Doocey MattMATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): Thank you very much Madam Speaker—what a great choice I must say. Thank you for helping me take another five or 10 seconds off the clock.DEPUTY SPEAKER: It's very late.MATT DOOCEY: Yes—yes. Thank you very much for taking my call there and starting the clock as well.I want to take in fairness a brief call. I don't think I will take the full 10 minutes because I just want to raise a few succinct points that I don't think have been raised so far in this debate. I don't think I'll need to take the full 10 minutes.What I do want to say is the first thing I want to point out and it is typical of a Labour Government: in a criminal justice scenario for them the focus is on the prisoner or on the offender. Where is the voice of the victim? And why I raise that in this context of submissions—how many private or secret submitters will we have to this bill? We are going to have a number of victims who do not believe that the offenders or the perpetrators of the crimes against them should have the right to vote. Some of those victims will not want to make their submission in public.So there will be a number of submitters and I believe this will happen: they will be contacting the clerk of the committee and asking for a private or a secret submission. A private submission is one where they can come along and talk to the committee in private; a secret submission is one where they speak but obviously the information they relay is not made public once the bill is passed back to the House. When you have a private or secret submission that is going to take time. That is going to take more time than a normal submitter.We need to factor that in because here we are not talking about a five-month or a four-month. When you look at it in weeks we are literally talking 10 or 11 weeks. Now you might think OK 10 or 11 weeks—that's a reasonable amount of time." but you've also got to factor in how long it is going to take the clerk and the committee to advertise for submissions. The normal good practice is six weeks. Now I accept sometimes that six weeks is shortened but because no member of the Government or the select committee or the sponsoring Minister is getting up to advise us we do not know how long that period is going to be. So if it's the full six weeks then in fact the time to hear submitters is greatly reduced even more. Now we're talking a window of opportunity of only a couple of weeks.Here we have a very contentious issue that potentially will have a number of submitters who might be victims of prisoners who do not believe they should be getting the right to vote and they will want to make submissions in private or in secret and I believe that will take extra time. Maybe the Government has factored that in but until they take a call it is our right to scrutinise whether that has been factored in and the pressure that puts on not only members of Parliament but also the clerk of the committee as well because it does speak of a Government that is out of touch.At the moment we have a Government telling New Zealand business and organisations it's about business continuity planning with the COVID-19 threat. What's every business going out there doing now? It's continuity planning working out if they've got plans in process to actually address some of the issues that will arise and the impacts on their business and organisations. So here we have a shortened report-back time where potentially it won't be a normal submissions process we've got no idea how long the clerk's going to actually advertise for as well and then throw in the mix whether there's problems with Parliament.How do we know that MPs are going to be able to access travel to come to Wellington? Well if the Government took a call and said "Actually we're looking into Zoom or other things to address that." then maybe the shortened report-back time is something that we could say "You've looked at things. You've done a risk assessment and you've looked at a business continuity plan for this." But because we haven't heard from the Government in one call we do not know what is going to be the continuity plan to ensure that members of this select committee are going to be able to attend with the challenges around their own health and safety but also just travel. I don't think we can just rely on local MPs who might happen to be in Wellington at that time.Now is the Government saying that in fact because of the shortened report-back time they are only going to hear submissions in Wellington or are they going to hear submissions? So if they get a critical mass of submissions in my area of Canterbury are they going to be providing a select committee process down there? Or because of the shortened report-back time is it only going to be to Wellington? That is why the Opposition has a number of questions not only raising points in this debate but asking the serious questions. What is the business continuity planning to make sure this committee will be able to go ahead in the shortened report-back date? Where are the committees going to be held? How are we going to address a number of submitters who might want to take private or secret submissions? But it would be interesting—instead of chipping across the House if maybe they take a call because the clue's in the name: it's a shortened report-back debate. Normally the debate is between both sides of the House.As I said I wouldn't take up the full time of my 10 minutes and I am going to sit back down now but I would appreciate a Government member answering those questions. Thank you Madam Speaker."