SpeechHon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Thank you Madam Speaker. Tonight I am speaking on this particular bill with a fair degree of trepidation. Usually when I seek a call in this House I feel very strongly in favour of the position that my caucus has adopted and have no difficulty in arguing it. But tonight I confess that I have some significant reservations. So I am signalling my support for this bill at the first reading but I withhold further judgment and will be following the progress of this bill through select committee with considerable interest.If ever there was a bill that must go to a select committee it is this one. So in rising with some reservations I have to say that at this point my reservations have intensified after listening to the opening speeches of this particular debate. I had assumed wrongly as it turns out that this bill would be referred to the Justice Committee which has responsibility for scrutinising justice and electoral matters in this Parliament. And of course as a subject-specific select committee it meets—as do most committees whether it's the Health Committee the education committee the law and order committee and so forth—regularly with members from different parties who bring some expertise to the table. And I'm not suggesting for a moment that we don't have members with expertise on the Privileges Committee but they meet regularly and one of their main purposes is to hear submissions from New Zealanders on a particular bill. That is not the nature of the Privileges Committee and I'll return to that theme in a moment. I do want to stress at this point that I will oppose vigorously any attempt to truncate the process of consideration of this bill through this Parliament. And I make that point because that has happened regularly as of late. I am deeply concerned that here we are again tonight sitting under urgency—and I acknowledge that we're not considering all stages of the bill under urgency but under this Government in recent weeks urgency has stopped being the exception and it has become the norm. For most of the last three weeks we have sat under urgency and in many cases that has meant that the public has not had the opportunity to have their voices heard on a range of matters. There are no members of the public in the public gallery because of course they are locked out of our Parliament and here we are tonight considering a very significant change to our constitutional arrangements. There may be some public watching on television or listening on the radio but they are not in the gallery here to watch us and they probably had no idea that this bill was going to be considered tonight because it hadn't been signalled even a couple of days ago that it would be.The first reason for my reservation is a relatively minor one. And that is as of four days ago I am no longer the shadow Attorney-General. That position has moved to the Hon Judith Collins in the National Party's reshuffle the other day. She's a very experienced and knowledgable lawyer. So I absolutely defer to her greater experience in these matters. But it does mean that I wouldn't have had an opportunity to have worked on this bill because I'm no longer on the Justice Committee. And now I find it's not even going to the Justice Committee. But as I say that's a fairly minor one.My second reservation is a more significant one and that is my concern and the Attorney-General has just alluded to it although he's obviously reached a different conclusion over how this bill will alter New Zealand's constitutional arrangements especially vis-à-vis the relationship between the legislature and the judiciary. As a young law student constitutional law was my favourite subject. I guess I always knew that I was destined to seek a political career. It took me a long time to achieve it.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): It's sad.Hon TIM MACINDOE: I beg your pardon?ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): It's sad.Hon TIM MACINDOE: Oh thank you Madam Speaker. But it just goes to show it takes all types to make a world. And of course we all studied Fitzgerald v Muldoon. We all read Sir Geoffrey Palmer's Unbridled Power. We were all taught that New Zealand has an unusual constitutional arrangement in that we only have this one Chamber; we don't have an Upper House for the further consideration of legislation. And we don't have a written constitution. So in many ways we are unusual but I think we have a very proud and relatively stable constitutional history.But I want to make the point that declarations of inconsistency are made frequently by the Attorney-General and I think that is right. In fact when I became shadow Attorney-General I went back to check thinking Well I've heard of a few over the years of my time in Parliament." And I was really surprised when I discovered how often it does happen. Often it doesn't attract a great deal of attention—media publicity—but it does happen quite frequently and rightly so. And that of course is ultimately the prerogative of the Attorney-General but he or she would make that declaration I know on the basis of very carefully considered advice from experts. And I respect that fact.So for that reason I acknowledge that there is an argument to allow this bill to be introduced tonight and to be referred to a select committee but it must attract submissions. It must be well publicised. It must be given sufficient time to do its work. And I am very very concerned that in sending it to the Privileges Committee which is comprised of senior and very busy members of this Parliament who do not meet regularly—in fact we heard earlier from the Hon Michael Woodhouse how infrequently that committee meets—it will not attract the degree of scrutiny and attention that it should do. And that I think is a very real concern. And I ask members to reflect on that. In fact while all members of different parties will have reached their party's position at this point I hope they will go back and speak to their caucuses again about whether this recommendation to send it to the Privileges Committee is appropriate because I don't believe that it is; although I do acknowledge the fact that they are very experienced members of Parliament and often—probably in most cases—have legal qualifications. And that is a good thing.As I say Attorneys-General throughout our history have regularly made declarations of such inconsistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act—or at least since the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act was passed. But ultimately—and this is where I did agree with the Minister before the Attorney-General—Parliament is sovereign and we as elected representatives are accountable to the electorate and every three years we go back to the electorate and we seek a mandate either to validate our positions here the decisions we have made and earn a further mandate or to give the members of the public the right to say "We do not like what you did. We don't agree with the positions that you have taken and we're going to replace you with someone else." It's not a nice experience when that happens but it's absolutely fundamental to our democracy and right that it should be so.Well of course the courts are not accountable to the electorate in the way that we are. And I am very concerned that this measure will hand further authority to unelected very distinguished members of our society to direct the Parliament.Hon David Parker: It doesn't.Hon TIM MACINDOE: Well the Attorney-General is saying that it doesn't. That will certainly be a matter that the select committee will need to consider. I hope that that is correct but I have a very grave reservation.A constituent wrote to me recently taking a slightly different view. He was one of the many New Zealanders who was outraged by the passage of the COVID-19 Public Health Response Bill a fortnight ago. I argued vigorously at every stage against that bill—at that stage in my capacity as the shadow Attorney-General. I remain deeply concerned by its passage and outraged by the fact that it didn't go to a select committee. He was just one of many many New Zealanders who have contacted us to express their concern about it.Barbara Kuriger: Thousands.Hon TIM MACINDOE: Yes it literally is thousands of people. And funnily enough most of them are probably not supporters of the National Party and I think members of the parties opposite should reflect on that fact. They are deeply concerned at the way in which their rights have been trammelled by that particular bill.Now my third reason for being cautious about supporting this bill is that the courts themselves were cautious about recommending it and I say that because the decision in Taylor v Attorney-General out of which this arises went all the way to the Supreme Court having been appealed initially from the High Court through the Court of Appeal to the Supreme Court. And in the Supreme Court the decision was based on a 3-2 split. Now when it's that close we do not have even an indication from the judiciary of overwhelming support for it. So if members haven't yet read the short but very crisp and helpful Bills Digest on this particular bill could I encourage them to do so. I think they need to see a little bit of the background of the bill as outlined in that particular Bills Digest. And as I say it's based on the Taylor v Attorney-General case which was an appeal against the Electoral (Disqualification of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Act 2010 which of course was a member's bill that is currently the subject of a repeal bill in the name of the Minister of Justice. I don't want to relitigate that—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): The member's time has expired."