Smith StuartSTUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. Well it is a pleasure to speak on the Oaths and Declarations (Members of Parliament) Amendment Bill. As has already been said by my colleagues we won't be supporting the bill. Look I do congratulate the member for getting a bill up and getting it drawn out but I don't support it for some of the reasons—I actually do have a bit of sympathy for the member who just took his seat Darroch Ball and his views perhaps not quite as hard-edged as that but nonetheless. I did look up before to find out how many languages there are in the world and I found the rather auspicious group the Linguistic Society which I take as being quite accurate I suspect. They say that One might suppose … that linguists would have a clear and reasonably precise notion of how many languages there are in the world. It turns out however that there is no such definite count—or at least no such count that has any status as a scientific finding of modern linguistics." So I guess the point is as was made by the previous member where does it end if we go down this track?I thought that the point that was made before by the Hon Mark Mitchell around other consequences of this such as the military such as the police—all of those and he read out the Acts. The Citizenship Act the Constitution Act the Defence Act Lawyers and Conveyancers Act the Education Act Policing Act and the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act all refer to languages and the official languages in taking oaths and affirmations. So this is actually quite important. This could really have quite far-reaching effects. It's for that reason really that I think the bill is beyond being tidied up in the select committee. I think it should be just go back and have another go and put another bill in. That would be my view. But I thought about my own colleagues Dr Jian Yang could—and I don't know if he did—take his oath in Mandarin. I can't remember—when we were sworn in. Melissa Lee could do it in Korean. We could have Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi—it would be in Hindi. Dr Parmjeet Parmar also could do it in Hindi. I suspect if given the choice the Hon Chris Finlayson would probably choose Latin and I suspect Latin would have quite a lot of relevance given that our system—the legal system in those days right back when New Zealand Parliament came into being—was rooted in Latin as was the medical profession. So you could make an argument for that. I suspect the Hon Paul Goldsmith given a choice would probably want to do his in Klingon but the rest of us would prefer—look we have official languages. They might not mean much to some of those people who come in. I understand that. I think all the cultures that come to New Zealand enrich our society and the different languages do enrich our society. And it's great to see certainly even in the provinces such as Marlborough I know the growing Pacific Island community is the fastest-growing group in Marlborough. I think that's something to be celebrated and we celebrate their languages. However when you come to a country you are leaving your home country. Bring your culture bring your views bring your language but we have some things that we want to do that are our traditions and our traditions like having Black Rod banging on the door there at the start of Parliament so that we must go to hear the Speech from the Throne. It might be a strange tradition to those people who don't come from here but that is our tradition. We accept it. And that's part of being a New Zealander and part of being a New Zealand citizen. Coming to this Parliament I imagine it would be a very uncharitable Speaker that would not allow a member of Parliament to give their oath in their mother tongue and then repeat it in English. I think it is a legally binding oath. It is absolutely important that what you say means what everybody else has said when they take their oath. So I don't support this bill. I do congratulate the member for bringing it here. She's not been here long so perhaps she's got plenty of time to tidy it up and put it back in the ballot and it may well get drawn out. Thank you."