Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Well I'll try and make it a good five minutes Mr Speaker. Look I think Henry Cooke's article this afternoon sums up this bill: good politics terrible lawmaking"—good politics terrible lawmaking. The spin this morning—in fact the press release from Andrew Little says "Government moves to ban foreign donations". Oh man that's pretty big. I sat there in caucus and the news came through and I thought "Oh that's pretty big." Except it doesn't ban foreign donations; it lowers the threshold from $1500—which is actually small to start with—to $50. So right from the start the Government has just been enveloped in spin as my colleague Dr Nick Smith says.Actually it's a lot like other press releases the Government puts out: "$400 million for State schools"—side note: not if you're State-integrated; you don't get anything. "Government bans semi-automatic weapons"—except only over a certain calibre and only over a certain size and only a certain number and we'll buy back the rest. So there's a lot of spin—a lot of spin. These guys are masters at it. So the bill doesn't actually do what it says on the tin. We are supporting it.I want to talk about the urgency. There is no justification for this urgency—none whatsoever. We're in a three-week sitting period. As Graeme Edgeler has pointed out he could turn up tomorrow morning at the Finance and Expenditure Committee if they don't want to send it to the Justice Committee. They could turn up tomorrow at the Finance and Expenditure Committee and Graeme Edgeler would be there noted scholar that he is and he'd point out the flaws and he'd point out the amendments that need to be made. Their heads are down over there because they know that there is no justification for this. Even with the gun laws post-Christchurch when people wanted to act in haste and send a message to the world that we were going to get these guns out of the hands of New Zealanders that went to the Finance and Expenditure Committee for a week. I sat on that committee. You can do a lot in a week. There is no justification for not sending this bill to a select committee.Now there is a case for urgency. Parliament sat after the 2008 election and we repealed the obligation on fuel companies to offer biofuels in petrol. Why did we do that? Well because the obligation came into effect three weeks later and Parliament was about to rise for the year. The Government had campaigned on repealing that and we did. We acted under urgency. There is no justification for urgency for this bill.Members opposite have been keen to complain about the select committee process. Let's be honest with what's happened here. A select committee the Justice Committee has been considering the local government election inquiry from 2016—that's a hang-over from the last Parliament. They've been considering the 2017 election inquiry and the remit of the committee got widened a few months in—some months in actually—to consider foreign interference. Now there is a lot of stuff within those three different elements and yes the committee has taken a long time. I sat on the committee for quite a long time.This is complicated stuff and frankly let's be honest with what's happened here: Andrew Little has had a tantrum OK? The Minister has had a tantrum—Hon Member: Another one.CHRIS BISHOP: —another one—and decided "Oh forget the committee forget the consultation with the Opposition; I'm just going to ram something through. I can turn up announce the bill in the middle of caucus meetings and see if we can take them by surprise and get the New Zealand First Foundation stuff off the front pages and off the headlines and we can talk about banning foreign donations. I can make all these thinly veiled attempts at implying the National Party gets all this foreign money and things will be great." That's what's happened. We all know that's exactly why we're here. We all know that's why we're sitting here in urgency. We're going to ram it through under urgency.Frankly for the Green Party who voted for urgency—I note Marama Davidson spent her entire speech talking about everything other than urgency. The Green Party spent nine years when National was in Government hectoring the Government calling them dictators and fascists and all the rest of it for using urgency—which actually most of the time was highly justified. Now we find the Green Party is willing to collaborate with a Government that is desperate to talk about anything else.This is yet another bill where the Government has not consulted with the Opposition. Firstly we had waka-jumping. Then we've had the next electoral bill which introduced the same-day voting. We've had the referendum bill. We've got another one coming on prisoner voting apparently and now we've got this one. The Minister is all over the show—five amendment bills to the Electoral Act or to various elements of our constitution and he hasn't bothered to consult with the Opposition. It is a disgrace. He is massively out of his depth."