Penk ChrisCHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you Madam Speaker. Well we've all learnt something today. In fact we've learnt a number of things. I'll call them lessons" rather than "learnings" because of course "learnings" is not a word.I think first of all it's instructive that the bill that was passed last week by this House was not called No. 1 but this one is called No. 2 in the same way that when the First World War broke out it was not called the First World War; it was called the war to end all wars. And of course it only became meaningful as the First World War or World War I when there was of course a Second World War or World War II.So anyway I'd guess that's as good a clue as any apart from common sense also being our guide as ever in such things that the Government had not anticipated that we would be here doing this all over again and of course neither did most of the rest of us.One of the lessons that we've learnt is that the Government now understands clearly in front of the whole nation the difference between principle and politics as within its own ranks. We've had the Greens on one side arguing on a principled basis that all prisoners should be allowed to vote and New Zealand First members and Labour saying that it should be more appropriately the case that prisoners who are incarcerated up to three years should be allowed to vote and that's fair enough. The result of the coalition discussions and negotiations must have been that they would retain those respective positions but ultimately vote in favour of the bill—fine. That's coalition Government that's MMP you know for better or worse in this particular case and indeed in terms of the arrangements of the country.But I would say to the Government that we have learnt a lesson today or rather they have: they can't have it both ways. They can't pretend to be principled in this space and making high-flown arguments in favour of all prisoners being able to vote because voting is a human or civil or political right and yet saying on the one hand that human or civil or political rights should apply to some and not all. The thing about being on a high horse is that of course you can fall off and the higher the horse the harder the fall.That's one of the lessons and another is about the perils of legislating under urgency. There's urgency and there's urgency of course but the form that sees a piece of legislation subject to the committee of the whole House stage where Government parties are putting up Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) that are not supported by other Government papers immediately to be followed by a third reading is simply asking for trouble. So that's another lesson.Yet another lesson is the question of logical consistency. So the substantive issue that underlies the difficulties that the Parliament has had with regard to this bill and its predecessor was the distinction between a three-year threshold a cut-off for prisoners being able to vote and not. I have argued in previous stages that it was inevitable because of this logical inconsistency between the Government parties therefore that one of them would put up an SOP that would be resisted by the others with the result that we have seen so far. In response—I would say refuting but at least in response—to the point made by the Minister Andrew Little that the National Party has in his view been inconsistent in supporting one of those parts of the Green Supplementary Order Paper and not the other I would say that it's been consistent with our position throughout in relation to the underlying legislation that we oppose it and that we will do nothing to assist its passage through the House because we do not believe in it. And that leads me to another point that I've made which I'll somewhat—well I'll call it a lesson. I was just starting to sound a little bit magisterial.Hon Clare Curran: Truncate.CHRIS PENK: Truncate. Now there's an interesting word that Hon Clare Curran is well advised to dispense by way of advice.Well I was going to say actually that one of the lessons was that an Opposition doesn't have many tools available at its disposal and it can only creep through doors that have been left ajar by a careless Government and one of those we saw last week. Who can blame an Opposition for wanting to have a rare opportunity to set the agenda to execute its own ideas in a way that isn't normally afforded to Her Majesty's loyal Opposition. Again as I said earlier rightly so the Government has won the Treasury benches. It has the right to control the affairs of the nation to the extent of course that it lets itself down and allows the Opposition to do so instead essentially. So it's not often that we have a majority of the House on this side of the House. But every now and then with our dear friends of the Green Party we are able to effect real change for a very short space of time which is funny really because that's normally the way the Greens operate in general as well.So turning to some of our other lessons the difference between rhetoric and reality—that's been an interesting matter to have been exposed. I refer again to the underlying point that the bill touches on with regard to prisoners who are incarcerated for less than three years having certain rights and those who are not not getting such rights. That's really interesting when it comes to the fundamental justification for this legislative reform taken as a whole which is that the Government has said that it wants to be consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. As Attorney-General Finlayson bless his heart and various senior courts have ruled it is inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act to have a piece of legislation on the statute book that says that prisoners can't vote. Yet they've done half the job as usual—although if I say half the job that's probably pretty generous when it comes to other policy failures to deliver but anyway we won't get into those. But if we're talking about consistency as well and again that gap between rhetoric and reality it's worth noting again that the very valid points that have been made in relation to breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi Te Tiriti o Waitangi in relation to the disproportionate effect on Māori of the criminal justice system I've argued that that an appropriate place to address that is in earlier stages essentially of the criminal justice system and actually of course before that in terms of the causes of crime. But if the Government's view is that there is a disproportionate effect that can be fixed by the issue of prisoner voting then they should take that seriously and acknowledge that actually the right legislative response was that proposed by the Green Party in its SOP which they did not support and that would be to allow all prisoners to vote. Now the opprobrium that has been placed upon us for having the temerity to support some of the Greens' SOP and not others is rather interesting in the context of the other Government parties not supporting it at all. So I think that's the more fundamental issue to be discussed in the Beehive and Bowen House when they are no doubt reflecting upon the lessons that have been learnt over the last 24 hours and actually I suppose going back to last week and that fateful night when we discovered a difficulty that had arisen in the proceedings of the committee of the whole House.A couple more lessons in my remaining time. One is that a Government that manages its legislative programmes such that it doesn't introduce electoral law in an election year is one that is acting more wisely than the current one. Others on this side of the House most notably Hon Dr Nick Smith have made points about the desirable nature of bipartisanship in relation to electoral law and he's sort of making it from a constitutional point of view—almost perhaps a moral point of view or historical point of view. But my perspective is actually slightly different which is that I'd emphasise that it's asking for trouble really just from a pragmatic point of view a practical point of view to be having somewhat last minute and in the context of a three-year term election year—and gosh we're within the regulated period at the moment; that really is last minute to be putting things through such as this even without what Blackadder would have described as a "cock-up". So we can see how that sort of relates really into other issues as well other lessons again which is essentially about understanding what it means to negotiate. So the Government parties have realised that in order to negotiate they need to understand what will keep their coalition members happy if they are to get across the line. The alternative view is that they had negotiated and the agreed position was that the Greens would put up something that they knew that the other parties wouldn't support and knew very well wouldn't pass which is I suppose firmly in the realm of virtue signalling more so than virtue itself. That's I suppose troubling enough except that we're in an election campaign effectively now certainly that period and so it is that you know again that's to be expected. It's something that this side of the House expects from Government parties—fair enough; good luck to them—and we respond accordingly. But they should not pretend that they're not doing the same when they put up amendments that will not be supported by their side of the House that highlight the logical inconsistency. The logical inconsistencies as far as I can go there—he said checking himself in the last 10 seconds to not say a bad word in parliamentary terms having already said "cock-up" which is pretty bad. And so for all these reasons—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yeah last time you put it in parenthesis which it still is unparliamentary.CHRIS PENK: It's still unparliamentary Madam Speaker. Well in that case I'd better stop by saying we remain opposed to this bill and indeed this legislative reform in total."