Macindoe TimHon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): E Te Mana Whakawā. Well that was a compelling and coherent contribution from Mr Ball wasn't it! Absolutely not. It'll be worth pointing out to members of the public who might be listening at this moment that Mr Ball is not a member of that committee therefore he was speaking then without any knowledge of what the Justice Committee has been deliberating on for a very very long time. One of the points I would like to make to him—because it was very hard actually to discern exactly where he was going with much of that rant quite frankly—is that the National Party did not submit a minority view because we are not in the minority on that committee. It is a split committee Mr Ball and when you try to lecture Mr Mitchell on getting it right I suggest pot kettle black.Darroch Ball: I seek leave to table the National Party's minority view which is in the report from the select committee.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): No the member ought to know the rules by now.Hon TIM MACINDOE: Thank you Mr Speaker. That report of course has been tabled in the House and is now a matter of public record. Mr Ball seems to be going from bad to worse in this debate.I want to go back to the opening contributions from the Minister of Justice because the Hon Andrew Little was telling us how good this bill is and I say to Mr Little and to members of the Government parties who are supporting him that if this bill was half as good as he claims it to be they would have followed many many decades of established and important constitutional convention and ensured that they had consulted with all the parties in this Parliament before they introduced it.Hon Andrew Little: You've got to have smart people on the other side Mr Macindoe and Nick Smith isn't that person.Hon TIM MACINDOE: Also—Mr Little is now interjecting—they would have waited until the Justice Committee had concluded—Hon Andrew Little: Two years—two years.Hon TIM MACINDOE: —its report into the general election because that's a triennial exercise that we have after every general election. I'm happy for Mr Little to point out that it's two years because the reason it was two years was that his own Government took so long to initiate the inquiry in the first place. I've been a member of this House for longer than Mr Little and I can tell him that never in my 12 years here has a Government taken anywhere near as long to initiate the inquiry or to consult upon the terms of reference that underpin its deliberations. So when the Minister of Justice has the audacity to try to tell the country that he had to introduce this bill because the Justice Committee had taken so long to report he is fundamentally ignoring the reason for that delay.As Dr Smith noted in his opening contribution it was also because the Government parties refused to allow the committee to inquire into the scandal that is now becoming a matter of considerable public interest and that is the Serious Fraud Office's declaration that they will be looking into the New Zealand First donations because that is a very serious matter. I reiterate the call that members of the National Party have been making in recent days that it is absolutely essential that that inquiry should be concluded and its findings be made public well before this year's general election. The Electoral Commission says that the New Zealand First Party broke the law and yet the Labour Party with the Minister of Justice sitting here and presumably the Greens—although I acknowledge that they're not members of that committee—agreed that the inquiry shouldn't look into those serious matters. Well this Government is defying as I say longstanding constitutional convention that electoral law changes are made on a cross-party basis following that triennial Justice Committee inquiry.Mr Little argues that the changes are non-controversial. Well I think anybody listening to this debate will have been able to hear in the last half an hour or more that that is clearly not the case. He could have avoided it this controversy simply by following the longstanding constitutional conventions. If that were true surely he would've consulted us before introducing this bill. It is outrageous that he has done so without consulting the parties of the Opposition. That's the sort of conduct that you expect from a banana republic. That's the sort of conduct that you expect from South Korea or another country that tramples on human rights and has no respect whatsoever for democracy.Chlöe Swarbrick: That's the wrong Korea Tim. It's North Korea; it's not South Korea.Hon TIM MACINDOE: Did I say South Korea? I apologise humbly to South Korea a country for which I have great respect and I do actually appreciate Chlöe Swarbrick correcting me on that because I would hate that to go uncorrected. I am of course referring to North Korea.I point out that the National Party respected all of those conventions right through our history from the beginning under Sid Holland the first National Party Prime Minister through to more recent times the Bolger-Shipley Government and the Key-English Government of which I had a great privilege to be a member. We always respected that convention and I believe that when we are next given the privilege of forming a Government we will respect that convention again because not to do so is appalling.There is much more that I would like to say on this bill but I'm supposed to have sat down after five minutes so I better do what the whip has told me. But I do want to finish by—Greg O'Connor: Well you do what Nick Smith tells you.Hon TIM MACINDOE: Mr O'Connor what a bizarre suggestion that is. I do just want to make the point that we will return to the issue of same-day enrolments during the committee stage in the hope that the Government will look at the very serious complications that arise. It's not just about the delay in the return of the writ. There is much more to it including the necessity if you are part of a democratic exercise such as a general election of having the ability as a candidate to reach out to all the voters to convey your messages to them. This particular measure will take that away from candidates of all stripes in a way that is fundamentally undemocratic. I'm sure that's why Britain doesn't do it Australia doesn't do it and much of the United States doesn't do it. So it's not as if we are currently out of step with comparable jurisdictions but we will be under this bill. It's a very flawed measure and I'm very disappointed to see the Government charging ahead with it in such an undemocratic and unconstitutional fashion.