Penk ChrisCHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you very much Madam Chair for the opportunity to speak to this Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 69 that would form new clause 7 within the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill. Other colleagues have spoken about the aspects of a by-election in particular being involved and the reasons needing to be given and the fact of the party leader's name being expressed. I would like to focus however on the fact that it would be a Gazette notice as opposed to some other method of publication that would be brought into the law as a procedural requirement—admittedly after the fact—that would be brought in by this proposed amendment.The first thing I'd note in that regard is that having a Gazette form of publication of these details that've been referred to provides external scrutiny. The fact that the reasons that have led—the reason in fact; singular as expressed in the SOP but it could be a multitude of reasons I suppose. The reasons that have underlain the action of the party leader and his or her caucus to be fair would need to be subject to external scrutiny and so it's appropriate that it is a Gazette notice rather than for example a memo or something on the parliamentary intranet or something that is less easily accessible. So for that reason I suspect my colleague Simeon Brown has used the Gazette mechanism but I'd be interested in the Minister of Justice's views as to whether he regards that as a valid way of notifying these matters.The second reason is that providing this particular method of publication would allow consistency with other official notices in the publication using this form that again the Minister in the chair Andrew Little has actually referred to and acknowledged is already a legitimate means of publicising such information. Well this would absolutely require—and it would not merely be a matter of discretion—that such matters would need to be gazetted.The next point I'd like to make in relation to the Gazette aspect of this Supplementary Order Paper is that it doesn't preclude other methods of publication. It doesn't preclude other forms of communication about the events that have led up to the expulsion and indeed the expulsion itself. For example there is nothing to stop the relevant party publishing a press release there would be nothing to stop the relevant party posting on social media there'd be nothing to stop the party publishing blog posts or indeed third-party—so to speak if I can use that word party" with a lower-case "p". With the indulgence of the Hansard folk I'll ask them to navigate that particular syntactic minefield that I've stepped into and from which I'm now trying to extract myself—Hon Tim Macindoe: Moving right along.CHRIS PENK: My point being—and moving right along as my colleague the Hon Tim Macindoe helpfully recommends—there are a number of different ways that the information that is necessary for public disclosure and confidence in the democratic system can be exposed to the world by which I mean the New Zealand voter and all those who are interested in and indeed affected by the laws of this place. The fact that this Supplementary Order Paper requires a gazetting of the reasons and the party leaders' names doesn't preclude those other forms of discussion and to me that's a point worth making because it does speak to the genuineness of the need for this information to be out there. So I'd welcome the Minister's comment on that as well.Finally if I may one of the key aspects of a gazetting system—that we already have and the reason I think that Mr Brown suggests it be applied to this particular suggestion—is that it provides a degree of permanence that we don't see in other methods of online publication or even hardcopy publication whereby there is a particular legal requirement that Gazette notices remain on the record for a long period of time. That's important for two reasons I submit. The first is accountability so that there is assurance that we will always be able to find the reasons and indeed again the party leaders' names that underlay the action back in 2018 or whenever it might've been but also to develop a jurisprudence to develop a body of work that says these are the reasons that these actions have been undertaken in the past. It might be a useful resource indeed these Gazette notices for courts who may or may not be considering the actions taken in accordance with this law. No doubt it will pass into law despite the objections of this side of the House but at least it could be done in a way that preserves at least some sort of electoral and democratic integrity."