Government not just put his name on the bill? It would still be wrong, but why not do that?

As for the Minister’s answer to the question about whether he has personal knowledge of any other person in the Labour Party or any of the Government-supporting parties being in a position similar to Harry Duynhoven’s—the Minister said he does not have personal knowledge—it absolutely shimmied around the edges. It was a classic Helen Clark “dance around the edges” answer—avoid and evade. It is quite clear, because the Minister was unable to stand up and unequivocally say that no other member of the Government-supporting parties has a problem, that the Government is protecting someone.

Did the Minister really consider all the provisions of section 55 of the Electoral Act when he came to put together Part 2? It seems to me to be quite clear that, under section 55, someone like Graham Kelly, who has been forced out of Parliament to take up his position as High Commissioner in Canada, could have chosen to remain a member of Parliament. Section 55(1) states: “The seat of any member of Parliament shall become vacant—(a) if, otherwise than by virtue of being a head of mission or head of post within the meaning of the Foreign Affairs Act 1988, for 1 whole session of Parliament he or she fails, without permission of the House of Representatives, to give his or her attendance in the House;”—in other words, fails to turn up. Well, what that tells me is that Graham Kelly did not need to go, but was forced to go.

If we read a bit further in the Act, we see that it tells us that Harry Duynhoven does have to go; the rest of us, supposedly, are being forced into keeping him here. This is just the worst kind of legislation we could possibly have. It is, in its retrospective effect, saying to New Zealanders that it is all right for the law to expect that any other New Zealander knows the law—any other New Zealander is deemed to know the law—and therefore pays the consequence of breaking it, but a member of Parliament, a person who stood for election, does not have to know the Electoral Act. That is an absolute nonsense.

I hope the new Minister in the chair, David Cunliffe, a man rumoured to have dual citizenship—

Dr Wayne Mapp: Of the United States?

GERRY BROWNLEE: —of the United States, in fact, and New Zealand—will explain to us why the provision in clause 6 has to be there. Why do we have to say it is OK for someone to give up his or her New Zealand citizenship during this term? What is so special about this term that allows this particular group of MPs to go off and seek citizenship anywhere else in the world? It is patently clear that the Labour caucus has a number of people who have breached the Act. It has a number of people who do not know the law.

We are being told today that, because Mr Duynhoven has such a huge majority, he is above the law; he is above the law by virtue of the fact that he polls well. We are also being told that by the provision being made as broad as it is, we are all, in some way, being done a favour by the Government. A simple thing for this Minister to do, something that no other Minister has been able to do—and he is the kind of guy who backs himself to do what no one else can—is to stand up, take a call, and say quite clearly that the only person in his caucus with a problem is Harry Duynhoven. He will not do it.

SIMON POWER (NZ National—Rangitikei): Part 2 of the Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill raises some very interesting questions. When we listened to the Hon Jim Sutton doing his best impersonation of John Wayne, it was clear that he does not understand what the bill means. He does not have a clue. He was sent down here by someone on a floor above him, and told to get in there and fight for Harry Duynhoven, but he missed the point completely, because the bill is about more than just the Hon Harry Duynhoven, as my colleagues have pointed out.

If this bill were designed to protect Harry Duynhoven only, clause 4 would state: “Section 55(1)(b) and (c) of the principal Act do not apply to the Hon Harry Duynhoven.” But that is not what it states. What it states is: “... the principal Act do not apply to any member of Parliament.” As my colleague Gerry Brownlee has pointed out, nobody on this side of the Chamber asked for it. In fact, I do not believe that anybody in the Chamber at all, apart from Labour Party members, has asked for this particular clause, and it seems to me that the whole issue would go away if each member of the Labour Party stood in the Chamber and said: “It’s not me.” At that point we would not have to worry any more about it, and we would be clear that the bill was about the Hon Harry Duynhoven.

The most disturbing thing about Jim Sutton’s comments was that he would have clause 4 amended to state: “Section 55(1)(b) and (c) of the principal Act do not apply to any member of Parliament, provided their majority is approved by the Hon Rick Barker.” That scares me on many levels, but the first level on which it scares me—and, let us be fair, Harry Duynhoven does have a large majority, but I am a bit concerned that Mr Barker would not be able to count that high—is that members of the Government have risen in this Chamber today and said that this measure should not matter, because of the size of Mr Duynhoven’s majority. That is just ridiculous. Would the same rules apply to David Parker, who sits on a majority of about 680 or 690, from memory?

Gerry Brownlee: Let him go.

SIMON POWER: He would be gone.

Darren Hughes: I’ve got a great majority.

SIMON POWER: Darren Hughes pipes up. He should just get up and declare that he, clearly, has dual citizenship of New Zealand and some African nation, and tell the Committee what the story is and be done with it, or, alternatively, he should stand now and deny his citizenship of an African nation. It is pretty clear to the rest of us that that possibility exists. He should get up and take that opportunity.

The Hon Roger Sowry in his initial remarks raised the point as to why on earth we would include the date of 14 August 2002 as part of the retrospectivity of this legislation, when Harry Duynhoven, in his own evidence to the Privileges Committee, said that he applied for citizenship of the Netherlands this year. Why is that? That date is the date on which the writ was returned after the last election, but why would we be bothered about having the legislation take effect from that date, if no one other than Harry Duynhoven has broken the law?

Dr Wayne Mapp: Someone else has applied.

SIMON POWER: Someone else has applied. So we get back to the same central point that was raised with regard to the title and to the way in which Part 1 was put together. Members on this side of the Chamber are interested to know which member of the Labour Party is hiding. It would be very straightforward simply to say: “It’s not me”. I cannot understand why the media in this country are letting Dr Cullen get away with “No comment” when every other party in Parliament has declared, straight up, that none of its members have breached those rules. This is a dual standard. It is a very simple and straightforward matter to rectify. I say to those who believe that an exemption should be made just for Harry Duynhoven that if members opposite believe that he is so worthy of special legislation, why was he not put in Cabinet straight away? Why has Harry Duynhoven become indispensable now? It is a very odd trend, considering the record of that poor old member under the current Prime Minister.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): New Zealand First will be putting an amendment to clause 4 of the Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill, to read as follows: “That clause 4 be amended by adding after the word ‘Parliament’ on line 5 of page 2 the words ‘except New Zealand First’.” We will be putting that amendment because, frankly, we do not want to accept the Labour Government’s open invitation to treachery, treason, and traitorous behaviour. We have no desire to accept its open invitation for us to join one or other of its members, in the likelihood of that happening. We want to ensure that we deny Labour the option of respectability, by our not being amongst the members of Parliament who will gain this unwanted protection. We are saying to Labour very clearly today: “Besmirch your own, but don’t besmirch us. Disgrace your own, but don’t seek to disgrace us.”

David Benson-Pope: Who have you been giving taxi chits to?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I say to Mr Benson-Pope that he would have been much happier in a gay bar with lots of paedophiles, but I am not. He thinks paedophilia is a wanted emotion. He would defend anything. If he does not like this, he should keep quiet.

I say to the Labour Party: “Besmirch and shame your own, but don’t besmirch us. Disgrace your own, but don’t disgrace us. Don’t try to pretend that any party other than your own wants this protection.” For New Zealand First’s part, our 13 members want out of this disgraceful behaviour, this disgusting, unparalleled, unprecedented measure in the history of this Parliament. It is no use Labour members muttering under their breath. Labour Party members should get up and tell us why we should accept this protection. Did we ask for it? No. Who asked for it? Harry Duynhoven. He told everybody that he needed it, and we believed him. We still do.

Simon Power: He’s honest.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: At least he is honest. At least he is upright. At least he is straight and direct. We believe him. So who else will gain this protection? Labour Party members think they can get away with this by saying “No comment”. It is astonishing that this matter should be dealt with so lightly by the media of this country. It is one more indicator of non-neutrality, non-independence, and bias. If any other party said: “Go away, we’re not making a comment on a critical issue like this.”, it would be pilloried all over the front pages and it would be first on the 6 o’clock news.

Dail Jones: Especially the Dominion Post.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Especially the Dominion Post. I wonder what that fish ‘n’ chips throwaway will make of this. That paper pays its journalists odium money for working for it. Typically, this will be on about page 9. An issue that is critical to our constitutional democracy will be on page 9, because what someone eats for dinner is more important to that paper. If one coughs, the Dominion Post reports that as something else. I say again to Labour that we will be voting for this amendment, and I hope our colleagues in the Chamber will.

Stephen Franks: We’ll help you.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I thank the member very much. We want to be outside this balloon of disgraceful manipulation, disguise, secrecy, and Philby-like, Burgess-like, Blunt-like, and Maclean-like behaviour.

STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT NZ): I have three issues to cover in this Part 2 debate. The first is an unintended—I am sure—or, I hope, unplanned effect of the proposed new provision that people can be kicked out of Parliament if they lose their New Zealand citizenship. This is a “Mugabe” clause. That might be funny to people who think that the idea of treachery or betrayal is funny. That might be funny to the senior Government whip, who has sat there letting his Labour spokespersons scoff at the idea of wanting to uphold affiliation and loyalty. But these kinds of provisions have been turned on their heads in other places. In May 1999 a woman was ejected permanently from the Turkish Parliament by the decree of the President. He had stripped her of her Turkish citizenship because she had dual citizenship and members did not like her wearing a headscarf in Parliament. That is what a provision like this is used for.

This kind of provision is used routinely in Central Asia where there is a bicultural society—lovely thing, that bicultural society—and the new indigenous majority does not like the Russians. So how has it got rid of the Russians from its Parliament? It has used a provision exactly like this to strip them of their citizenship and kick them out immediately. That is a lot easier than going through an electoral integrity bill. It is an awful lot easier than going through the procedures put into electoral legislation in 2000 by that Labour Government, which at that stage was claiming to uphold integrity in the constitution. A Government just has to use a section like this—find someone it does not like with dual citizenship, use executive power to strip that person of that citizenship, and it has got rid of its irritant.

