Benson-Pope David: Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
Benson-Pope David: Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:610;Page:7733] 
DAVID BENSON-POPE (NZ Labour—Dunedin South) 
: 
 I am pleased to rise briefly in support of this legislation. I find it astonishing as will most of the listeners in this country to have heard the sanctimonious self-serving claptrap we have heard from the Opposition this morning. I cannot help but think that the National Party and ACT party are the parties that in the case of ACT have Donna Awatere Huata the imaginary member for the sake of the money she generates for the party’s funding and in the case of the National Party have Maurice Williams the man whom it suspends but whose vote it continues to cast. So those parties should not talk to us about smell. They should have a look in their own rubbish tins before standing up and embarrassing and disgracing themselves with that nonsense. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 It is hard to believe that someone with some brief experience in local government who has now been in the House for a few years could get up and make such an appallingly hopeless incompetent unfocused speech then sit down and think he has done his duty by his taxpayers by the people who elected him and might I say by his party. That was a disgraceful intervention by that member David Benson-Pope and he should be thoroughly ashamed of himself. Could he address this most fundamental issue: why is the Labour Party not prepared to say that all its members with the exception of Harry Duynhoven are not in breach of section 51 of the Electoral Act? [ 
Interruption 
] Of course the member as the senior whip for the Labour Party has had the opportunity. He has had the opportunity for the last 4 weeks ever since this subject was known. He has had the opportunity for the last 48 hours ever since some of his colleagues would have informed him of the outcome of the Privilege Committee’s deliberations. 
For here is the real point: a majority of the Privileges Committee of this House finds that inadvertently or otherwise Harry Duynhoven breached section 51 of the Act. That means—if those members of the select committee were reflecting the position that their colleagues would take in the House—that a majority of this House now finds Mr Duynhoven in breach of the Electoral Act. That being the case of course and if that is the way the vote is cast the Speaker is put in a very difficult position at that point in time because he will have heard the House and he will have heard the select committee. 
I think it is entirely appropriate that this matter went to the select committee because it meant we were able to hear evidence from a range of submitters including Mr Duynhoven’s counsel the Solicitor-General and also the Clerk of the House. In fact I believed at the time that the defence put up by Geoffrey Palmer was simply likely never to succeed because it minimised the importance of electoral law and the choice of a Government in any democracy particularly a democracy with a British constitutional background. 
What was amazing was this: on the select committee we had some lawyers—well legally trained people—like the former Dean of the University of Waikato School of Law Margaret Wilson. One has to wonder how someone with that supposedly expert background in academia or so they say could find that the law was unclear and ambiguous. The Solicitor-General did not see it that way. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: Chief legal adviser. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: Yes the chief legal adviser. The Clerk of the House did not see it that way. In fact if we read very carefully Geoffrey Palmer’s submissions we see he knew it was not going to be seen that way and that is why he had secondary pleadings all lined up to throw his client upon the mercy of his colleagues in this House. So how on earth could the Attorney-General a former Dean of the University of Waikato School of Law find that the law was unclear and ambiguous? And that tells us volumes because the Waikato law school is all about Treaty of Waitangi stuff. It is not about law; it is about touchy-touchy feely-feely Treaty of Waitangi stuff so any issue of great constitutional moment is not likely to be carefully entertained by that faculty. That is the reason so many of its students in their last year shoot through to the law faculties in Auckland Wellington or Dunedin to get a respectable closing part of their degree. 
But I come back to my point. Lianne Dalziel the Minister of Immigration is also someone with legal training we are told and a staunch advocate of trade union laws. She also found the law—surprise surprise—ambiguous and not clear. 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: She’s a lawyer? 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: She is a lawyer. 
Hon Murray McCully 
: They found in unison. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: It was sort of like pure intellectual serendipity. There was no combination or covert behind-the-scenes collusion on how they might make up their minds; they just found in unison alongside Dr Cullen. We can forgive Dr Cullen because after all he is a historian and the big picture is what historians are interested in not the finite detail or the humdrum of the ordinary existence of normal human beings like us. They are interested in the grand huge picture and in the end justifying the means; that is what left-wing historians are all about. I can forgive Dr Cullen because of his propensity to come to that sort of conclusion but it is very hard to forgive two so-called lawyers unless of course one makes the usual compensation for where they last practised their trade. 
That said let me make this point very clear: we in New Zealand First are extraordinarily disappointed about this issue because we do think that Harry Duynhoven though he broke the law did not breach the spirit of the law and that in all the circumstances as so often exercised in British and New Zealand justice a way can be found around his paying the price for such a mistake. It is not a matter of protecting one of our own but of doing the right and fair thing. It is easier to do justice in some ways—and this is what I would say to the National Party—but 
often the greater calling in Parliament is to do what is right and in Harry Duynhoven’s case we in New Zealand First believe he should not suffer the ultimate punishment of losing his salary from 11 June of losing his superannuation benefits. 
And the effects are extraordinarily serious. Have members fought a by-election? Let me tell members as someone who knows this personally that if he was put to a by-election he would lose his benefits. He would come back having lost the same career opportunities as others who came in with him. I personally know that that stinks and is unfair but as a matter of principle it had to be done. In Harry Duynhoven’s case it is just not right when we can avoid it and I am prepared to defend that in front of any taxpayers all around this country. They are often not aware of the facts when they come to their talkback-show decisions. 
But my having said that our commitment was to a person who owned up whom we believed was telling the truth and who had been through a significant agonising period whilst trying to wrestle with this present problem. We never made a commitment to have a blanket suspension of this important part of our law for the whole term. We are not going back on our word but sadly this Government a minority Government as it is will not accept our amendment that the change be confined to Harry Duynhoven alone and that its ambit cease the day after it is applied to him so that his situation is dealt with. In that circumstance we have to oppose this legislation. 
We ask at the end of our contribution to the second reading this very simple question: why can the Labour Party not face up to the fact that it is the only party not prepared to place its cards on the table? Who is the member or members it is trying to shield here now? Government members are abusing Harry Duynhoven as much as anyone else is. They have misused their colleague they have misused his background and they have misused his record of integrity for their own deceitful ends. It is despicable. [ 
Interruption 
] David Benson-Pope had a chance to make a full speech but he could not. Even he could not defend his actions and he seeks to make a speech now by way of intervention. Who are the people—is it the man from Christchurch? 
Dr Wayne Mapp 
: Which man? 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: Tim Barnett—is he the one who is carrying two or three passports? 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: Is it the Prime Minister? 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: Is it the Prime Minister? Is it Mr Goff? It has to be someone because why would a political party in such a precarious situation where Harry Duynhoven is concerned go to these extraordinary lengths to offend the rest of the House and Parliament and our constitution were it not that there was something very serious not known to us and that its members cannot have known because they will be embarrassed? Why do they not come clean? 
Dail Jones 
: Is it a list MP? 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: Is it a list MP? 
David Benson-Pope 
: It’s a conspiracy! 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: Oh Mr Benson-Pope a conspiracy—yes it is a conspiracy. Why do we need a blanket suspension?