Williams PotoPOTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): There is very little that David Bennett would motivate me to do but in this case I am motivated to encourage that member to correct the Hansard about the comment he made about the Labour Party members who may or may not have voted against the marriage equality bill. Mr Bennett I can give you the list. If you would care to stand up and correct the Hansard given your speech—[Interruption]—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No no. The member will sit. That is not a point of order; that is interrupting the speaker.POTO WILLIAMS: Thank you Mr Chairman. We all know that David Bennett is prone to some fantastical ideas and in this regard he is still on the money. I come from a place called Christchurch. There is something in that name that will signal where I am going to head with this particular contribution because I spend many of my Sundays attending services around my electorate of Christchurch East. Many many many people in my electorate choose to spend their Sunday mornings—and a large part of their Sundays—in observance of their faith and I often attend services all across my electorate. There are many people in my particular electorate who choose to use Sunday as a day of rest a day of fellowship a day of sharing and gathering with other members of their faith to have some time together. And they may in the afternoon even choose to go shopping but their first observance is to their faith on a Sunday. Not only am I a member who represents a constituency that has a high population of faith-based communities but I am also a member of the Pacific Island community. It is to my distress that I see members from the other side of the Chamber who are of my Pacific community who are not able to enact—Hon Nicky Wagner: That's an assumption.POTO WILLIAMS: —what they believe they should do. It may be an assumption according to Minister Wagner. It may be an assumption but I know because I have had conversations with those two Pacific members about the depth of their commitment to their faith. So it is very sad when we get to the point where Government policy overrides the intrinsic values and beliefs of an individual member. This should be a conscience vote and I know that if it was a true conscience vote those two Pacific members on the other side of the Chamber there would be voting against this legislation. They are members of a community that has faith at the heart of everything they do and after faith comes family. So you cannot tell me that this Government is not whipping its members to vote completely for the bill. It causes me distress to know that my Pacific brothers in the National Party cannot vote the way their true conscience would want them to do. The other thing that this Government has decided to do is to abdicate its responsibility around this very very important issue on to our territorial local authorities. It is up to them to deal with this and to develop local policy and bylaws on this particular issue. So we have pushed the responsibility on to our local authorities. They are the ones that are going to have to engage in the public consultation. They are the ones that are going to have to do the hard work on this particular matter and there may be territorial local authorities whose communities choose like quite likely my community in Christchurch East or a Pacific community: Actually you know what? We're going to go with what we truly believe which is we want to ensure that Easter Sunday remains as it should." Thank you."