That is the sort of reason that these things should not be going through this Parliament in one day, under urgency. They are constitutional issues and they need thought. If this Government were serious about a select committee review, it would have said that this bill had effect for a reasonable time so that the select committee could look at it. It could have said that this suspension lasted until, say, November, when the select committee could have taken account of the possibility that something like clause 6 could be misused to eject people the Government did not like. That is a constitutional provision, an odious provision, and the Government does not care about it.

I heard Government members scoffing earlier at the idea that members of Parliament had had any correspondence with people complaining about the action being taken today. I can tell members about one correspondent—Neil Harrap, inventor of the Fly by Wire adventure attraction. He is an exporter to a number of places in the United States, and the man who was caught, very unfortunately, by the tragic accident in Queenstown. Neil Harrap called me and said: “I thought they couldn’t do retrospective legislation, but I have just been told that Parliament has cancelled my insurance retrospectively under the Health and Safety in Employment Act.” I said that I did not think Parliament would have done that retrospectively. There is a strong constitutional convention against depriving people of rights retrospectively, and anything retrospective should be of the most limited extent possible. But I looked the Act up, and he was right.

The last time this Parliament deliberately did something retrospective, it cancelled Neil Harrap’s insurance, and now, having paid his premiums, he is facing liability for something he personally had nothing to do with. Under the Health and Safety in Employment Act, he is facing full liability for that accident, without his insurance. This Government did that deliberately, despite the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act provision against retrospectivity, and now it is bringing this bill into Parliament with absolutely no comment from the Attorney-General under section 7 of that Act. Where is the legal guardian of the Cabinet’s conscience? Where is the Attorney-General? Where is the section 7 opinion? I have only just touched on the issues involved in Part 2, but we are being asked to race this bill through with a completely unnecessary degree of retrospectivity.

If the Government wanted to go along with New Zealand First and United Future, I could have understood it, but there is something sinister here. This is a corrupt process. Government members might laugh at the Turkish Parliament ejecting a member because it had stripped her of her dual citizenship, but a Government that can get the Greens to support it in this kind of retrospectivity, when they do not even know who it applies to, is of great concern. As the price of their compliance, the Greens have not insisted on knowing—or even asked—just what this legislation covers.

Dr WAYNE MAPP (NZ National—North Shore): In the last Parliament this Government proudly proclaimed that it believed in the Electoral Integrity Act, and it went around the country saying how important it was that there was integrity in the electoral process. It campaigned on it, and passed the law, which will last for a while—but what is the first issue it deals with under the Electoral Act in this Parliament? The Government has just swept the idea of integrity past, saying “Oh, no, no. Don’t worry about it. Harry may have offended a little bit, but we’ll fix it for you, Harry, and we will fix it for this other unknown person, or persons, by retrospective legislation.” Where is the integrity in that? Where is the proper observance of constitutionalism in that? Where is the person and Government that would get up and defend the whole idea and notion of retrospectivity, and who would get up and say why this legislation has to be so extensive that it covers far more than Mr Duynhoven?

I can say to the Committee, and to the country, that my colleague, Mr Gerry Brownlee, has put forward an amendment on behalf of the National Party that says that we do not want this legislation to apply to us, because our views are clear. Each and every one of the members of the National Party has one allegiance—not several, but just one—and that is to New Zealand. We do not want a suspension of section 55(1)(b) of the Electoral Act. We are not asking to be able to give allegiance to some foreign power or prince, but Labour is—for the future, apparently. We are not asking to be able to get foreign passports, but Labour is.

The interesting thing here is that the bill is not just about the actions of Mr Duynhoven—or, indeed, of another person or persons—that occurred prior to today. If that were the case, then these provisions would be suspended only till today. But these provisions allow for members of the Labour Party to renew their foreign passports, and to make declarations of allegiance to foreign sovereigns and Governments in the future. So I wonder which one of those members wants to go out and renew his or her foreign passport. Surely Labour members have been put on notice in this Parliament today, and on days previous, that they are expected to govern in the good interests of this country.

I want to tell members that I listen to that prayer each day, and it asks us to govern in the interests of New Zealanders. I would have thought that that meant that we do not go out and get a passport of a foreign country, either in the past or in the future. We do not go out and take oaths of allegiance to foreign sovereigns and foreign princes. But, no, this Government wants to do precisely those things. Its excuse—miserable as it is—is that the Justice and Electoral Committee needs to be able to consider this matter for the future. That is simply a falsehood.

This legislation—if it is needed at all, and it is not—should cease to operate as of tomorrow, so that the country can consider whether its members of Parliament should be able to get foreign passports and make oaths of allegiance to other countries. But no, the Government will not allow New Zealanders to consider that, because for the next 2 years—up until the next election—there will be members of the Labour Party and the Green Party who go out to apply for passports, and who go out and give allegiance to foreign powers and foreign Governments. I have to ask myself what New Zealanders would say about that. Can we imagine the spectacle of Mr Locke enthusiastically taking up the prospect of declaring his allegiance to the principles of Fidel Castro? Members will hear it from today.

Hon MARK GOSCHE (NZ Labour—Maungakiekie): I move, That the question be now put.

STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT NZ): I appreciate being given the call, and I recognise that I am somewhat privileged. I do have other matters in Part 2 that I think this Committee needs to consider. Firstly, there is a highly rational reason for sections 55(1)(b) and (c). Although there has been an attempt to portray those sections as fuddy-duddy relics of ancient requirements that do not matter any longer, there is actually a very sensible pattern in them, which is no doubt the reason that Parliament left them in place when it last looked at the Electoral Act 3 years ago.

The rational reason is that the Act trusts the people. The Act provides that there is no reason that the people should not be left to elect someone who has dual citizenship, as long as they know about it. That sort of thing comes out in an election campaign. The people elect the person they choose, but that person cannot then succumb to the temptations that come in office and change his or her allegiance, fetter his or her discretion, or come into a relationship with a foreign power after he or she has been elected. If the person does so, that person has to resubmit himself or herself for effective ratification by the electorate. So the law is not penal or punitive. It simply provides that someone who changes his or her status in that kind of way needs to go and get a fresh mandate from the electorate. A person can do that. The law does not state that a person cannot owe dual allegiances, but it does state that if a person creates an allegiance while he or she is a parliamentarian, that person has to then go back and seek the re-approval of the people.

That is a very sound principle, and I cannot see that the Justice and Electoral Committee will be able to improve on it. Therefore, when we look at the provision for retrospective change in clause 5 of the bill, and at the period of retrospectivity, we see that this rushed process is saying that it does not matter that the people have elected us on the assumption that, on a change in our status, they will get another go. We will pre-empt that opportunity, not just for Mr Harry Duynhoven but also for anyone in this House. That is a very significant change to the vacancy rules. In effect, it changes the contract, the constitution, and the basis on which we are here as members.

We urge the Labour Party to vote for the amendments that Richard Prebble has put forward, by which the suspension of those sections would not apply to ACT. We do not want the benefit of this measure. We believe we have been elected here by New Zealanders who expect us to have to live with the consequences of the decisions that are made in this Parliament. A member who applies for Dutch citizenship, or any other citizenship, while he or she is an MP is, in effect, saying he or she will leave the rubble that he or she may create, and will be able to go off and live on a Dutch pension, irrespective of where the New Zealand economy goes to. Mr Duynhoven may have provided one of the most benign examples of what can happen. It may be that people think there is nothing wrong with someone wanting to go and live in the Netherlands. But there is everything wrong with a member of Parliament sitting here, voting, and affecting the future of New Zealanders, and meanwhile having an exit hatch wide open, without people being aware of that at the time the MP was elected.

The provision we are suspending states that if a person creates an escape hatch while still a member of Parliament, then he or she had better get a fresh mandate. We have effectively said that Mr Duynhoven, and all the other mysterious members who have created their escape hatches—from the Prime Minister, with her escape hatch to the United Nations, all the way down—can do so, using, and perhaps abusing, the powers they are given as members of Parliament, and perhaps selling their vote to foreign powers. They can take on an escape hatch by perhaps fettering their discretion, and pledging their vote—and that is not fanciful; it has happened in the British Parliament. Votes have been sold in return for future benefits.

The provision that we are suspending is part of the constitutional protection for New Zealanders that prevents a member of Parliament from being potentially tempted to use his or her powers to gain an advantage from a foreign power, or to gain some sort of concession. I am sure that the Dutch Ambassador raced Harry Duynhoven’s application through far faster than she would have done for any ordinary citizen. One can already see that an MP is in a privileged position to extract concessions from foreign powers.

MARTIN GALLAGHER (NZ Labour—Hamilton West): I move, That the question be now put.

Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU (NZ National): I am very pleased to stand and take a call on Part 2. I ask members a question: what is the difference between an Aussie MP and a New Zealand Labour MP? The answer is that the Aussie MP knows the difference between right and wrong, and that lot on the Government side of the Chamber have no idea about that. I am absolutely ashamed to be part of a Parliament in which we have a Government that uses the law with impunity to get its own ends for no good motive, and that treats the law with cynicism.

This Government has done that twice in the last month. This is the second time we have been put into urgency with regard to retrospective legislation, and I think that is a disgrace. I say to the Minister, Rick Barker, that he should not pass this legislation on my behalf—I do not want it or need it. He should not pretend that he is doing any of us on the Opposition side of the Committee a favour—other than the Greens, who would not know a principle if they saw one. They would not know a principle if they tripped over it. That is the great disappointment about Rod Donald, who thinks he is the defender of the faith, the defender of democracy, and the defender of the constitution. He is none of those things. He is so hungry for power and so willing to get into bed with the Government that he will do anything, and this is one of the things he will do.

