Copeland Gordon: Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
Copeland Gordon: Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:610;Page:7740] 
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) 
: 
 I had the privilege of being part of the Privileges Committee on the evening of 30 July in the absence of Peter Dunne and during that evening the committee received evidence from Terence Arnold QC—our Solicitor-General—on section 55(1)(c) of the Electoral Act which is at the heart of this debate. Today I would like to talk about the background to that section and the way in which it has been interpreted during periods of time over the years. 
First of all as we know that section of the Act had its origins in 1852—151 years ago. The first point I make is that it absolutely beggars belief that over those 151 years this is the first time that section 55(1)(c) has been breached. Countless parliamentarians have gone through this Parliament since 1852. Many of them would have had dual nationality. In order to get dual nationality they would have had to apply for example for a British passport. Under section 55 of the Act immediately they took that action—“immediately” as Richard Prebble correctly says—their seat would have become vacant under the law. It is very very clear that literally hundreds of MPs may well have breached the law over the last 151 years. Is it not remarkable that after all that time the first MP in history to put his hand up and say he thinks he may have broken that law is Harry Duynhoven? For the first time someone has put his hand up. 
By the way the law was strengthened from 1975 onwards. From that time people have not been able to become members of Parliament without having New Zealand citizenship. So there has been shall we say a higher responsibility on MPs since 1975 if they breach this law to put up their hand and say so. We then go through the procedure that we face for the first time here today. 
I would like to make the point too that the minority report of the Privileges Committee lays some weight on the fact that a select committee had another look at this law in 1993. If that is true I can only say the select committee in 1993 did a very very poor job of work indeed. As I will mention in a moment I believe the policy intent of this law has a loophole in it that is big enough to drive a bulldozer through. If any self-respecting lawyer had been in the House in 1993 and thought about the policy intent of section 55(1)(c) of the Act—which I am about to talk about—that lawyer would quite clearly have seen that the section is quite ridiculous. 
I turn now to the policy intent of section 55(1)(c) which was explained by the Solicitor-General Terence Arnold to the committee. He said that the policy intent was to prevent a member of the New Zealand Parliament from having dual allegiance—that is an allegiance to New Zealand and the possibility of allegiance to another foreign jurisdiction. That seems to me to be quite a reasonable point. Any member of this Parliament needs to give allegiance solely to New Zealand and to no other foreign nation. Perhaps I can illustrate the issue by giving this example. Let us suppose an American member of the Senate becomes the honorary consul for the nation of New Zealand and continues to sit in the US Senate. Probably no one would be very concerned about that. But let us suppose a citizen of the US who is a senator is also the honorary consul for North Korea. In today’s environment one would think that the US Senate could regard that as unpatriotic and as illustrating a divided allegiance—in that case against what is at this moment one of the US’s prime enemies. Terence Arnold explained that that was the kind of situation that section 55(1)(c) anticipated. He gave the illustration of the Second World War. If during that war a member of this Parliament had applied to become a citizen of Germany that would have been evidence of swapping allegiance from New Zealand over to a country that was in those days our enemy. The point I make is that if that is the policy intent of section 55(1)(c) then there is a great loophole. 
Right here and now and during the last election any citizen of New Zealand who is also a citizen of any other nation has dual citizenship. I imagine that many of the MPs who contested the last election are in that position of having dual citizenship—of also being citizens of other countries. I myself for example am eligible for both an Irish passport and a British passport. I have not activated that but my father was born in Northern Ireland a jurisdiction that is recognised by both Ireland and the United Kingdom. So I am eligible for three citizenships here and now. I could easily have activated that before the last election. Had I done so I would be in Parliament owing allegiance from that point of view to three different nations but I would not have broken any law. There would be no basis on which anybody could ask me to vacate my seat in Parliament. 
That is the huge loophole in this whole thing. [ 
Interruption 
] Mr Prebble is trying to interject but he has had his say and I want to have mine. The Solicitor-General in response to my specific question said that what I have said is exactly right. We all know it is right. We can be elected as members of this Parliament if we hold dual citizenship. There is nothing to stop it and we are not obliged to reveal that to the electorate. The Solicitor-General said that maybe a person in that situation could tell the electorate. For example in Harry Duynhoven’s case if he had taken this action before the last election he could have told the electorate that he had Dutch citizenship in addition to New Zealand citizenship. That was actually the fact of the case. Harry Duynhoven in effect was a citizen of the Netherlands at the time of the last election—and he broke no law. On that basis we have no justification for asking him to vacate his seat in the House. Therefore that is a considerable loophole. 
Let us look at the issue in another context. Let us suppose that at the time of the Second World War a person was elected to this Parliament who was a citizen both of New Zealand and Germany and that person had a malicious intent in entering Parliament. Therefore the member did not reveal during the election campaign his or her dual nationality and nobody knew about it because the member did not bother to tell anybody about it. It is not as though we have a police force that goes around looking for these offences because this is the first time there has been a so-called offence in 151 years despite it being obvious to me that the provisions of this law have been broken time after time. The individual whose situation I have outlined would have been perfectly validly elected to the Parliament of New Zealand. He or she could have served in it while giving his or her allegiance in various ways to the nation of Germany during the Second World War and in terms of this particular section there would have been no grounds whatever for asking that member to vacate his or her seat in Parliament. I think that is a major contradiction in this law. I think that this law in both its policy intent and its legal interpretation is obscure. 
There is one thing that I am very very satisfied about and it is this. Harry Duynhoven has not broken the spirit of the law or of section 55(1)(c) of the Act—he has not broken the spirit of that. In fact he has done the honourable thing for the first time in 151 years put his hand up said he may have broken the law and asked for it to be looked at. I think we should praise him for that and in no way criticise him. 
At the Committee stage of this bill Peter Dunne will move an amendment to limit the exemption we are making to the law to the period from 14 August 2002 to 6 August 2003. That is designed to ensure obviously that Harry Duynhoven retains his seat in this Parliament—and that is obviously the intent of the bill that we are looking at and also of Peter Dunne’s amendment. But it does mean that between today and the next election if anybody else in this House wants to renew a passport get another nationality or become a consul or whatever else for a foreign power he or she will have to come back to the Privileges Committee just as Harry Duynhoven did.