Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Well thank you very much Mr Chair. Look I think that there may be time to accept a closure motion from Kiritapu Allan but it should be after the Minister has responded to some very serious questions that have been raised that he appears to have skirted around. I sometimes wonder what his caucus colleagues think about that.Really you can boil down the questions I asked in my last speech—what's the standard for honouring contracts; what's the standard for honouring the Treaty of Waitangi; how does this Government see the Treaty of Waitangi in New Zealand's constitutional arrangements?—to a more practical question that Nikki Kaye has alluded to just now and it's this: what will the Minister do if he has passed this legislation and finds that the Waitangi Tribunal has an adverse finding? It's going to be very difficult legally but what about politically? Will he have the political capital within his own caucus to steamroll the Waitangi Tribunal? How will it make his Government look if the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations sitting here said Well look the Waitangi Tribunal is something that we take seriously some of the time."? I think that's a real problem. And what will it look like for his ministerial warrant if he ends up having to go to court or pay out compensation as a result of that tribunal finding?I think that the committee before members vote on this amendment by Nikki Kaye deserves answers because if Nikki Kaye's amendment was to pass then the problem that's being highlighted that the Minister doesn't seem to have an answer for would be alleviated. It would be simple. The potential problem of the legislation being contradicted by the tribunal would be solved simply by not having the legislation come into force for three months after the tribunal finding. That would give the House three months to make any necessary amendments to give respect to the Waitangi Tribunal. It's actually not particularly complicated.But I'd also like to talk about the commencement date more generally. If we imagine for a moment that the Waitangi Tribunal claim and all of the problems—political and legal—that it presents were not in place then we might ask ourselves: well what does it mean for New Zealand generally to have a commencement date that would make partnership school contracts illegal while many of them still have several years to go?If you will excuse me it is necessary to introduce a little philosophy. F A Hayek when he tried to define liberty in his 1960 book The Constitution of Liberty saw that there were real difficulties with restraining the State in a principled way. He found that sometimes it was necessary for collective action to take place that sometimes it was necessary for rulers and Governments to take arbitrary action. Liberty wasn't as simple as just saying "Every man is an island and nobody can coerce anyone else." because there are such things as public goods. There are such things as useful regulations. He sought to answer the question: well how is it that people can be free and live in a free society? And Hayek's answer—which is pretty standard it has to be said through most of the legal profession—is that we don't know what arrangements people will make individually or collectively but they do need the ability as Hayek said to plan their futures without concern for arbitrary coercion by another or others. In other words people would not be bullied and would not have the rules changed on them.Funnily enough children in the playground including at partnership schools kura hourua are aware of this. They know it's not fair to change the rules mid-game but what this legislation is doing by making partnership school contracts illegal while they still have several years to go—some of them go through to 2023 2024—is violating the rules that Hayek outlined that most of the legal profession agreed with and that children in the playground understand: that it is wrong to arbitrarily change the law and screw up people's plans. I could go on—[Time expired]"