I mean no disrespect to any of the members on the Opposition side of the Chamber when I say it is great to be tangata whenua. It is great to be mana whenua, and I will tell members why that is. I have no need for this law. I have no need for an allegiance to anybody else, and I have no need whatsoever for a passport from any other country. Whether I am in this House or outside Parliament I have no need for it, and I do not want it. Rick Barker can have his legislation, because I do not want or need it. I know where my allegiance lies, and it is to this country, New Zealand, and it is to New Zealanders. I do not need some other country’s flag to be flying in my office; I do not need a Dutch flag or any other flag. I do not mean any disrespect to those other nationalities, but if one comes to this place and swears allegiance to this country, then that is all one should have. We should have no accommodation at all for members of Parliament who want to hold dual citizenship—no accommodation at all.

Harry Duynhoven made a mistake—tough. He breached the law. His seat became vacant, and certain things should have flowed from that, but they did not. Now that we have seen what is flowing from it, we can see the Government is so arrogant that it will use the law to give an advantage to one of its own when it suits it. But the Government has ultimately brought great disgrace on this House. It has used the law with impunity, and brought this House into disrepute. I am ashamed to be part of a Parliament in which we have a Labour Government that does not know the difference between right and wrong, and that is using the law to advantage itself. All that the Government can think of is to hang on to power—never mind about the constitution, democratic principle, or what is right. No, it does not mind about any of those things.

I will give some advice to the members on the Government side of the Committee, including the whippersnapper David Cunliffe, who is just new here, and who is the great white hope of the Labour Party. He thinks he knows everything, but he must get something in his head. If David Cunliffe seriously wants to be a leader of this country, he had better seriously understand the difference between right and wrong. This legislation is absolutely wrong. It smells. I absolutely loathe what is happening here today.

The Māori members on the Government side of the Chamber should think hard about this bill. If they use the law with impunity to advantage one of their own, it can also be used with impunity to disadvantage them. They have to think about that. What is happening today, whereby the law may be suspended or bent, is part of the history of our country, and Māori were the people at the receiving end of the law when it was sometimes suspended.

DAVID BENSON-POPE (Senior Whip—NZ Labour): I move, That the question be now put.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (NZ National—Nelson): I rise with significant concern about the provisions in this part. Again, I want to challenge the Government about its double standards. Only 6 weeks ago the Attorney-General, Margaret Wilson, said that if a person broke the law, he or she had to face the music. When my situation arose and the Solicitor-General alleged that I had broken the law, Ministers of the Government said the law applied regardless of whether they agreed with it or not—and the Government has introduced a bill to change the very section of the Guardianship Act that I am alleged to have broken. Government Ministers said that did not matter, and I had to comply with the law of the land on the day. On that basis, the top law enforcement officer in this country will drag me before the High Court and try to hang me for doing my job.

Mr Harry Duynhoven then came along. He was not doing constituency work and was not trying to help anybody, but, as he said to the Privileges Committee, he wanted an extra passport so that he and his children could travel easily in Europe. On the basis of that, he breached the Electoral Act. Then the Government changed its tune suddenly. Only 4 weeks earlier, it set the moral standard, and said that Nick Smith had to front up and account for his actions. Suddenly, the rules are different for Harry Duynhoven, and I ask Government members why that is. When the Solicitor-General alleges that I have broken the law I have to face the music, but when the same Solicitor-General finds that Harry Duynhoven had breached the Electoral Act, the Government is to pass retrospective legislation. Section 55 of the Act is the very section that, if I am found guilty, will potentially put my position as a member of this House at risk.

Government members say that this legislation is a matter of principle. Well, golly gee! The principle goes no further than looking after their mates, and having a different standard for those who sit on the Government side of the Chamber. I listened to the debate last night and all morning, and I have yet to hear a single member from the Government explain why I should be hung and Harry Duynhoven should walk free. That is what the Government is saying should happen.

Would Clayton Cosgrove, the noisy member from Waimakariri, explain why he will vote for legislation that changes the very section that, if I am convicted of the alleged breach of the Guardianship Act, will put my career at risk, and why he thinks that I should go to the High Court, but not Harry Duynhoven? Will he support the amendment proposed by the United Future party, which has at least been consistent? I am not asking for the protection of this Parliament, and nor should Harry Duynhoven. But I am saying that at least the United Future party is being consistent.

Clayton Cosgrove: Which of the five lawsuits against you are you talking about?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Mr Cosgrove wants to divert attention from the issue. He does not want to answer the question of why there is one standard for members of the Government and a different standard for members of the Opposition.

It is a damning indictment on this Parliament when there is one set of rules for members on one side of the Chamber and a different set of rules for those on the other side. I ask Government members to examine their consciences and to think about whether they are being consistent and fair to this wonderful institution of Parliament that we are privileged to sit in. It is just a pure double standard. This is straight cynical politics. The Government does not want to hold a by-election. It will conveniently change section 55(1) of the Act because it may hang Harry Duynhoven, but it will leave me lined up on another provision in section 55. If something is good enough for one, it is good enough for all. Margaret Wilson has to explain this bill. Other Ministers like Damien O’Connor have to explain it. Only 6 weeks ago my local newspaper stated that everybody must comply with the law—and Harry Duynhoven is included.

CLAYTON COSGROVE (NZ Labour—Waimakariri): I move, That the question be now put.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): I would be comfortable with giving ACT another call. There are 15 amendments. ACT have 80 percent of those.

DEBORAH CODDINGTON (ACT NZ): I would like to follow up from what the honourable Minister, who is now back in the chair, said about half an hour ago. He answered calls from members of the Opposition who had asked for assurance that this legislation was not being passed to protect other members who have not come forward, like Harry Duynhoven, to declare that they have breached that Act. In answer to calls for the Minister to assure the House, he said that he did not know of any other Labour MPs who were doing this. I do not know of any, either. No one on this side of the House knows of any other, because our questions have not been answered. We have asked and asked. We have been told that the media have asked and asked, and they have not been told. They have just been told “No comment.”

As the Hon Richard Prebble said, clause 4 of Part 2 is the crunch clause. It is really appropriate that this is happening 12 months after all of us who became MPs walked into this House and felt very proud to be part of this Westminster tradition, and privileged to be elected to represent people out there. We took crash courses in the unwritten constitution of New Zealand, courses in select committee procedure, and walked through the corridors of these buildings. I felt really honoured to be walking down the corridors looking at some of the photographs on the walls, of people who had been elected to this place before. I find it absolutely appalling that just 12 months after we came into this place, we are in here under urgency, disregarding all of those things that we were taught by the people who work in this place who are not elected members of Parliament, who taught us about the importance of public input into a select committee, who told us that this was one of the only Parliaments in the world and the Commonwealth that has public submissions, and where people can appear at a select committee and have their say.

So what do we do, 12 months down the track? We bring in legislation that exempts MPs from a law, because one Labour MP has broken that law. I find that absolutely despicable. I am so proud at least of the fact that the Hon Richard Prebble has moved an amendment that ACT MPs not be included in this despicable legislation. No wonder the public out there have no respect for us! No wonder they think we are a bunch of ratbags! If we pass legislation under urgency that exempts MPs from legislation, I can understand fully why they have no respect for us, because this legislation brings this whole House into disrepute.

As a New Zealand MP I visited the House of Commons. I was proud to be there as a New Zealand MP and to understand more about the Westminster system and why we have the Westminster system. I can see now how far we have strayed from that system, when we are so shallow that we bring into the House legislation like this.

If the Labour Government is indeed just using this legislation to exempt Harry Duynhoven and to save him from going through a by-election, why did it not agree to the amendments? It could have agreed to the amendment moved by the Hon Peter Dunne. Ideologically Labour members are opposed to the ones that National and ACT bring in, but they could have easily agreed to Peter Dunne’s amendment. If they had nothing to hide and if they had no one else whom they were protecting, they would have agreed to that amendment. They could have shown that they at least had one skerrick of decency left in them.

But why are we not surprised, when we see this Government use its power to abuse the Westminster system in terms of trying to overturn the Standing Orders with Business Committee dodgy deals, and with a Prime Minister who signs paintings that she does not even paint and who gets rid of people in the private sector whom she does not like—people who send private emails to other people, criticising the Government? This is a really sad day. I am proud to support Richard Prebble’s amendment, which excludes ACT MPs.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Associate Minister of Revenue): I move, That the question be now put.

RON MARK (NZ First): This is the first time I have spoken in this debate and I want to cap a couple of issues prior to the vote being taken. First, I am going to ask this Government, and its members, to please, please allow the members of Parliament who want to be dissociated from this bill—who have moved amendments to allow our parties to be excluded—to have that right. Could the Labour members please not exercise the tyranny of power that they have by being a majority collective, with the Greens tagged on, to deny us our right to exclude ourselves from the privileges they seek to ordain themselves with. We do not want it and we do not need it. Labour members should respect that request and allow our vote to carry. That is the first point.

The second point is that many members have asked who this other person is, or other persons are, that this bill is now clearly designed to protect. It has occurred to me that this person must be one of the favoured few at the top echelon of the party, because Harry Duynhoven—hapless Harry “two-flag” Duynhoven—is not one of the Prime Minister’s most favoured. Harry Duynhoven had to go kicking and screaming to get an Associate Minister’s job. Harry Duynhoven was in the same category as Dover Samuels, Taito Phillip Field, Janet Mackey, and all those who sit slightly to the right of the Labour caucus, who are not looked upon with favour. Therefore, the only reason this Government is moving to protect Harry Duynhoven is that there is someone more senior who is in the same position and who has not come forward and identified himself or herself.

That means that it is a senior person—very likely a list person, which means he or she could not win a by-election, because there would not be one—and that brings the suspicion very, very narrowly down. It is easy to dispel any suspicion. All the Minister has to do is stand up, and truthfully and honestly tell the Committee who that person is, and stop wasting everybody’s time. The talkbacks are going crazy right now. The one thing that MPs have been slated for in the Sunday Star-Times and everywhere else is their protection of their perks. The worst thing that has now been seen out in public is that they are protecting their jobs—protecting their jobs, when clearly they have broken the law.

