Bishop Chris; Tolley AnneCHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Thank you very much Madam Chair. I do want to respond to the comments of the Minister in the chair Andrew Little. He says integrity is what happens when voters express their views at a general election and the will of the people is given effect to and the Parliament sits and 120 of us—121 in the last Parliament—come in here. His view is that integrity means basically everything is static for the next three years. No one can leave their party by-elections can't happen—and I'll return to that point.Integrity means proportionality is absolute across the Parliament except that cannot be true because in Northland in February 2015—as much as it pains my colleagues—there was a by-election and the National Party lost a seat and New Zealand First gained a seat. If members over the other side were holding firm to their principles we would have come to some sort of arrangement in our electoral law that gave the National Party an extra seat because in the Minister's own words proportionality is the paramount principle—that's what integrity means: integrity means proportionality". That's essentially boiling it down to three words: "integrity means proportionality" except that's not correct because as we know with by-elections and particularly in the example of Northland where the New Zealand First Party which is proposing this bill before the Parliament and Winston Peters—in fact the only MP I can find who actually supports this legislation. We are in this unusual situation as my colleague Nick Smith has noted in which a bill that the majority of Parliament doesn't support is probably going to pass which is a slightly strange situation—Hon Maggie Barry: Thanks to the Greens.CHRIS BISHOP: —but that's the sort of Orwellian world we've entered thanks to the Greens but anyway. The Minister says proportionality means integrity except that can't be true. Because if that was true the National Party would have gone back up—Darroch Ball: Bad example.CHRIS BISHOP: —to 59 seats in February 2015. Darroch Balls says "Bad example." How can that be a bad example? By the Minister's own words proportionality got disturbed. The voters had another go in February 2015. The voters had their say; the National Party lost a seat. By the Minister's own integrity and by their own line of logic the National Party should have got an extra seat and New Zealand First would not have got a seat. After all integrity means proportionality and proportionality as determined at the 2014 election was that the National Party was entitled to 59 seats and then we lost a seat and we went down a seat. Well actually if that's true—if integrity means proportionality—then we should have gone up.Another point to note is the other point that Mr Little made which is that it's voters' choice. He says political party realignments will still happen. The real question for the committee is: do we want the integrity to be tested—because we're talking about the word "(Integrity)" in the bill—by leaders of parties or by voters? That's actually the real issue for the committee. Our view on the National Party side of the House is that the test of integrity should not be with the leader who can then use the power that accrues to a leader by dint of their job to potentially threaten and chasten and pressure. That power should not be enjoyed by the leader.When we line up in this Parliament and we have the Speech from the Throne and the Commission Opening of Parliament as Dr Lockwood Smith said in his submission to the Justice Committee MPs take their oaths one by one as individual MPs in Parliament. The Rt Hon Bill English did not stand up and take the oath on behalf of 56 National MPs after the 2017 election. The Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern did not stand up and take the oaths on behalf of all the Labour Party MPs including the Minister of Justice Andrew Little. She did not do that. Labour members National members New Zealand First members the sole ACT member and the Greens—they all took their oaths one by one because we owe our seats in this House to the votes of New Zealanders not to our party leaders.So the question before the committee is: is integrity to be decided by leaders or by voters? The word "(Integrity)" is actually a really important issue in this debate. We're only on the title clause but integrity matters and the definition offered by the Minister in the chair so far is seriously deficient.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): I call the Hon Michael Woodhouse."