Peters Winston: Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
Peters Winston: Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:610;Page:7756] 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 I do not know where Mr Barker got that advice from but it is nonsense. It is utter drivel to say that the law is drafted as a general provision and therefore must be worded in the plural. This is a bill for Harry Duynhoven—for one member—that is a “vacancy”. Mr Dail Jones is quite right that the suggestion of “vacancies” is a clear indication that the Labour Party is not admitting that it has members other than Harry Duynhoven who are caught by this provision. We want to know who the Philbys the Burgesses the Macleans and the Blunts of the Labour Party are. Who are these people who cannot be trusted to behave in the national interest in their own country? Who are the Philbys the Burgesses the Macleans and the ones who most resemble Blunt? Do members know who Blunt was? He was the artistic adviser to the Queen and he had certain proclivities which they all had. I cannot mention that fact of course but they had certain proclivities that made them susceptible to serving foreign agencies. So who are those people in the Labour Party? That is why the word “vacancies” is there. 
 That is why we have in brackets a clear admission without the names and it surely behoves the Labour Party to front up today in this important part of the Committee stage and tell us what is going on. If it does not we will find out eventually anyway. Mr Prebble is right to put up a series of personalised amendments and we will find out one by one whether Labour members are prepared to admit it at the time. 
When members think about the importance of this issue in our constitutional law they cannot surely argue anything other than that this Government has been absolutely frivolous with our constitution. I want to say this to them—[ 
Interruption 
]—and I want to tell the member for Waimakariri because it is very important that this sort of arrogance and pride goes before a fall. In my rather extensive political career I have seen parties on the rise and I have seen them on the fall. That member’s party is on the fall. 
Rodney Hide 
: Even your own party has gone up and down a bit. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: Yes but right now we are going up and nothing will stop us now. Pride goes before a fall and arrogance is what usually befalls members of Parliament who think that because they have “MP” after their names or “Minister” before their names they are somehow now of a special species and above the ruck of a human existence that requires certain standards and decencies to be met. 
So I say again—please let us know who these other members are. Let us know what their offence might be because it is certainly far greater than Harry Duynhoven’s. We ask that the title of this bill be narrowed to Harry Duynhoven—the person whom we had a select committee hearing about and the person whom this bill is all about. Accepting that the plague that beset MI5 and the British Secret Service seems to have beset us as a country via the Labour Party’s Cabinet and back-benchers who are these people who are not prepared to tell us what they have been doing about swearing allegiance to their own country?