Hudson Brett; Rurawhe AdrianBRETT HUDSON (National): Thank you Mr Chair. It's a pleasure to take a call on this. Now very clearly this is an egregious affront to our democracy but I think nothing is more so than this whole concept of the idea that a member of Parliament or in effect a party leader or even the collection of members can somehow know what it is that actually does distort party representation or what is likely to. The reason I raise that is it comes to the heart of how can we have knowledge of what has formed and the reasons for the forming of the representation of parties in this House.The proportionality of the House is determined by the aggregate of individual free-thinking New Zealanders each casting their own vote in a general election and then the aggregate determining how many seats each party gets. So to know what has created that proportionality is to claim to know the exact reasons why each of those 2.5 million or more people cast their party vote the way they did. That is fundamentally core to this provision this idea having any merit at all and I would argue that no individual member and no collection of members in this House can evince that—no; we cannot claim to know that.What we happen to know that parties do is they go out to the electorate at large and they have manifestos. They make announcements—some people may see them as commitments—on a campaign trail. One thing they also do—and they are required to do it under this very principal Act actually—is publish a list of candidates. The public are able to make choices with their party vote that may have some weighting on the individual elements to the manifesto and the promises made and may also be based on who is present on that party list and to the degree they do that we cannot possibly know.So if to give this some example—potential real-world example—Mr Darroch Ball were to take a position that the oil and gas exploration ban was wrong for New Zealand and were to make public pronouncements on that not only would he be 100 percent correct but he might find himself having a charge against him from his party leader saying This is an act that is distorting our party representation because our caucus has a view that is different to what you're expounding Mr Ball." But here is the actual fact and it is why this clause is so important and wrong: the New Zealand First caucus' view on that and Mr Peters' view on that is not relevant because what determined the party representation for New Zealand First in this Parliament as is the case for other parties as well was the decisions that individual voters used to cast their vote—the few votes they got—for New Zealand First.So in order to be able to show that there was a distortion of party representation or the likelihood of a continuation of such that caucus or that leader needs to be able to show evince and have the evidence that they would receive a different number of votes if that member were to continue with that line of public position and the only way they can substantiate that claim is through another general election. If it is the people that created the proportionality of Parliament the only way to test "Has it changed?" is to give all of those people the opportunity to speak again which is also by the way—and in another important related point—why actually having an electorate MP have a by-election if they fall out of favour with their party leader and claim that doesn't upset the proportionality of Parliament is abjectly false because it takes the power away from the aggregate of 2.5 million - odd votes and places it in the hands of about maybe 14000 people.So this is an absolute disgrace of a bill. But this idea about individual members or their party leaders—because in effect it is the party leader that exercises the authority to claim to know what determines an impact on party representation—is fundamentally false and the only way to test it is through a general election.CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): I call Jan Tinetti."