SpeechHon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Thank you Madam Chair. I want to acknowledge the outrage that the co-leader of the Green Party expressed a moment ago about the point that she was making and also I acknowledge the fact that the Attorney-General has just responded to that. But I am left wondering why the co-leader of the Green Party and her colleagues are not expressing similar outrage to some of the very Draconian measures that this House this committee at this stage is being asked to enact in Part 2 of this bill. Because the Green Party has a very long—and they would consider proud—tradition in this country of protesting against attacks on civil liberties and constraints of our freedoms and they have been extraordinarily silent in all of those matters on this particular bill to this point. So I just ask them to explain to their own members who are fond of getting out to protest participating in every demonstration that's going around the country why they are so silent on this particular Draconian piece of legislation. Now I'd just like to throw my support behind two Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) relevant to Part 2 that are in the name of the Leader of the Opposition. The first is SOP 500 in which he was seeking to have the restrictions that are being placed on funerals tangihanga weddings and other services—not just in Christian churches but in places of worship right around the country this very diverse multicultural country that we have—lifted because I have been inundated in the last 24 hours by messages of concern by people throughout New Zealand and I'm sure members opposite must have been as well. I feel it personally. I want to echo the very moving words of my colleague Simeon Brown the MP for Pakuranga when he spoke on this topic—it might have been late last night I think.New Zealanders value their right to worship. That is a freedom and a human right that we should never take away from them. The reason why I support this SOP so strongly is because worshippers whether it's in a temple or a synagogue or a mosque or a church or wherever they might worship—I don't know where Zoroastrians worship but wherever they worship and I'm pleased finally that I'll be able to tell my younger daughter I've worked Zoroastrians into a debate—they should be trusted to worship responsibly. I say to the funeral directors the celebrants the ministers—anyone who would be organising a service of that type particularly for those who are grieving—we respect the work you do and we trust you to enforce the rules as you always would do and as would be absolutely simple for you to do in those places of worship. How utterly ludicrous that 50 or more people can go to the cinema and be trusted to sit with appropriate physical distancing but 100 people can't be trusted to go to a funeral in a large church and observe the same rules. That is nonsense. We have called it out constantly. I'm asking one more time in this committee stage for the Government—and not just Labour members but New Zealand First and the Greens as well—to stand up for the rights of those New Zealanders to worship responsibly and not to impose upon them this Draconian utterly unjustifiable ludicrous constraint which is actually going to engender contempt for the law rather than respect for it. The other SOP I wish to speak in favour of is SOP 501. I endorse the words of my colleague the Hon Dr Nick Smith when he spoke earlier. The National Party holds the majority of electorates in this House. We are the largest party in the Parliament. We accept we're not in the Government—there's no argument about that—but nevertheless given the important role we as an Opposition have in our constitutional framework I strongly echo the plea for the Leader of the Opposition to be included in the consultation process. I also acknowledge David Seymour as an electorate MP and his concerns about some of these matters. There is good constitutional precedent. We've seen it with the Epidemic Response Committee which the Leader of the Opposition has been presiding over very responsibly and very fairly; members of all parties have been involved. The same principle should apply in this particular important phase—if this bill is going to go through and the Government has the numbers to do it—to at least ensure that the Leader of the Opposition can also be consulted.