Willis NicolaNICOLA WILLIS (National): I rise in solemnity today to talk about clause 4 of the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill. I refer you back to section 55 of the Electoral Act that this clause adds to. What are the other circumstances under which an MP would be forced to leave this Parliament? Let us think of what severe circumstances they have been to date: a death because someone has become mentally unfit because there has been a criminal offence or because they are serving another country or have become an MP in another country. And add to that list of things which are very serious a new clause which says Actually if you resign from your political party you will cease to be a member of Parliament." We need to consider how grave that is.A very good way to provide us a sense of that gravity is to think of other countries who specifically outlaw this kind of a clause from their electoral law. We can think of Germany—the home of MMP—which specifically precludes this sort of a provision being a grounds on which a vacancy can be called. We can think of exactly why that would be. We can think of the other countries of the Inter-Parliamentary Union of which members opposite are part: an institution that is 180 years old and that says that countries that have these kinds of provisions in their electoral law are political party dictatorships. That is a gravity of what this committee is considering in clause 4.What the Inter-Parliamentary Union says of those countries is that they cannot be seen to uphold democracy because it is at the very heart of democracy that we will be held to our conscience and to our thinking as individuals not beholden to the dictatorship of a political party. This clause undoes that grave principle. It assumes that resigning from a political party is a grave offence—that it is an offence that "lacks integrity" if we are to read the title of the bill to have any real meaning apart from its Orwellian implications.We consider in this Parliament today members of Parliament past who would have been forced to vacate this House if this provision had been in law: members such as Rod Donald Peter Dunne Roger Douglas Jim Anderton Winston Peters Tariana Turia and Hone Harawira. We consider these members. I may not agree with their views. I may not agree with the things they said in this House or the laws that they voted for but they were true to their own views and were not forced to leave this Parliament because they resigned from a political party. But today the Government would say that those people should be forced to vacate this very Parliament.This represents a grave cultural change. In this contribution I want to draw your attention to the comments of the Attorney-General who said in his not - section 7 New Zealand Bill of Rights report that the effect of having a clause such as this "has the potential to discourage an MP from speaking up against the party". These are not my words. These are not the words of the National Party. These are the words of the Attorney-General—a Labour Party member of Parliament. He said that it has the potential to cause "a chilling effect on an MP's freedom to express themselves inside and outside [this] House." And he notes that this "suppression of dissenting voices … is a solemn matter for any Parliament." Because of course it has the potential to do this not just prima facie but also to have a chilling effect on the other actions which they take.So at this point I would point to other countries in the world which have clauses such as this in their electoral law: Zimbabwe and Pakistan. I would urge this committee to consider the threat that we are dealing with because what are the circumstances under which those countries have drawn these laws into action? MPs have been dismissed for expressing their doubts about the corruption of their own Government because they have been forced from their political party and therefore have been forced from Parliament. MPs have been forced from Parliament for voting differently from their leaders. They have been forced from Parliament for holding press conferences without the consent of their party leader. That is the threat that is at stake today in this Chamber when we consider this clause 4."