I want to bring this notice to the attention of the Committee that I have had handed to me by the Hon Matt Robson. It states that Sir Howard Morrison and the Manaakitanga Aotearoa Trust are coming here with a group of young people on 12 August. Young Māori leaders who are role models are coming to Parliament to present their kaupapa and to present who they are. They are looking for leadership—for principled leadership—and for role models.

What are we going to show those young people when they get here? I ask the Green Party whether we are going to show them that our principles are malleable, that we will adjust our principles when one of our people breaks the law; but, when one of those young people breaks the law, will Metiria Turei go forward and change the law to help them? Of course she will not. The Greens will do it to protect that lot over there because the Green Party has become the new lackey party jumping to Helen Clark’s call. The only thing the Greens are saying is: “How high Helen, and when can I come down?”. That is it. The Greens would defy gravity on instruction from Helen Clark because their principles are malleable.

There is a simple message that I state as a law and order spokesman who deals with young people: one cannot go out and demand of young people that they adhere to the law, that they accept their punishment when they have breached it, and that they front up and take total self-responsibility for their actions, if here at the highest court in the land, when a member of Parliament breaks the law, we simply change the law.

And when a member of Parliament has broken the law and is too afraid to come out and put up his or her hand and say: “Don’t worry Harry Duynhoven, I did it too.”, we expand the change in the law to cater for that person so that that member never ever has to be identified. That is not an example that my party and other parties want to be party to at all.

Hon PAUL SWAIN (Minister of Transport): I move, That the question be now put.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the question be now put.

Ayes 69

Labour 50; Green Party 9; United Future 8; Progressive 2.

Noes 48

New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8.

Abstentions 1

Hunt.

Motion agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Dail Jones to clause 4 be agreed to:

to omit the words “Section 55(1)(b) and (c) of the principal Act do not apply to any member of Parliament” and substitute the words “This House acknowledges that Harry Duynhoven MP did, or concurred in, an act whereby he became a subject or citizen of a foreign State or power or became entitled to the rights, privileges or immunities of a subject or citizen of any foreign State or power”.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.

Ayes 48

New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8.

Noes 69

Labour 50; Green Party 9; United Future 8; Progressive 2.

Abstentions 1

Hunt.

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Richard Prebble to clause 4 be agreed to:

to omit the words “any member of Parliament” and substitute the words “the Hon Harry Duynhoven”.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.

Ayes 48

New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8.

Noes 69

Labour 50; Green Party 9; United Future 8; Progressive 2.

Abstentions 1

Hunt.

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Richard Prebble to clause 4 be agreed to:

to add the words “but continue to apply to ACT members of Parliament”.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.

Ayes 48

New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8.

Noes 69

Labour 50; Green Party 9; United Future 8; Progressive 2.

Abstentions 1

Hunt.

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Richard Prebble to clause 4 be agreed to:

to add the words “except the Rt Hon Helen Clark”.

A party vote

hat the amendment be agreed to.

A party vote

That the amendment be agreed to.

Ayes 48

New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8.

Noes 69

Labour 50; Green Party 9; United Future 8; Progressive 2.

Abstentions 1

Hunt.

Amendment not agreed to.

was called for on the question, t

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (Leader—ACT NZ): I raise a point of order, Mr Chairman. Earlier a question was asked of the Government whip as to who he was voting on behalf of, and he was prepared to answer. Can he tell us whether he has a proxy for the Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister is voting to exempt herself from the Electoral Act?

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): My advice is that a party vote is not differentiated. I thank the member for raising the matter.

was called for on the question,

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Richard Prebble to clause 4 be agreed to:

to add the words “except Tim Barnett”.

A party vote

That the amendment be agreed to.

Ayes 48

New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8.

Noes 69

Labour 50; Green Party 9; United Future 8; Progressive 2.

Abstentions 1

Hunt.

Amendment not agreed to.

was called for on the question,

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Richard Prebble to clause 4 be agreed to:

to add the words “except Dr Ashraf Choudhary”.

A party vote

That the amendment be agreed to.

Ayes 48

New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8.

Noes 69

Labour 50; Green Party 9; United Future 8; Progressive 2.

Abstentions 1

Hunt.

Amendment not agreed to.

was called for on the question,

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Richard Prebble to clause 4 be agreed to:

to add the words “except the Hon Dr Michael Cullen”.

A party vote

That the amendment be agreed to.

Ayes 48

New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8.

Noes 69

Labour 50; Green Party 9; United Future 8; Progressive 2.

Abstentions 1

Hunt.

Amendment not agreed to.

was called for on the question,

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Richard Prebble to clause 4 be agreed to:

to add the words “except the Hon Taito Phillip Field”.

A party vote

That the amendment be agreed to.

Ayes 48

New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8.

Noes 69

Labour 50; Green Party 9; United Future 8; Progressive 2.

Abstentions 1

Hunt.

Amendment not agreed to.

was called for on the question,

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Richard Prebble to clause 4 be agreed to:

to add the words “except the Hon Mark Gosche”.

A party vote

That the amendment be agreed to.

Ayes 48

New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8.

Noes 69

Labour 50; Green Party 9; United Future 8; Progressive 2.

Abstentions 1

Hunt.

Amendment not agreed to.

was called for on the question,

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Richard Prebble to clause 4 be agreed to:

to add the words “except Winnie Laban”.

A party vote

That the amendment be agreed to.

Ayes 48

New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8.

Noes 69

Labour 50; Green Party 9; United Future 8; Progressive 2.

Abstentions 1

Hunt.

Amendment not agreed to.

was called for on the question,

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Richard Prebble to clause 4 be agreed to:

to add the words “except the Hon Jim Sutton”.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.

Ayes 48

New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8.

Noes 69

Labour 50; Green Party 9; United Future 8; Progressive 2.

Abstentions 1

Hunt.

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Richard Prebble to clause 4 be agreed to:

to add the words “except Sue Bradford”.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.

Ayes 48

New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8.

Noes 69

Labour 50; Green Party 9; United Future 8; Progressive 2.

Abstentions 1

Hunt.

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Richard Prebble to clause 4 be agreed to:

to add the words “except Nandor Tanczos”.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.

Ayes 48

New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8.

Noes 69

Labour 50; Green Party 9; United Future 8; Progressive 2.

Abstentions 1

Hunt.

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Rt Hon Winston Peters to clause 4 be agreed to:

to add the words “except New Zealand First”.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.

Ayes 48

New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8.

Noes 69

Labour 50; Green Party 9; United Future 8; Progressive 2.

Abstentions 1

Hunt.

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Gerry Brownlee to clause 4 be agreed to:

to add the words “but continue to apply to New Zealand National Party members of Parliament”.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendment be agreed to.

Ayes 48

New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8.

Noes 69

Labour 50; Green Party 9; United Future 8; Progressive 2.

Abstentions 1

Hunt.

Amendment not agreed to.

That Part 2 be agreed to.

Ayes 69

Labour 50; Green Party 9; United Future 8; Progressive 2.

Noes 48

New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8.

Abstentions 1

Hunt.

Part 2 agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question,

Bill reported without amendment.

Third Reading

Hon RICK BARKER (Associate Minister of Justice): I move, That the Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. We have had an interesting debate throughout the day, and I want to highlight a number of points to confirm that this legislation is to cover this forty-seventh Parliament from the day the writs were returned until the general election. During the remaining part of this Parliament, I will be asking the Justice and Electoral Committee to consider this piece of the legislation. I do not want to recap on the issues, because they have been gone over thoroughly enough, but I want to highlight one inconsistency, among many—that is, if someone is elected to this Parliament who has a passport for, or is a national of, another country and continues with that right throughout his or her time in this Parliament, there is no problem; but if someone wishes to pick up a right that he or she has by birth, or by foreign law, then there is a problem.

The ACT party seems to have a view that people in this Parliament should be New Zealand nationals only. Well, we have never, in my opinion, made a considered view that that should be the case. The riding to the Justice and Electoral Committee will give it the opportunity to consider all those issues, including the view of the ACT party. It will be able to take submissions from the public and get this legislation sorted out before the next election.

Arguments have been put up about retrospectivity. I restate the view that retrospective legislation is not good where it takes away people’s rights retrospectively, but that is not the case where it confers rights and privileges retrospectively. This Parliament has passed an amount of legislation of that kind. I recall that one of the first measures I witnessed in this Parliament was a rates validation bill for the Whakatane District Council. Without that legislation the council’s rates would not have been able to be collected. There are many, many other examples of that kind.

This bill is a fair piece of legislation. It confers a right on all MPs. To do as some would suggest—confer it on only one MP—would have been wrong. To confer it on one MP, up to a certain period of time, would also be wrong. It is not good to confer a particular right on one MP and not on all members. That is what New Zealand First and United Future were saying—that we should do it for one. I do not agree with that view. I commend the bill to the House. It has been thoroughly debated, and I look forward to the report of the Justice and Electoral Committee.

Hon ROGER SOWRY (Deputy Leader—NZ National): From time to time we get involved in some very heated debates in this Chamber. They are debates that have an ideological background, they are on policy issues, and this is the right place for them to take place. I have always been proud to be a member of this House and to take part in those debates and issues. One does not have to agree with those on the other side.

Today, for the first time since I came to this Parliament, I felt ashamed of the way this House has been treated by the Labour majority. I felt ashamed that a coincidence has arisen, whereby the Speaker has decided not to make a decision, until next week, on the Privileges Committee report, thereby giving a window of opportunity for the Government to change the law for Mr Duynhoven. It has done that so that Mr Duynhoven, who has breached the law, who has vacated his seat—in the determination of the Privileges Committee, the Clerk of the House, and the Solicitor-General—will be deemed not to have done so, because the weight of the majority of his colleagues in the Labour Party is to change the law, rather than adhere to the law.

