Penk ChrisCHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Madam Chair thank you.Hon Member: Watch out David Seymour.CHRIS PENK: All kinds of warnings for people to watch out all over the Chamber. I'm just—[Interruption] I'm just very safety conscious that's right. If this were health and safety legislation those contributions would be highly relevant. Moving on though all that I'm looking out for is the detail within clause 5 where we're talking about a referendum to be disregarded not to be binding after all. I just want to place that again in context because again it's really important to understand what's in the bill currently and would effectively be displaced in terms of what the Government is putting forward. And the proposal that we've got here is that the will of one council can actually be greater than the will of another. In this place we often talk about Parliament being sovereign and that's a very important concept in the sense that a democracy must respond to the needs to the people and so one Parliament cannot bind another. We cannot say for example in this House in this term that not only a thing shall be but also that a subsequent Parliament cannot undo it because it might be at the following election that the will of the people is to elect other MPs more National MPs perhaps for a start as a friendly pointer for anyone watching. But the will of the people however it's applied and whatever the result might be should be respected. At the last election colleagues on the other side of the House returned in greater numbers and we are fewer. So be it—it is the will of the people of course. It would have been absurd if the Parliament that had its term between 2017 and 2020 were able to bind the hands of this Parliament so that the duly elected people as at the 2020 election couldn't execute their will representing the people—and the previous term and so on and so forth. So in the context of this particular provision what we're looking at is saying that the councillors who happen to have been elected at the last local government election should be able to say that certain things will be in relation to Māori wards and not be displaced in a subsequent referendum. So in other words the people who expressed their will at one moment in time cannot have that overturned or updated or amended by another group of people another set of voters who might have been younger and therefore not eligible to have voted in the last council elections. They might be newly moved into the area from another region of New Zealand. They might have come to this place from overseas. There won't be so much of that of course at the moment because of the ravages of COVID on our immigration system but there are all kinds of reasons that a different population in a different area forms a different electorate and so it is from time to time that if democracy is to be real not only between people in a moment in time but relevant across time across three-year terms then it has to be that there is a mechanism for changing the will or rather changing the mechanics of our voting system according to the will of the people changing as we go forward. That's the point that the Hon Simon Bridges was making regarding Hotel California" in terms of checking out but never leaving—I think it's checking in but never leaving; I actually meant to look that up. My knowledge of the Eagles' lyrics is not as strong as my very close examination of this legislation so please forgive me. Perhaps the Minister might be able to answer that if nothing else.That was my first point. The other point was in relation a referendum being a mechanism by which the will of the people can be determined. Well I've got mixed feelings on referenda as I know others in the House do. Sometimes I like the result sometimes I don't but I think that as an elected representative of the people I along with my 119 colleagues in this place also duly elected we must honour the result of a referendum that is or should be binding. And the point about a referendum—of course the problematic bit—is that sometimes they're not appropriate mechanisms. As the Hon Dr Nick Smith has said however they are appropriate when it is about determining the rules of the game by which the participants the representatives must play. Otherwise there's a conflict of interest. Otherwise we're our own judge in our own matter. So it's not appropriate for councillors to be deciding over and above or on top of—riding roughshod over if I were to adopt a phrase that the Hon Dr Nick Smith has either used or is probably about to use—the will of the people and that's a very serious matter for us as a constitutional matter as a democratic matter and so the mandate for this is very low—indeed non-existent."