Hipkins ChrisCHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): It is always a tremendous privilege to follow one of the great legal and constitutional minds of the National Party when speaking in this House although I do on behalf of the Opposition want to thank the Minister who has just resumed his seat Nathan Guy. He is the Opposition's secret weapon in his ability to take 10 minutes to deliver a 5-minute contribution in the debate.I do think however that National has missed an opportunity here. This bill repeals 137 Acts. I think National missed the opportunity there. There are 137 possible members' bills there in keeping with its tradition of stuffing the members' ballot with bills that are irrelevant and relatively inconsequential. There are plenty of other bills that we can recommend for the next statutes repeal bill and I would start with most of the bills in the ballot in the name of National members of Parliament. I do want to commend the handful of National members of Parliament who have taken the time to draft genuine members' bills that are actually designed to encourage proper debate.I think a statutes repeal bill is a very useful exercise and one that this House should perhaps do a little more often. It is interesting though to look at some of the titles of the bills that are repealed here and I think it is particularly interesting to note that the last time the New Zealand Parliament passed a statutes repeal bill was in 1907 and that that bill itself is being repealed by the current Statutes Repeal Bill that we are passing through the House today.It is interesting to look at the number of Acts that are being repealed that were themselves repeal Acts. So we have got the Post Office Act Repeal Act of 1987 which is being repealed the Infants Act Repeal Act of 1989 the National Development Act Repeal Act—all of these Acts repealed other Acts and yet they remain on the law books. So I think it is well past time that that was tidied up.I also want to speak in favour of Supplementary Order Paper 315 which I have tabled on this bill and which will be debated in the Committee. It removes blasphemy from our statute book—something that has been well canvassed in the media in recent days. I do want to acknowledge the constitutional purists who have argued that adding such an amendment to the bill after the select committee process is not good practice but I would like to point out that during the course of the hearings on this bill by the Government Administration Committee there were indeed only four submissions and as a result of those submissions five additional Acts were added to this bill. Those five additional Acts that were added were themselves not necessarily the subject of the full select committee scrutiny process so it is not unusual for additional Acts to be added to a repeal bill as it progresses through the House.I think repealing the laws around blasphemy is certainly well and truly justified. They violate the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which New Zealand is a part of they violate our human right to freedom of expression and repealing them brings us into line with many other countries around the world including Britain the Netherlands Norway Iceland and France that have done the same thing. In an open society that reflects diversity and difference it is well past time that we remove from the books the idea that one can be prosecuted for blasphemy. Tolerance cannot be fostered through prohibition and yet I think New Zealand is a tolerant society and we have no need for that.I was somewhat staggered to learn that one can be imprisoned for a year for blasphemy in New Zealand and I welcome the support of the churches up and down the country for the notion that blasphemy should be removed from our statute book. I think it is very important in terms of our international standing that New Zealand removes this because we have been very outspoken about the misuse of blasphemy laws in other countries around the world and I think it somewhat undermines our position when we condemn the actions of other countries for their imposition of such laws when we ourselves have them on our statute book. So I think it is time for us to remove laws around blasphemy.I want to commend the Government for a good process around the Statutes Repeal Bill. I want to commend my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson who chaired the select committee that heard the submissions on this. I have no doubt that the committee applied rigorous scrutiny to this exercise and as a result we can be sure that the repeals that we are progressing through the House are justified.There are two types of bills in this House that do this kind of thing. One is a statutes repeal bill—and this is the first one in over a hundred years—and the other is a statutes amendment bill. The statutes amendment bill has if you like a fast-track process through the House and works on the basis of unanimity. I think one of the things that we should consider in the House if we want to keep our law books up to date is adding a similar provision to allow statutes repeal bills to follow a similar process to that of statutes amendment bills so that they can be done more frequently without unduly sucking up parliamentary time. In that spirit I am going to end my contribution early so that this legislation can be progressed.