That is not a precedent we should be proud of. That is not something the Minister says is fair. In the Committee stage no changes were made, despite, for the first time in my experience, MPs getting up and pleading that they did not want this change for themselves. This change to the law does not affect anyone outside this Chamber. It only applies to MPs in this Parliament; not in any previous Parliament, nor in the next one. It is only for this Parliament. National does not want to be covered by this law. New Zealand First does not want to be covered by this law. ACT does not want to be covered by this law. We are happy for the law to stand, as it is. But Labour decided that not only would it change the law for Mr Duynhoven but also it would change the law for all members of Parliament.

Why would Labour want to do that? To answer that question one has to go to Dr Cullen and find out whether any other Labour MPs have breached this law. Despite every party asking time and time again, Labour refused to answer it. Labour voted, along with the Greens, to make sure this law went right back to the first swearing in of MPs in the Parliament. It did not go back to when Mr Duynhoven breached the law, but way beyond that.

Rodney Hide: How do you explain that?

Hon ROGER SOWRY: The only way one can explain that is that somebody else has been caught up in this, as well. New Zealanders have a right to know who that is. It is a serious issue, because, if it were a Minister, then a Minister has been sitting in this Chamber making decisions, signing papers, and being party to making regulations that we are effectively validating, through the back door. There is no validation legislation here that says that the Minister, whichever one it is who has broken the law, needs those regulations validated. The Government does not want to go through anything messy and honest like that. It wants to validate it for everybody, so that the Labour culprit can get away with it.

That is outrageous. It is impossible to imagine that happening in another democratic Parliament in the world. I wonder how the Clerk of the House will explain this at the next Commonwealth Clerk’s meeting in trying to make us look like a leading parliamentary democracy in the Commonwealth. When the people who have been a party to this go home tonight they will not feel, in their stomachs, they have been part of some great victory. The people who have been a party to this wanted to make sure that the law was changed in such a way that not only does it protect Mr Duynhoven, whose case we all know about, but also protects somebody else whose case we do not know about and may never know about—

Rodney Hide: Never.

Hon ROGER SOWRY: Not ever. That is an outrageous situation to be in. I have never seen us spend so much time on a piece of legislation for one individual, let alone a member of Parliament. I also make the point that the retrospectivity of this legislation, which goes way back to when the House was sworn in, also allows for unknown people to get off. That is quite unusual.

I really regret that the House has been placed in this position. I believe, and I want to say this to you, Mr Speaker, because you were not here last night, that I think you have to ask yourself about the role you played, unwillingly or unwittingly, in allowing a window of opportunity like this to arise. It never needed to happen. The law is absolutely clear. The Speaker must declare a vacancy when it occurs. I understand you will have been receiving advice on the issue, and I want those people who are giving that advice to also reflect on this. What has been done here today cannot be undone. What has been done here today is a precedent for a Parliament in the future to make decisions about an individual MP’s right to sit in this Chamber. We have no formal written constitution, and that may be the weakness we are being exposed to at the moment. That may be the problem. But I think what we are being exposed to is a Labour Party that did not want to fight a by-election, and told us that Mr Duynhoven would win anyway, so there was no point, and we should just change the law. What a pathetic excuse!

Does that mean if it was a list MP or a marginal MP, or Mr Parker on a slim majority, Labour would not have used that excuse and we would have had a by-election? Does that mean we have a different rule depending on the size of one’s majority? Does that mean if someone comes in here with a large majority, and then breaks the rules, that person should not worry about it because the rules will get changed so that he or she can stay, because there is no point in having a by-election? That is not what parliamentarians should believe. The Labour Party should not be scared of a by-election. No politician should be scared of a by-election. I think that is what has driven this issue. I think Mr Prebble was dead right. The word “Timaru” has never been far from Labour’s minds on this issue.

This is a very sad day for this Parliament. This debate will be written up in parliamentary journals. It will be looked at around the world. No one else will find a democracy that has gone to such lengths to protect one of its own who is named, and one who is unknown but who happens to be in the Labour Party. That much we know, because the Labour Party simply refuses to deny it. I think that is outrageous. I think New Zealanders will believe that that is outrageous, and they deserve a lot better from a democracy.

CLAYTON COSGROVE (NZ Labour—Waimakariri): I rise to support not only this bill but also one of the most honourable members in the House. Despite all the patronising flummery from the previous speaker, whose political career as an electorate MP is historic, there would be few mean-spirited members in this Chamber who would disagree with me that very few members would exceed the work rate of the Hon Harry Duynhoven, both as a Minister and as an electorate MP. He is an honourable person who works his guts out in his electorate, and has returned huge majorities—[Interruption] I am glad the two ACT members interject. He has returned huge majorities and mandates from his people, unlike a number of members, Mr Sowry included, who were rejected by their electorates.

When we talk about dual standards in this House, I want members to reflect on a point I made earlier today. In my view there is a huge difference between holding dual citizenship, taking up a foreign passport, which gives one only the rights of a citizen, and, on the other hand, sitting in this Chamber as a member elected to the New Zealand Parliament, charged with advocating for one’s constituents, but, at the same time, holding a warrant from a foreign power—being a diplomat appointed by a foreign power, charged with advocating for that foreign power. If that is not a conflict of interest, I do not know what is. I ask members opposite to reflect on their colleague, Richard Worth, who, as we know, is the honorary consul for Monaco. I ask them to reflect on that.

The people of New Plymouth will have listened to this debate, as will others around New Zealand. They will reflect on the puffery and arrogance of certain members of Parliament, the time wasting, and the money that has been wasted today by people not putting aside politics, not acknowledging an honourable member. Members on the other side talk about principle. I find it ironic that none of them has stood to defend the position of Mr Worth, or to explain his position. I ask them to reflect on that. I ask them to reflect on the scorn, the ill manner, and the ill spirit they have poured on Mr Duynhoven for hours today. I know that certain people around this country will also reflect on that.

DAIL JONES (NZ First): It is interesting to listen to the speech of that Labour member of Parliament. He talks about being mean-spirited and making all sorts of accusations about the way in which members of Opposition parties conduct themselves. Well, that was one of the most mean-spirited, irrelevant speeches I have heard in Parliament for a long time, but it was the customary speech that we expect from Mr Cosgrove. As members on this side of the House know, Ron Mark is on a roll, and Mr Cosgrove had better look out in the South Island.

New Zealand First made it very clear in the Committee stage that we do not want to be part of this bill. We sought an amendment to be excluded from the opportunities given in this bill. We do not want to be associated with the likes of Clayton Cosgrove. He can have the immunity, if he likes. He can put it where he likes. New Zealand First does not want to be part of any of these Labour members of Parliament who want the protection of this bill and who want the right to swear allegiance to a foreign country.

That is what Mr Cosgrove has just done. He has given himself the right to swear allegiance to a foreign country. Mr Worth, the National Party member, said that if he swears allegiance to a foreign country, sack him as a member of Parliament. Mr Cosgrove wants the protection, but Mr Worth does not. Clearly, Mr Cosgrove does not understand the bill. He may be protecting somebody, but he does not know who it is.

The real shame about this legislation is that even the Minister in charge of the bill does not know whom he is protecting. He is not in the inner circle of the Labour Party. He does not know. Mr Barker has passed this bill through the House blindly. He does not know which member of this minority Labour Government is getting the protection under this bill, but he has done his job as a willing lapdog of the Prime Minister Helen Clark. He has put this bill through the House and he has done as he was told. Some member of this minority Labour Government will benefit from it. We have asked time and time again who it is.

New Zealand First asked to be excluded. We feel violated by this legislation. It is a violation of our rights as members of Parliament. We are violated by the Labour Party, which has insisted we be made part of this dreadful treasonous, traitorous, type of legislation. We do not want any part of it. Labour can have it. But Labour has insisted that we become part of it. Why could it not just exclude New Zealand First, or ACT, or National? We are loyal New Zealanders. I do not really speak on behalf of ACT—we have very little in common—but we are first and foremost loyal New Zealanders.

Rodney Hide: Unlike the Greens.

DAIL JONES: Unlike the Greens, and unlike the New Zealand Labour Party. The New Zealand Labour Party has established in this legislation that it is the Labour Party; it is not a New Zealand Labour Party. It will allow foreign people now to become foreign nationals, after the passing of this legislation, without being tossed out of this Parliament.

This bill has three stages. There is 14 August 2002, to 10 June 2003. Clearly, someone in the Labour Party lodged an application to become a foreign citizen, or swore allegiance to a foreign country in that time, because the next day—on 11 June, in the second category—is the day on which Harry Duynhoven did that. From 12 June onwards, to the passing of this bill, anyone in this Parliament can swear allegiance to a foreign country and this Labour Party supports it. It is an absolute disgrace. New Zealand First feels violated that we have to be caught up in this disgraceful state of affairs. Words just about fail me.

Mr Ron Mark of New Zealand First made the point during the Committee stage that we say to young New Zealanders: “You should obey the law. The law is there to be obeyed, and if you disobey the law you get punished.” We look at our prisons where 55 percent of the people in prisons for violent crime are Māori. They have committed an offence, they break the law, and sometimes they go to prison. They have committed an offence, invariably they put their hand up, and away they go. Here we have a Labour member of Parliament who has committed an offence, and he or she is not prepared to put his or her hand up—not prepared to nod, in the way we would say in the criminal courts. And Miss “Turituria” here was very strong on the support of Māori and suchlike.

Hon Tariana Turia: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Would you ask the honourable member to pronounce my name correctly?

Mr SPEAKER: It is not a point of order, but the member should do so.

DAIL JONES: I am sorry. I am struggling, and I will not use the name, rather than mispronounce it. I apologise. The Labour member who has just interjected is very strong on looking after the youth of our country and the way in which young Māori should progress. What will she tell young Māori next time she is on the marae? What will she say when they say to her that there was a Labour member of Parliament who breached the law, and she protected that Labour member of Parliament? She was not willing to let that Labour member of Parliament face up to his or her actions. She will sit here, collect her ministerial salary, live in the ministerial house, use the ministerial car, use the credit card, and she will go on to the marae and talk to someone who has not got a bean.

