Bridges SimonHon SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga): I want to support Nick Smith's amendment to this bill which seeks to add—Hon Member: Very wise.Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Well I don't always support him—an expiry clause to it. It seems to me there's a very strong principled reason he hasn't mentioned for why we would want a clause like this. If what I have said before and other parts of this bill are true that it is egregious that it is retrospective—and we've gone through that and I won't canvass all of those arguments but if you accept that as so—and if we also accept the urgency of this the rushing of it and all of the ways that has offended the norms of this House—if all of those things are true—then one thing that won't cure those defects but will go some way to making this better law that is less offensive to this Parliament and to New Zealanders who are reasonably concerned about constitutional-type issues would be to have a time limit set in the law. I note what Nick Smith has said and he's precisely right. I thought it was a curious thing that they did but there is a precedent in this from another colleague of Nanaia Mahuta's in this House not very far long ago and that is in relation to the pill-testing bill where they said exactly what the Minister has said and to make good on their words in this House the Government did have that time-limited expiry clause.But outside all of the principled reasons why an expiry clause in this bill is right to as I say not cure but somewhat make good the defects in this law on Māori wards and Māori constituencies I say there's actually just a very simple reason and that's that I take the Minister at her word. Of course I do. I don't just do that actually because she's a member of this House and that's what we're obliged to do under the rules; I believe her. I think she's an honourable person and she means what she says. But if she does she should do this. If she does there is precisely no reason not to put it in. If she doesn't frankly that leads members on this side of the House to be somewhat distrustful that she does actually mean it because look if she did she would. And if she doesn't you can sit there and I think it's reasonable to have a few suspicions about this. Otherwise if she's not going to put in this kind of safeguard stopgap clause the Minister is effectively saying to the House Trust us—just trust us." It's not just New Zealanders outside of this Parliament who are a little cynical of politicians in power who say that; look I think even in this House we can be somewhat cynical of that. We actually have an example in relation to this bill that shows dare I say it—I'm not suggesting the Minister is the person who wrote it—on this very issue actually just a few months ago we couldn't trust what was said by the Labour Party and that was their manifesto where it was quite clear right there that they want to bring all of New Zealand with them. They weren't going to do this. And yet cynically—I think dishonestly—the Labour Party said one thing there and has done quite a different thing before you can say bobsy-die in this House as one of the starting—Hon Scott Simpson: Very scurrilous.Hon SIMON BRIDGES: —contumelious I think you'll find Scott Simpson—before we've barely started the law.So I say in summary to the Minister: this is a principled thing to do and to support. It costs the Minister and the Government nothing. If she means what she says she can and she should do it. Just saying to this House "Look actually trust us. We know what we're doing. Look I've said that."—that's not good enough actually. If she can say that's what she's going to do she could certainly support this and we ask her to do that."