Ghahraman GolrizGOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green) (remote): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's with great pleasure that I speak in support of this bill as a member of the Privileges Committee. I do want to thank my colleagues on that committee and congratulate the Attorney-General the Hon David Parker who is our chair for their courage to bring a bill like this to the House in response to the Supreme Court's decision in Taylor.I do want to hold that decision engaged: the fundamental right of New Zealanders to vote and whether or not there was discrimination in that regard. So these are the types of fundamental issues that engage the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. It is the case that every Parliament can explicitly breach those rights but to say that citizens who've gone all the way up to the Supreme Court of our country to find that their rights have been breached could have no response at all by Government or respective Houses of Representatives as we come through is—I think—something that would shock most New Zealanders. I think that the expectation of the public is that a bill like this would exist; that there would be a requirement for Parliament and for the Government of the day to respond appropriately—not that an unelected court would overrule the other elected branches of our Government but that if we are to say that access to justice is important and that the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and the Human Rights Act both respectively hold our fundamental rights that there would be a response.We worked really really hard on this in committee and we did hear from some incredible constitutional law experts. We heard from the Human Rights Commission the Office of Human Rights Proceedings and we heard importantly from the architects of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act from Sir Geoffrey Palmer and Sir Ken Keith who came along with handwritten notes from back in the day when the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act was being drafted. They told us their intentions and their understanding of how that piece of legislation would operate to secure fundamental rights in New Zealand. They told us that the expectation was always that Standing Orders would be amended to require a reaction to inconsistencies to section 7 reports; that that was never done; that the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act was relegated to this position of relative impotence; and there was palpable and justifiable anger at that.They did lay at our feet the responsibility to give effect to this piece of legislation now that the Supreme Court has told us what is needed. So when the legislation came to us it was already exciting that we were going to as a Parliament—and it began last term but then renewed this term—and say Yes the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act can go up to the higher courts and there can be these declarations."But it was also at least for my part anxiety that we wouldn't necessarily prescribe a process in the bill that would give effect to the type of reaction and the type of response that the Supreme Court had intended for us to do. And so those submitters really crystallised what was needed. So I do want to acknowledge that and I do want to thank both the committee and the submitters for actually looking at this closely enough and saying "What is the balance?"So we have a democracy and we have the elected members responsible for lawmaking who are supreme and can presumably breach rights but that the judicial branch of our Government who's responsible for ruling in individual cases and interpreting the law is also part of this equation and that members of the public have a right to have their rights made effective if they have had recourse to the courts. We worked hard on that.And so I think the balance is struck here and I think this is an incredible and exciting constitutional development for New Zealand. I think we're going to see some interesting cases come before us and some important ways that we as lawmakers and Government—and Governments and Parliaments after us—are going to be engaged with questions about the way that we make law and the way that we respond to popular sentiments like taking away the right to vote from prisoners which is what that case engaged. But that means something in terms of weakening or strengthening human rights across the board in New Zealand and that slippery slope won't be so easy for Governments and Parliaments to fall down. So I do commend the bill to the House and congratulate the Attorney-General and the Minister for bringing it."