How can she tell that person what to do, when she is so culpable in this breach of the Electoral Act? She has no standing and cannot possibly have any standing whatsoever with young Māori or any Māori, bearing in mind what Labour is saying to young Māori generally: that the Labour Party supports the taking of foreign citizenship by members of Parliament, and that those Labour members of Parliament who then take foreign citizenship will be the ones who will decide the foreshore and the seabed of New Zealand. What sort of a standard is that? Labour members of Parliament will decide the foreshore and seabed of New Zealand for Māori, having already taken allegiance to a foreign country—some of them as Ministers, and one of them is a Minister who flies a foreign flag in his office. Well, what sort of a Labour Party is this? [Interruption]

Hon Richard Prebble: I think the member who interjects has an American passport.

DAIL JONES: Well, the member and I might both be able to claim American passports. I have only one passport. Since my adulthood I have only ever had one passport, a New Zealand passport. It has not occurred to me to get another one. This bill does not apply to me. I do not want it to apply to me, and we in New Zealand First have said that we do not want to be associated with this legislation, but the Labour Party has insisted that we be part of this legislation. We made it clear that we wanted to support Harry Duynhoven from the very beginning, and we were prepared to support Harry Duynhoven. We voted in the Committee stage to support Harry Duynhoven continuing as a member of Parliament. We could not get the Labour Party’s support for that amendment. They voted against it. There was an amendment in the Committee stage to support Harry Duynhoven continuing—being exempted from his action and being given an allowance to continue as an MP. We supported Harry Duynhoven, we voted for the amendment in the Committee stage, but the Labour Party opposed it. What is New Zealand First supposed to do? We said we would support him, we did support him, other members of this House supported him, but the Labour Party voted against it.

What a funny state of affairs we are in! The Labour Party, I believe, is just using Harry Duynhoven as a front man. There is clearly somebody else there. This bill is not called the “Electoral (Vacancy) Amendment Bill”; it is called the Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill. Two or more people are involved in this legislation, not just one. We have asked, time and time again: who is it? The Labour Party is condemned. This is an abominable piece of legislation. I regard it as being comparable to treason and traitorous behaviour. New Zealand First does not have anything to do with it.

JILL PETTIS (NZ Labour—Whanganui): I rise in support of this bill.

Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (Leader—ACT NZ): The ACT party rises to oppose it, and the fact that the previous Government speaker can speak on a constitutional measure of this importance in one sentence shows the contempt with which the Labour Government is treating this Parliament, our constitution, and the public of New Zealand, whom it now does not believe it needs to be accountable to. I am a strong supporter of our parliamentary system and of the Westminster Parliament. I say to the House that what we—and I say “we” because every MP is implicated—Parliament, are doing today will do great damage to the reputation of this institution and to the concept of parliamentary democracy and the concept that we as a Parliament are under the law, but we are going to do a lot of damage to a lot of people, as well. The Hon Harry Duynhoven, who has been proud to be the highest of the high—and only another MP knows what a majority means—and has been proud to have a majority of 14,000 will, in about an hour’s time, have a majority of three. He will have gone from the highest of the high to the lowest of the low.

And, of course, he will be regarded not as the MP for New Plymouth but as the MP for a majority of members of Parliament. That is a terrible thing to do to him. Those who advised him to take this course, rather than take the honourable Westminster course of resigning, are no true friends of Mr Duynhoven or of this Parliament. But it has also damaged other reputations. The Attorney-General, who is supposed to uphold the law, has damaged her reputation. Nobody can possibly credit the sorts of statements that she has been making as being proper statements of the law. The Leader of the House has damaged his reputation, because he should be the Leader of the House.

I have to say that I am starting to sympathise with Mr Peters. I had better look more carefully at immigration when the immigration Minister can tell us that she cannot understand section 55 of the Electoral Act, which the Solicitor-General told us was a clear, unambiguous piece of legislation with a beneficial purpose—and what was that? The beneficial purpose was to ensure that every member of Parliament owed allegiance to the public of New Zealand, and not to a foreign power.

Let me just state what the law is. When I look at the Electoral Act, I have admiration for our Parliament. The law is quite simple. We do not discriminate against people who have dual citizenship. But what we do say is that they then must swear allegiance when they become an MP, and as an MP they must not exercise their foreign citizenship, and they certainly must not take it up. That is a very good, sensible rule. We have a member of Parliament who says he did not give it a thought and has broken it, and, as a result of that, we have now rewritten the law for him and damaged our reputation. When I first came into Parliament, Mr Speaker—and you will remember this—there was a major court case. It was called Fitzgerald v Muldoon, in 1975.

What the Chief Justice then said was that the pretended power of suspending of laws, or the execution of laws, by regal authority, without consent of Parliament, is illegal. It is in the 300-year old bill of rights, and he said that it is still part of our law. The judge quoted that: “The principle of parliamentary sovereignty means neither more nor less than this: namely that Parliament, thus defined, has, under the English constitution, the right to make or unmake any law whatsoever.” And further, it states: “No person or body is recognised by the law of England as having the right to override or set aside the legislation of Parliament.”

We have done that, too, have we not? The legislation of Parliament in the Electoral Act, section 129, “By-elections for members representing electoral districts”, states, in subsection (1): “If the Speaker is satisfied that the seat of a member elected to represent an electoral district has become vacant, the Speaker must, without delay, publish a notice of the vacancy and its cause in the Gazette.” I just say to you, Mr Speaker, that everyone in this House, including those people who abstained today, all know that that seat has been vacant, and that it has been vacant for more than a month. If the Prime Minister, when she learnt about it on 4 July, had advised that, within 12 hours, she had suspended Mr Duynhoven’s warrant, then that would be what I call “without delay”. I do not call waiting a month “without delay”; and the case of Fitzgerald v Muldoon—and the Labour Party used to be very much in favour of that court case—has been trampled over today.

I just make this point when we talk about Mr Duynhoven’s being very popular. It is very true that he is popular, but his reputation has taken a terrible pounding in many ways, and one of those ways is as a Minister. The Government, I understand, went back to see whether he had exercised any authority that could be challenged—whether he had actually done something as a Minister that could be challenged in court. Do members know that the Government had to go back to April to find such a decision? I used to make half a dozen such decisions before breakfast!

What do these Associate Ministers actually do? Why is Mr Duynhoven getting a ministerial car and an office if he has not actually made any decisions that could be reviewed? What the Government has done to Mr Duynhoven’s reputation, I think, is appalling. If he had gone on television last night and said: “My colleagues want to pass a piece of legislation to rewrite the law and let me into Parliament. But I recognise that, even though I did not know it, I was making a mistake, I take responsibility for it, and I have tendered my resignation. I am leaving it to the good people of New Plymouth to decide whether to return me.”, then I think he probably would have been returned with a huge majority. But he did not take that honourable Westminster course, and those who had advised him not to were not doing him a favour.

We are left with the great suspicion that there are Labour members of Parliament who have actually done far worse things than Mr Duynhoven, who did know what they were doing, and who have sworn allegiance. We are in the interesting situation where every single political party has gone back and checked its MPs, and has said: “We are not affected.” ACT party members—and New Zealand First followed us—said that we do not even want to be covered by this bill. We moved amendments, and I greatly object to the Green Party’s demands that members actually have the right to swear allegiance to overseas countries.

Mr Keith Locke may want to join the Taliban, as he now will be able to within an hour, but no one in the ACT party wants to do that. I find it an outrage that the Labour majority is forcing that upon us, and, in doing so, is lowering the standing of this Parliament. As a result of what has happened today, damage has been done to the Speakership, to the Attorney-General, to the Leader of the House, and to Harry Duynhoven—and to all of them, because we do not know who the traitors are. We just know that there are people in the Labour Party who are voting for a measure to enable them to swear allegiance to a foreign State.

Let me make it quite clear that I think, as an MP, that MPs who do that are traitors to New Zealand. Members have an obligation to serve the people of New Zealand, and, as the Bible says, we cannot serve two masters. But that is what Parliament has decided—[Interruption]—eight times in the past.

And now we have the Minister of Immigration, who says she cannot even understand the law. This is a very sad day for the New Zealand Parliament.

Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future): I want to make a brief contribution and spell out three reasons that we are not supporting the third reading of the Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill. The first is that this measure was originally introduced as a way of dealing with the particular circumstances concerning Harry Duynhoven. We were concerned that the scope of the bill, particularly in Part 1, took it far beyond Mr Duynhoven’s situation, and I moved an amendment at the Committee stage to limit its application to the period expiring 6 August 2003. That amendment was not accepted by the Committee and, therefore, changed the basis of our previous support for the bill.

The second issue I want to raise follows on, in less flamboyant language, from the point made by Mr Prebble. We now have a situation in which there will be a spectre of suspicion over a number of members in the House, because of the deeply held fear that there are many other members who are hiding behind Mr Duynhoven in this particular instance. Unfortunately, the debate has not clarified that position one iota. In fact, because the debate has not clarified it, it has added to that sense of suspicion and concern amongst the public.

The third point is a plea to all members of Parliament, because the bill that we are, it seems, about to pass now contains an open invitation to everybody within the next 2 years to do all they can to acquire foreign citizenships, nationalities, or appointments—you name it—and have the full protection of the law. All members of Parliament should reflect very carefully upon that, because the gaze of public scrutiny will be upon all of us to see who is brazen and foolish enough to take up the opportunities that this legislation inflicts upon us. The irony will be that, as we pass this bill, we are putting in place the mechanism for a much tighter standard in future. The pressure, as I think Mr Prebble suggested some time ago, will be to restrict the eligibility further so that no one who holds dual citizenship can be a candidate for the New Zealand Parliament.

Hon Richard Prebble: No.

