Penk ChrisCHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's inappropriate to bring the Governor-General into the debate of this House; so I'll just reflect in general terms on the strange feeling that must have been about to descend on Government House when Her Excellency is asked to sign into law a very similar piece of legislation to that which she would have been asked not that long ago—yesterday in fact I understand. It's often been quoted—the original phrase we understand of Harold Wilson—that a week is a long time in politics; it's also quite a long time in the context of electoral law legislation. Actually for the political geeks out there apparently Harold Wilson originally made a similar comment back in 1960 some four years before that now-famous saying about the week being a long time of politics that 48 hours is a long time in politics which is funnily enough about the same period of time that the Government now intends to pass this entire new piece of legislation amending the other one and no doubt have that passed into law and be assented again. So we've got this situation having arisen because a number of lessons it seems needed to be learnt. One is the lesson of managing a legislative programme. Now I haven't been in the position of being in Government in my time here either in the general sense of being a member of the party that is in Government or obviously being part of the executive—I'm sure it's only a matter of time on both fronts he said modestly albeit facetiously in the case of my own career.Greg O'Connor: And optimistically. CHRIS PENK: I hear the candidate for Ōhāriu adding in his two cents' worth. There have been three years in this. It's many times been said that three years is not long enough for a parliamentary term—I think there are reasonable arguments to be made on both sides of that debate—but the reason that we're here today relitigating so to speak the legislation that was passed last week is because it was relatively late within the three-year term that the legislation was even brought to the table so to speak. One could speculate that that was the result of negotiations that needed to take place between Government parties. I wouldn't know. I wasn't there but suffice to say this is not a new issue; so it does seem strange that we've ended up with this somewhat indecent haste as it's turned out to be that the legislation was passed the other day and it's now being re-passed. As I say one might speculate on the cause of that but it's probably helpful if I move on to other matters—for example the fact that the issue that was at the heart of the confusion of last week—let's just call it confusion and move on—was an issue that had been raised and canvassed extensively at the Justice Committee. The principled position that some submitters brought to the table—and in very convincing terms I'd have to say. If one were of the persuasion to say that some prisoners should be able to vote the argument went that so all prisoners should be able to vote. That was obviously the position taken by the Green Party but not by other members of the Government as in the parties that are effectively forming Government as opposed to being the Government support party—I use the term support" in a reasonably loose kind of way on this occasion. And so it was that the Greens put forward an amendment that the other members were not prepared to accept and support and so we had this bizarre position whereby it was open to the National Party to highlight the principled opposition of many people on the other side of politics let's just say who in many cases would have said that it would be right to highlight the inconsistency the anomaly of the fact that a law was passing through this House that says that some prisoners are able to vote; others are not and yet the law change has been characterised by its proponents as being a matter of human rights. Well if it's a matter of human rights and if all prisoners are human regardless of whether they're serving less than three years or three years or more surely all prisoners should be allowed to vote. Now just to be clear on this side of the House we are not arguing that all prisoners should be allowed to vote but I'm pointing out that the logical inconsistency of the Government's position other than the Greens' position that was on display last week and as highlighted by the Greens' Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) and in turn highlighted by our support of the Greens' SOP in respect of Part 2 has reached its logical conclusion which is to say that we are coming back to re-debate the issue now. Now the Opposition in a parliamentary democracy has few tools at its disposal. I believe that's fair enough. That's the nature of democracy. We have elections and there is a winner and a loser roughly speaking. My side of the House did not win the last election in the sense that the Government was able to be formed by a majority of MPs who were on the other side of the argument roughly speaking. But while we don't have many tools at our disposal one that we do have is to make deals with other Opposition parties or members—whether or not they are aware of the deals that are being struck in this case—and so it is that we are able to highlight issues that are important to us and to our voters by any means within the rules that we are able. And let us be clear the rules of this House were strictly observed by us last week in the sense that we voted "Yea" and then we voted "Nay"—well actually the other way round; so it was "Nay" and then "Yea"—in respect of motions that were completely entirely correctly from a procedural point of view put before the House.So as an Opposition we don't have much opportunity to execute our ideas in the sense that we don't control the wider machinery of Government. We don't have much platform to set the agenda in the way that a Government has the moral authority. We don't have access to official advice at least to the same extent although I will note that those of us on the Justice Committee of course did discuss the issues entailed in this legislation at some length and we don't have the majority in this House usually. On the rare occasions that we do have the majority in this House because one of the Government parties has thought it would be helpful to show up at its partners we would be foolish not to use it to the extent that that can be helpful in raising for the benefit of the nation a discussion that has to be had about the inconsistency of what has been brought before us—namely as I said before the fact that some prisoners are to be given what has been characterised as a human right and others are not. So it is not a matter of opposition that is mindless as some have characterised but rather a rare opportunity for the Opposition not to be voiceless.Let me finish in this the first reading speech—and I sense I'll have other opportunities as the afternoon and evening wears on—with a little analysis that I have taken the liberty of bringing to the House in relation to what it means to negotiate. Now Supplementary Order Papers are not normally a good tool for negotiation but the reason that the Opposition from time to time will have the opportunity to negotiate with the Government through SOPs is that there are very few other options but it is a rare opportunity for the Opposition to say in the way of a negotiation that party A has something that party B wants. Party B has within its power the power to give to party A that thing. Conversely party B has something that party A wants. In this context—and the analysis goes that the National Party had the ability to vote for the Green Party's Supplementary Order Paper in both Part 1 and Part 2—the Green Party had something that the National Party wanted which was the ability to bring to the Table an amendment to the legislation that could help to prove a point about the inconsistency of the law.And so it was those things that were exchanged: 1) the SOP on one hand by the Green Party and 2) on the other hand by the National Party votes to support it. That isn't the basic nature of a negotiation. A negotiation is an exchange of things that are mutually beneficial and so it was entirely logical and entirely consistent with the National Party's position as stated consistently throughout this House on the first reading of the No. 1 bill—if I can call it that—that we would take an opportunity that was afforded to us albeit accidentally no doubt by the Government to highlight the issues that had been raised throughout the select committee process by those supporters of the bill who said that it didn't go far enough and by opponents of the bill who said it simply didn't make sense. So I look forward to speaking further about the inconsistency therein and in particular how that relates to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and the finding of the Waitangi Tribunal. And so at this the first reading without wishing to delay further we remain opposed to the bill on this side of House."