Carter John: Standing Orders—Suspension 
Carter John: Standing Orders—Suspension 
[Volume:609;Page:6233] 
JOHN CARTER (NZ National—Northland) 
: 
 I want to take a call on this matter and bring the attention of the House to an issue that worries me. Firstly let me make it very clear that National supports this motion and will be voting for it. But I am concerned that we are taking up the House’s time in having to debate this motion at all. That worries me. Normally convention has it that when the Government puts up an uncontentious omnibus bill the parties agree to it and if it contains issues that maybe there is some objection to then they are taken out. That has happened for I imagine as long as you have been here Mr Speaker and probably for longer. It worries me that we have now got into a position of having to spend maybe an hour or so of the Government’s time which is precious enough under MMP to have this debate so that the Government can do what convention has set down for many many years. 
I want to talk just a little about that aspect and to do so in the context of the Standing Orders. Quite honestly I can see the time coming when if it becomes the norm for the Government to have to put through a non-contentious omnibus bill by way of a motion then it is likely that a suggestion or a recommendation will be made to the Standing Orders Committee to change the Standing Orders. So rather than the Business Committee operating by total consensus as it basically is or near unanimity in fact maybe we will have to set a figure of a 90 percent majority or something of that nature. I say that that is bad. If we have to go down that line and get to the stage where the Government finds that we have to address the issue of the Standing Orders and to change convention because one of the smaller parties is holding up something that has worked well for many years then I think that is unfortunate. 
It worries me in the context of in the main—although I am not a supporter of MMP—the way in which we have set up systems that basically have worked well enough. I know there are some issues we are going through in the Standing Orders now as a consequence of MMP—the number of House sitting hours etc.—which we will debate at some stage but it worries me that we have got ourselves into a situation now of having to spend some time debating this matter. I will be very interested to listen to New Zealand First’s contribution. I am sure that Mr Jones will be taking a call to tell the Parliament why New Zealand First cannot agree to this and why it has gone outside what is the norm to get the Government to the stage where it has had to introduce a notice of motion. 
As I have said normally those bills are not contentious; they are done for a very good reason. Normally they are put through without much debate at all. Normally they are agreed to and they go to a select committee for a quick once-over come back and away they go. They are technical bills. There is nothing contentious or political about them. I cannot understand why we have had to go through this procedure. It disappoints me. 
One of the things I will say to other parties in this House is that they need to realise that it is these sorts of things that may well one day upset—it is only a little thing and by itself it will not upset our MMP system but it is one of the reasons that people start saying: “If you can’t get the Government’s legislation through the Parliament because we have to take into account every whim and wish of small parties then maybe we will have to go back to address the whole system under which we elect members of Parliament.” 
I wanted to make this contribution because I think that members of the House need to consider that as we do things particularly where we get to a stage where a Government is forced to bring a notice of motion to put through this sort of legislation that may have a downstream impact. New Zealand First and also other parties that may for some reason or another want to try to move outside what has been the norm need to think very seriously about what they are doing before they take a step that breaks convention. Convention has been set by this Parliament for many good reasons. We need to be very careful about convention before we go through the system of changing it. I do not want us to have to get to the stage where the Standing Orders are changed so that the Government can force something on us. The Business Committee has worked extremely well under the Speaker’s guidance. Indeed in my view it has worked particularly well since its inception. It will seem a great shame if this becomes the norm and we may well have to go back and change the Standing Orders so that we have to operate in a different way. 
I say to the Parliament particularly New Zealand First but to all parties that where they think something is not working and they want to frustrate the system they should be careful. I am not trying to be critical because there may well be a particularly good reason for New Zealand First’s action in this case; I want to take us outside this particular issue and just think more of the general basis and wider ramifications of what we are doing here and what the impact of it may be downstream. Often as the old saying goes one does something here and there are downstream consequences later. Maybe one day these things will come back to bite us. I leave that thought with the Parliament as we debate this issue. It is an important issue and one that we will be supporting. However it is more the principle I wanted to put on the floor of the Parliament today for debate.