Hon PETER DUNNE: I thought the member had, but—

Hon Lianne Dalziel: He must have meant that.

Hon PETER DUNNE: Whether he said it or not, the point is that the pressure for us to tighten the law in that regard will become much stronger as a result of this measure. So there is an irony involved here. On the one hand, it seeks to protect the circumstances of Mr Duynhoven, and, on the other, it creates a much wider situation that will produce an outcome that, I believe, will see us adopting much tighter rules in the future. I do not think that that is what anyone intended, and I think this will turn out to be something Parliament will regret in the future. It is a matter of great regret to me that we have created this anomaly through the way in which this bill was drafted.

METIRIA TUREI (Green): The Greens will support the third reading of the Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill. The Greens are committed to changing ineffective, unworkable, and unjust laws, be they cannabis prohibition, repealing section 59 of the Crimes Act, or, as in this case, the suspension of section 55(1)(b) and (c) of the Electoral Act. We consider every piece of legislation that comes before us on its merits, and in a rational and consistent manner. That is why we agree that this bill should be broadly based and cover all current MPs during the whole of this parliamentary term. We do not support legislation that concerns specific individuals only. We believe that where a deficiency in the law has been discovered, it should be remedied for everyone, not just for some.

Mr Dunne and others have argued that the bill should apply to Mr Duynhoven only, and that it should apply retrospectively only, not until the next election. The primary reason seems to be that other MPs who may have been affected by section 55 are hiding behind Mr Duynhoven’s courage. We do not believe that United Future’s desire to smoke out other MPs is a good enough reason to undermine the basic principle that the law is ineffective and unjust, and should be suspended so that the policy behind it can be properly and thoroughly debated. In our view, it is a matter for each MP’s own conscience, if he or she will benefit but is not open about it.

There is also the major issue of retrospectivity. We are not completely opposed to retrospective legislation, and assess our position on that on a case-by-case basis. We accept that retrospective legislation that confers a benefit or a right is not, on its face, objectionable, though we would certainly not give a blanket assent to such legislation. We have considered this bill very carefully, and because we consider section 55(1)(b) and (c) to be unjust and unworkable, we think that retrospective legislation is appropriate in this case.

We have not yet heard any compelling argument, at all, as to why an MP should not be able to pursue a dual citizenship while an MP. The discussion has been based solely on the presumption that taking on a second citizenship is inherently treasonous. The debate has raged as though, by simply being a dual citizen, an MP has renounced his or her commitment to this nation and its people. That is fundamentally untrue and smacks of old-time paranoia and old-time xenophobia.

The Greens take a consistent and rational analysis to the efficacy of the laws in this country, which is based on what is just, appropriate, and right. That is why, as I said, we work for the review of cannabis laws and section 59 of the Crimes Act. We support this bill as amending one wrong and unjust law on a spectrum of wrong and unjust laws.

Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Minister of Commerce): I want to contribute briefly to this debate to say that I have listened to the most appalling sophistry from the opposite side of the House. The fake moral outrage of people who are incapable of contributing to a quality debate on a serious matter does this House no credit, at all. I have heard the Bible quoted on how one cannot serve two masters. Why, then, do we allow people with dual citizenship to stand for Parliament? The expression that has been given is that the Bible says we cannot serve two masters. The person who is saying that has dual citizenship. He is a British citizen as well as a New Zealand citizen. I ask why he did not put his citizenship to one side. Why did he not revoke it? Why did he not take active steps to get rid of it if he is so pure and above all of that?

The same member who quoted the Bible called people who took out citizenship of another country “traitors”. I reject that, as well. Is he a traitor to Britain because he is now a citizen of New Zealand, even though he holds dual citizenship? There is a word that, for some reason, we are not allowed to use in the House, but if the cap fits, I say to Mr Prebble, he should wear it. We are not here because an individual actively applied for citizenship of another country. That member arranged to have his Dutch citizenship restored, which, under Dutch law, meant he had always had it, since birth. People have tried to portray that as someone breaking the law, and Parliament allowing him to get away with it. That is not correct. He has not broken any law. The question we are debating here is whether we suspend the operation of the particular provisions of the Electoral Act while we sort out what Parliament really intends to do. It certainly did not intend that somebody in this situation would lose his or her seat in Parliament.

Hon BILL ENGLISH (Leader of the Opposition): We are about to do something that is without precedent in New Zealand, which is to elect, without voters, a member of Parliament to a seat. There will be no vote, except in this House. I have been in Parliament for 13 years, which is not nearly as long as some members. But I have learned to respect its conventions and to act, even if it does not suit me, in a way that maintains its integrity, and this is the shabbiest exhibition of the abuse of parliamentary process and privilege that I have seen in that time. That is not because the issue of substance is the biggest one this Parliament has ever dealt with, but because Parliament is doing dirty work for one of its own members—that is why.

Mr Harry Duynhoven and the unnamed members of the Labour Party who are covered by this legislation are being accorded a privilege they do not deserve. That is the privilege of coming to this Parliament to ask for legislation to absolve them, retrospectively, from the consequences of their actions. No other New Zealander has that right, and nor would this Labour Government accord it to any non-Labour member of this Parliament. No way!

This issue started with Government dishonesty, when it said that this was an ancient law. Well, the ban on killing people is an ancient law; it happens to stand as completely relevant today as it did in biblical times. This law was passed by this Parliament, and was voted for by the Greens, last year. So all the mouthing-off about the moral silliness of this legislation should have been discussed by them last year—and it was not. Section 55 of the Electoral Act was amended in detail last year.

Rodney Hide: What way did they vote?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I think the Greens voted for it. They know very well that if Harry Duynhoven were applying for citizenship of Iraq, this matter would have been handled completely differently—for very good reasons. So the issue started with Government dishonesty. There is a reason that this Parliament should be handling it differently, and it is to do with the privileges of sitting in this House.

There is no doubt about the facts. Harry Duynhoven disqualified himself from sitting in this Parliament on 11 June this year, under the law that this Parliament passed as the law of the people of New Zealand. There is no doubt about that. The questions are about how that issue has been handled. Here is a good question, which I want an answer to: why was a vacancy not declared, Mr Speaker? Why did Mr Speaker not declare a vacancy? What were the reasons that a vacancy was not declared, when it is now 2 months after the action that disqualified this MP? What will happen if I take an action that disqualifies me as an MP? Will Helen Clark wait 2 months? Will Mr Speaker wait 2 months?

The advice that has been given on this case from the Clerk and the Solicitor-General is unequivocal. It is unequivocal and incontestable, and what has happened? We have sat here for 2 months, and let a disqualified member sit in the House. That is a disgrace! It is an absolute disgrace, because sitting here is a privilege. It is a privilege accorded not by us but by the law of New Zealand. A member of Parliament disqualified himself, and we have let him sit here.

Rodney Hide: Not us!

Hon BILL ENGLISH: We did. And we let the Speaker sit there for 2 months and not declare a vacancy, when the facts were absolutely clear. I ask who was talking to whom about how to meet the needs of the Government.

The last thing this Government wants is a by-election in New Plymouth. That is the last thing it wants, and that is why it has abused the process in such an obscene manner—to avoid a by-election in New Plymouth. What do people think in New Plymouth? Helen Clark’s hypocrisy on the issue of the ownership of the beaches—

Mr SPEAKER: That phrase will be withdrawn.

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I withdraw. How do Government members think Helen Clark’s attitude towards the ownership of the beaches will go down in New Plymouth? How many votes do they think that will get? How do they think the Prostitution Reform Bill and the civil unions bill will go down in New Plymouth? That is the underlying dirty little political secret behind this issue. Helen Clark fears deeply a by-election in New Plymouth, as Labour is becoming more vulnerable by the day. That is why Labour members are having long caucuses and beating each other up. In the public’s opinion Labour is getting done, and a New Plymouth by-election would show that to be happening.

I believe that this Parliament is owed an explanation—[Interruption] I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. There has been a continual barrage of interjections, and I do not believe that is in order.

Mr SPEAKER: I have noted that previous speeches have been heard in almost complete silence from the Opposition and from opposing people. The member has made a reasonable point. There will now be very few interjections, at all.

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I offer this challenge to the Greens. Rod Donald is a man who campaigned extensively and successfully to assert the control of Parliament over the executive. He was among those people responsible for changing the electoral system, and he deserves credit for his ability to influence public opinion in that respect. Part of the reason that that happened was that people wanted to see Parliament exert more control over the executive, but here the Greens are being party to a disgraceful episode whereby the executive is using its majority to decide who sits in Parliament.

Dr Wayne Mapp: The Greens have gone along with it.

Hon BILL ENGLISH: And the Greens have gone along with that.

John Carter: The only party that has.

Hon BILL ENGLISH: The Green Party is the only party that has. New Zealand First started out on the wrong side and changed, as did United Future. It is the Greens alone—who came here to change the way politics are done—who have supported the executive in passing a law to decide, retrospectively, who is allowed to sit here.

Will that retrospection be available to my colleague Nick Smith in the event that he gets a serious punishment for contempt of court, when there is legislation in front of this House, right now, that changes the law in a way that means he could not be found guilty of contempt? Will that changed law be available to him? Absolutely not! Would we ask for that? No!

Simon Power: What about the Privileges Committee?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: I must raise a point about the Privileges Committee. I do not think that that committee did defend the privileges of this Parliament. It was not its job to try to help Harry Duynhoven with regard to his disqualification. It had one job, which was to give an opinion as to whether there was a vacancy. The Privileges Committee has become subordinated to the partisan interests of the Labour Party, and that is a shocking indictment on this Parliament.

There is no process, no law, and no office of this country that cannot be suborned by the Labour Party in its partisan interests, and that is the worst aspect of this matter. Every aspect of our law is subject to Helen Clark’s political needs, and that is why we are totally opposed to this legislation.

Hon MATT ROBSON (Deputy Leader—Progressive): I congratulate the Green speaker on that contribution earlier. It was a rational speech and took us to the issues. [Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order!

