Mitchell MarkHon MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. It is a great pleasure and honour to be able to stand in the House tonight and take a call on the Oaths and Declarations (Members of Parliament) Amendment Bill. Can I please acknowledge the new member to Parliament Anahila Kanatahi Suisuiki—and I hope I got the pronunciation right on that.Marja Lubeck: Not really.Anahila Kanongata'a-Suisuiki: Nice try.Hon MARK MITCHELL: I didn't. Which leads me probably to my next point: I grew up in New Zealand and I was schooled in New Zealand in the 1970s and 1980s. The only option that I had when I went to school the only language option that I really had was to learn French. As a young guy growing up in New Zealand back in the 1970s and 1980s it was very hard to see how French was really going to be that relevant to me as I moved into adult life and into my working life. I took it in fifth form which I think is year 11 now—Hon Stuart Nash: First time or second time?Hon MARK MITCHELL: —and I discarded it. What's that?Hon Stuart Nash: First time or second time?Hon MARK MITCHELL: Oh you mean—are you with me on that one are you Nashy? What—two or three years in fifth form?Hon Stuart Nash: I did three years in fifth form.Hon MARK MITCHELL: Yeah three years—OK. I did actually get through the fifth form.Hon Stuart Nash: Oh well done.Hon MARK MITCHELL: But anyway the point that I'm sort of getting to is this: languages enrich our lives. Later on in life when I started to travel overseas I really struggled. I wanted to learn the language in the country that I was living and I really struggled with that. Someone pointed out to me and said that unless you actually learn languages unless you actually engage with them at a young age so that part of the brain is developed then actually it is much harder to learn languages in your adult years. I guess we can look to Europe as an example where often children will grow up very comfortable. I mean Marja can probably attest to this having come from the Netherlands. How many languages? Seven! Seven languages.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! I'll just remind the member to use the member's proper name when referring to them.Hon MARK MITCHELL: Of course Madam Assistant Speaker. So Miss Lubeck grew up in the Netherlands and she had an ear for languages and she can speak fluently—I assume—seven languages.Marja Lubeck: Definitely not fluent.Hon MARK MITCHELL: Near enough to it anyway. So the point that I am making is that languages are fundamentally very important. So can I acknowledge and congratulate the member on having her bill drawn and at least getting it into the House for us to have this debate and for it to be an issue that we can engage on together. We won't be supporting the bill and there are some reasons for this and I'll just run through some of them. The other side can certainly stand up and address—that's what the debating chamber is for which is that we can have a discussion around it. The ability to swear an oath of allegiance in all of our official languages including New Zealand Sign Language should be supported; however it raises questions when you extend the oath to include foreign languages and I'll start to dig into that more as I go on.The bill does not limit it to just the members of Parliament and I think that fundamentally I don't know I'm not sure—the member can get up and correct this—but this bill does not actually just limit it to members of Parliament; it goes much broader than that and that does have consequences. It simply allows other language equivalents of the oath of allegiance—Kiritapu Allan: It's in the name. It says Members of Parliament".Anahila Kanongata'a-Suisuiki: Yeah it says "Members of Parliament" in the title.Hon MARK MITCHELL: —set out in section 17 and does nothing to restrict this to MPs.Kiritapu Allan: It's restricted to members of Parliament Mark.Hon MARK MITCHELL: So that this is something that you can stand and take a call on and maybe give us some confidence that it isn't actually broader than relating to just MPs.It does seem an absurd proposition to allow this for MPs and—as an example—defence personnel but not for judges or justices of the peace. This is a very important point: we should be careful in allowing translations of statements in unofficial languages. Other languages and cultures may have different interpretations of the meaning of words such as "allegiance" and "according to law". I was just reading actually—there's been a very recent relevant case of this with President Macron in Australia on a State visit where just very innocently he referred to Malcolm Turnbull's wife Lucy as being "delicious".Marja Lubeck: But he meant it.Hon MARK MITCHELL: Because in French—well maybe he did. But actually in French "delicious" actually translates to "delightful" and what he was meaning was that her company and her hosting was delightful but it was lost in translation. It literally happened in the last day or two and it's just a recent example of what can happen with the interpretation of different languages.At present the Oaths and Declarations Act 1957 allows oaths and declarations to be made in two languages: English and Te Reo Māori—and of course we also recognise sign language as well as an official language in New Zealand. "[The] bill amends the principal Act to allow … the Governor-General to prescribe equivalents in any other language of the oaths and declarations required to be taken by members of Parliament and by ensuring that they are legally equivalent in effect to the English versions." This is actually quite an important point because at the end of the day if we were going to extend and allow people to take an oath of allegiance in another language then you'd have to be very confident that the person taking that oath or hearing that oath understood it clearly and was conversant in that language as well otherwise there could be some serious mistakes made.What ensures that this is only going to be used for MPs? That's the question that I'm putting forward and I think that Kiri Allan might take a call on this; she's interested in this. Schedule 4 of the Oaths and Declarations Act 1957 lists six other pieces of legislation that require an oath of allegiance. While only one of them refers explicitly to section 17 others including the Bill of Rights Act 1688 leave this blank. There are other Acts—and I'm actually going to run through them—that this will directly relate to as it's currently contained in the bill.So it raises some questions. Will this apply to the Citizenship Act 1977 for new citizens swearing oaths in public ceremonies when they all swear at once? Because I know that we all would have attended as members of Parliament citizenship ceremonies which I know we all hugely enjoy being part of because you can see the excitement and the energy of the people that are swearing and becoming citizens of New Zealand. But recently there was one held in my electorate where there were 500 people there. So this is actually very relevant in terms of—is this bill going to relate to the Citizenship Act 1977 and how does it interact with it?What about the Defence Act where Defence Force personnel are required to swear an oath of allegiance to the Sovereign. It would be unusual to swear an oath of allegiance in a language foreign to the country you are swearing allegiance to.Just very quickly because I'm conscious that I'm going to run out of time some of the other Acts that could be addressed or I'd like to be addressed tonight in the House as the calls go on: I've mentioned the Citizenship Act 1977; there's the Constitution Act 1986 section 11; there's the Defence Act 1990 section 34; there's the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006 schedule 4 clause 1; there's the Education Act 1964 section 162; the Policing Act 2008 section 22; and the Bill of Rights Act—and I'm not sure if this is a misprint but it's got 1688 here on my sheet.So I'd invite the next speaker that takes a call or the speakers to follow just to address those issues. They are important ones and they have definitely been a serious block in terms of us being able to support this bill. Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker."