Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Thank you very much Madam Chair. Acknowledging what you said I would like to make a series of contributions and I want to go through Supplementary Order Paper 69 and Supplementary Order Paper 70.Supplementary Order Paper 69 is slightly different and it's a very good amendment proposed by my colleague Chris Penk. I do want to make this very serious point for the committee and for the Minister: very seriously consider this amendment because noted public law commentator and electoral law commentator Graeme Edgeler who the Minister has previous adverted to having great respect for has urged the Parliament to consider this amendment. Now we don't necessarily—well we don't agree with the bill at all and many members in the House don't on this side of the House. But he has urged the Parliament to consider this amendment very seriously because what the amendment does is provide a new section 71AA for registered parties to have expulsion rules.Why is this important? Political parties occupy a curious position in our constitution—they really do. They are largely unregulated. There's an open question I think as to whether or not they are capable of judicial review. It's perhaps not an open question; they are capable of judicial review. The rules are certainly capable of challenge in the same way that the rules of incorporated societies are open to challenge and members will recall the celebrated case from 1985 when the New Zealand Rugby Union was stopped by its own rules from sending a rugby team to South Africa an official All Blacks rugby team. So I think that's without dispute but the law is generally pretty silent about how political parties run themselves.The Minister earlier talked about the requirement in the Electoral Act 1993 for the selection of candidates to be democratic. The other thing is that there are various requirements around membership rules and the courts have seen fit in—I mean the National Party doesn't like to remember it; the case of Roger Payne down in Selwyn which was an expensive undertaking for the party. No one likes to be in the courts but the courts will enforce membership requirements when it comes to selection and things like that and that actually relates to candidate selections. But it is true that political parties occupy a curious place in our constitution. So that's the first point.Then you apply that curious position to the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill which will change the Electoral Act. It's fair to say I think that without being too political about it it is going to be a curious part of our electoral law. It's not unique internationally. In fact many countries have provisions like this. As my colleague Nick Smith has pointed out on numerous occasions they're not countries that we would typically like to be associated with when it comes to electoral law matters but other countries do have it. In the sort of spectrum of Western parliamentary democracies a provision like this will occupy an odd place a strange place. OK if that's the will of the Parliament—we live in a democracy in which Parliament is sovereign. I have the entire judgment of Fitzgerald v Muldoon in my office on the wall in a painting to remind me every day when I go into my office that this place is sovereign and that the elected democratic will of the people dictates what laws we have in New Zealand.So I am a great believer in parliamentary sovereignty. If Parliament passes this law it will be the law of the land. But because of the strange place parties have in our constitution and because they are largely unregulated and because this bill arrogates to the party leader of political parties enormous power I think it is reasonable for the Parliament to say at the same time as they pass this law At the same time you must have rules governing the expulsion of members." That does not seem unreasonable. It seems totally eminently feasible to me for the Parliament to say "At the same time as the Parliament enacts a law around how members can be expelled from the House there should be similar provisions within party rules about expulsion." That is totally logical."