Hon MATT ROBSON: It reminded me of the words of Pierre Bourdieu, a French scholar who said —[Interruption]

Mr SPEAKER: Order!

Hon MATT ROBSON:—that it will be a great day for Parliaments around the world when they act like scholars and actually look at the facts.

Rodney Hide: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Right through the Hon Bill English’s speech there was a constant barrage of interjections made by five or six members of the Government. It was constant. You did not raise a murmur. Matt Robson started on his speech, I interjected in a way that was rare, witty, and interesting, as did Bill English, and you shut us both down. That is wrong.

Mr SPEAKER: No. It was wrong to speak in the second person. Members are perfectly entitled to interject in the third person.

Hon MATT ROBSON: I hold the opinion that if we had many more dual citizens in this Parliament it could lift the level.

I heard Mr English call me a parrot, and I think that sort of ad hominem attack is exactly what is wrong with much of the debate that I have heard in this Parliament in the time I have been here since 1996. I have been insulted in terms of the level of intelligence and the low general level of debate in the New Zealand Parliament. I rarely yell out to people; I try to listen to the arguments. But, frankly, if I went through the Hansard I would find that the level of debate in the New Zealand Parliament is one of the lowest that I have experienced in many Parliaments around the world. I say that having visited about 10 other Parliaments, and having been particularly impressed, when I was in the German Parliament, by the fact that its members actually spoke to the issues.

If members want to be given an argument for dual citizenship, I would say that some of those people who have argued in this debate in terms of their patriotism, and who have beaten themselves on the chest while saying how strong their feelings for New Zealand are, possibly hold only New Zealand passports. But many of the people with dual citizenship who have served in this Parliament, going back over many decades, have clearly made an enormous contribution. It is not an argument to say that because someone has dual citizenship, he or she does not give allegiance to New Zealand. That has been reflected in the very liberal attitude of this Parliament and of the country, which recognises that people can be New Zealand citizens without having to eschew their origins. There is a fallacy in the argument that if one takes a foreign passport, one is somehow or other shifting allegiance or giving it to a particular Government. Where does it state that because a person is a citizen of a country, he or she has to support the aims or objectives of a particular Government? For example, we have many American citizens in this country. They live here because they do not like the policies of the Bush administration. I have a problem with the Australian Government, because it did not like me saying, as a Minister, that it was acting as the deputy sheriff for the United States.

My criticism of previous New Zealand Governments—particularly National Governments, but also Labour administrations—was that they gave away their adherence to New Zealand’s best interests in two ways. One was through the sale of State-owned assets. As far as I know, it was New Zealand passport-holders who sold New Zealand’s public assets, and they became very rich. They gave that benefit to many New Zealand passport-holders who now live overseas—Sir Michael Fay and David Richwhite are but two of the people whom New Zealand First has attacked over the years, and quite rightly. Holding a passport does not mean a person gives allegiance to a country; what one needs to actually look at is what people do in their day-to-day lives.

We are told that the Privileges Committee is a rubber stamp. I first went and saw the Privileges Committee under Paul East, a former National member for whom I had quite a high regard. It was an absolute disgrace. There was no procedure or order. The committee acted like some of the worst select committees I have seen—not good ones like the one chaired by Brian Donnelly, which I read about in the newspaper yesterday. He is very strong in his chairmanship, but some of the select committees in this Parliament have been disgraceful. The Privileges Committee that I saw under the previous National Government was like that—and talk about a rubber stamp! The issues in the Alamein Kopu case were predetermined, because Alamein Kopu was going to provide a vote for the National Party. That was a disgrace.

Two particular sayings sprang to mind when I heard this debate. One is that patriotism is the refuge of scoundrels, and I think people should reflect on that. I have often found in life that those who beat their breasts about patriotism are the biggest scoundrels of all. The second saying is that this is not the crime of the century; in fact, there is no crime. Harry Duynhoven was entitled to apply for his Dutch nationality to be restored—there is no crime in that. We encourage that in New Zealand, because dual citizenship is allowed. The question then becomes one of interpretation. Having been successful in doing that, does that mean his seat should be vacated? That is not a crime either; it is a question of interpretation. Harry Duynhoven is not sitting here as a fraud. There is a difference between a crime and an action a person is entitled to take that may have consequences flowing from it.

The Privileges Committee quite properly looked at that issue. Anybody who goes to the Privileges Committee will see that I as the chair, my deputy chair, John Carter, and the committee members are determined to make the Privileges Committee act properly, in a semi-judicial way. It is not a judicial committee in the sense of being set up by the courts or by legislation, but it must act in a judicial way. We have plans to make sure that the committee will set down rules that will, particularly, allow for the principles of natural justice to be followed. It was not helpful for the committee to have Mr Richard Prebble say he had made up his mind as to what should happen before he had heard the evidence. That was not helpful at all, but, under the rules, we could do nothing about it. What the Privileges Committee did was to look first at the narrow question, and, by seven to three members, it said, yes, it looked as though there was a vacancy.

I was one of those members, so at that stage I was neither a parrot nor a lapdog, if that is the next ad hominem insult to be thrown at me. I acted in accordance with what I believed, having looked at the matter. The three members who voted against that were entitled to take a fair, large, and liberal interpretation. That shows the difficulty we had, because this matter has thrown up many unanswered questions, and that meant we had serious matters to argue for.

This bill before us now gives us the space to clear up the ambiguities and the mess. It is a sensible step to take.

Dr WAYNE MAPP (NZ National—North Shore): That last speech was extraordinary. There stood the chairman of the Privileges Committee, who admitted that the seat was vacant as at 11 July this year. That was a clear statement by the Solicitor-General and the Clerk of the House. It was advice that the Speaker would have had, yet today we are participating in what has to be a breach of our constitution—that is, this Parliament is overriding the proper rule of law, which is that if there is a vacancy, there must be a by-election. It is pretty plain and pretty straightforward, and it is what would happen in Australia and other democracies.

I have to ask why it is not happening here. Surely members would have to agree that it is a privilege to be in this House, and the only way one can get here is to be voted in by the people. If a person breaches the Act and that leads to a vacancy, then the consequences of that are clear, and they are laid down in our Electoral Act—there is a by-election. That is what should be happening in this case.

The Government has a curious argument: he has a large majority, therefore why bother? Well, one might say that if that were true, the Government would be welcoming a by-election, but it is not. There are a number of possible explanations. First, the Government is scared of a by-election because it would have to account publicly for various policies. There is another explanation on top of that, and it is that there is another member of Parliament in the Labour Party who is also in breach, and we could have more than one by-election.

One might say that that is the consequence—the Act has been breached and there will be more than one by-election. But what if it is a list member? What if it is a senior member of the Labour Party who is a list member? In that case, of course, there would not be a by-election. What would happen if that person were simply kicked out of Parliament, their seat became vacant, and the next person on the list came into Parliament?

Today the Government has completely failed to answer the very reasonable question that has been put to it by speakers from various parties—namely, why is this legislation so broad and extensive that it covers not just Mr Duynhoven but some other person?

John Carter: They’ll get found out.

Dr WAYNE MAPP: My suspicion is that it is not just a person who needs a by-election, but one who is a list member. For that person, that is the end of the line. He or she is out of Parliament, and the next person comes in. If that is the case, then the Government has a clear obligation—in justice and in adherence to the constitution—to confess to that reality. It should say who that person is, and be truly honest and upfront as to why this retrospective legislation is being designed to protect someone who is quite probably a list member of Parliament. At least then we would know why this legislation has been drafted in that way. The Government has been given every opportunity to name that person. Each party member of the Privileges Committee was asked to go back to their whips, who would put the informal question to each of their members—

John Carter: Which is normal tradition.

Dr WAYNE MAPP: I am informed by a member far more senior than myself in the ways of this House that that is normal tradition. Each party went back to the Privileges Committee and said that it did not include a member of its party. One party did not do that, could not do that, and that was the Labour Party. Dr Cullen, the Leader of the House, was asked that question specifically. I was sitting in the Privileges Committee and heard Mr Prebble challenge Dr Cullen on that very point. There was no answer at all. Today in this House we have asked and asked members and whips which member was infringing, and there has been silence throughout.

I am deeply offended that we in this Parliament have been asked to partake in a charade, a travesty of our constitution, where we will do two things that are normally seen as fundamentally reprehensible. One is to pass retrospective legislation, which is normally seen as reprehensible, particularly so when it deals with a constitutional issue. Surely, the Government can see that.

The second issue seems to be that we are being asked to participate in an act of dishonesty to assist a member of the Labour Party—quite possibly a senior list member, and quite possibly a member of the executive. I do not hear any denial of that statement from that side, or from Cabinet. Various members of my party have just raised the question of who it could possibly be.

Hon Steve Maharey: Me.

Dr WAYNE MAPP: The member is not a list member.

It behoves the Government to come clean. The integrity of this place behoves it to be accountable to and honest with the citizens of New Zealand.

I close on the issue I raised right from the beginning. It is a privilege to be in this Parliament. None of us have to be here; we all chose to stand for election to represent the interests of New Zealanders. I heard a completely specious and false argument from the previous speaker, Mr Robson, that somehow it is a good thing to be a dual citizen. Being a member of Parliament is a voluntary action, and it seems to me that whilst he or she is a member of Parliament, his or her responsibility is to represent the interests of the citizens of New Zealand, their electors only, and no other. Surely, taking out a foreign passport whilst one is a member of Parliament is an infringement of that principle. Today we are participating in a travesty of our constitution. I for one say that is wrong, and that is why this party and other parties in this Parliament will vote against this legislation.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

Ayes 61

Labour 50; Green Party 9; Progressive 2.

Noes 56

New Zealand National 27; New Zealand First 13; ACT New Zealand 8;United Future 8.

Abstentions 1

Hunt.

Bill read a third time.

The House adjourned at 5.57 p.m. (Thursday)