Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Oh thank you Madam Chair. It's a great pleasure to take a call on this new clause 3A because it actually goes I think to the heart of what we are talking about here. I want to just follow on from my colleague Maggie Barry's description and discuss a little bit of history—recent history—around the former Green Party members of Parliament Dave Clendon and Kevin Hague because they certainly acted in a way that did have the potential to invoke this. Indeed it was that close to the election that what was currently able to be done in law was done. They were thrown out—Hon Members: Kennedy Graham.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Kennedy Graham sorry not Kevin Hague—is that what I said? Kennedy Graham and David Clendon. The Green Party threw them out of their party and took them off the list for the 2017 general election. My question is actually this: whose actions upset the proportionality of Parliament? Was it the actions of Kennedy Graham and David Clendon in acting with honour and in upholding the whakapapa of the Green Party or was it the remaining members of the Green Party who threw them out?Now it's worth speculating on that because I think we have a more recent example of where the Green Party stood for one thing before the general election and at least some of their members are now standing for something else and that is with this bill. Every single member of the Green Party stood up and said how loathsome a waka-jumping framework was—every single one of them. So my question is which ones of them now are going to act with the sort of integrity that we saw David Clendon and Kennedy Graham display and demonstrate 10 months ago? My question is who moved from the principles—the grounded principles—of the Green Party in saying this bill is anathema to the things that they stand for? Yet there must be members in that caucus who are terrified who want to do the right thing who now know that the moment this bill is passed if they do it with this or any other departure from Green Party principles they're out.It is a fundamental philosophical question about who is upsetting the proportionality. Is it the person who stands on their principles or is it the party that moves away from their principles? I have to say students of political history will know that this is just the latest chapter in a long-running saga in this Parliament where members of Parliament have believed that it wasn't they that moved from the core principles on which they stand and for which their party stood—Jim Anderton is a very good example of this. Even if it wasn't so principled even if it was relationship-based even if it was the sort of thing that the Hon Maurice Williamson went through in 2003 where he was thrown out by the National Party caucus—what happened to that?Hon Gerry Brownlee: Suspended.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Suspended—touché. He spent another 14 years in Parliament—CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Could we just talk proportionality as part of this?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: This is about proportionality because that action in standing up for the things that those MPs stood for against their party's wishes is an action that under the new clause 3A that we are debating would constitute acting in a way that distorts proportionality. I think this could even be expanded further with a potential amendment to say that the actions that distort proportionality are not the actions of the individual but the actions of the broader party that led to that point. Actually it becomes a slightly existential question about who should resign: the member that stands up and says This is wrong—this is not what our party believes in." or the other seven members that say "No we're going to fold like a red-hot Mars Bar because that's what the Government wants us to do." because that's exactly what the Green Party did in saying that they have a philosophical objection to this bill—"but we're going to vote for it." What kind of action does that speak to for a fine party that's in its dying vestiges?"