Tolley Anne: Appropriation (Continuation of Interim Meaning of Funding for Parliamentary Purposes) Bill — In Committee 
Tolley Anne: Appropriation (Continuation of Interim Meaning of Funding for Parliamentary Purposes) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:643;Page:13114] 
ANNE TOLLEY (National—East Coast) 
: 
 Well that is interesting is it not? Here we are in this Committee debating a bill that is due to come into effect before Christmas before the end of the year and the Labour Government is shutting down the debate on it. We are not even allowed to debate it in this Chamber— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: The member will be seated. The decision about how long a debate goes on is the Chairperson’s decision. If the member wishes to criticise the Chairperson there is a proper process for doing so. 
ANNE TOLLEY 
: Madam Chairperson Government members opposite moved the closure motion and the debate on clause 1 was closed based on a vote. At no stage did I intend to criticise your decision. I was criticising the Government for moving a closure motion to shut down debate on this bill. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: OK; I accept that. 
ANNE TOLLEY 
: This bill is due to come into force on 1 January next year. I want to make the point I made when this bill was introduced: the Government has had the whole year to negotiate this bill. As insidious as the National Party found the whole bill in essence we were prepared to talk about the processes around moving forward understanding that this validation bill would lapse at the end of this calendar year. However the Government has made no attempt to set up sensible reasonable cross-party negotiations. The first time the matter was raised with the National Party was in September. So the previous Minister of Justice was sitting on this piece of legislation knowing that it was going to expire at the end of the calendar year. It has been discussed at the Parliamentary Service Commission as expiring at the end of the year. Everyone has been aware that the legislation was due to expire but the Government and the previous Minister of Justice have done nothing—absolutely nothing—until it was so late in the piece the end of September when negotiations were started. 
Now we are faced with 3 or 4 weeks of sittings of the House in which to rush a bill like this through. We cannot even fully debate it in this Committee without having closure motions moved by the Government after only a couple of speakers. That is outrageous; that is an assault on democracy. 
Sue Moroney 
: I raise a point of order Madam Chairperson. The speaker on her feet is asserting that she is not allowed to debate this bill although she is clearly on her feet debating the bill. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: That’s not a point of order. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: We will have just one warning on this; when I am trying to rule on a point of order there will be silence. It is not a point of order. 
ANNE TOLLEY 
: So we are now in the position of having to debate this bill under extreme provocation and extreme circumstances because it is time limited. There is no opportunity for us to discuss alternatives to this insidious bill. 
We are told that if this bill does not commence on 1 January next year we will have no rules under which to operate. That is absolutely absurd. This Parliament had perfectly good rules. We do not need this bill. We could quite easily see this legislation lapse and go back to the old rules that were in force prior to this backward retrospective validating legislation and if everyone abided by those rules there would be no problems. We have worked hard this year to clarify the rules so that everyone understood them. We could start on 1 January when this new legislation is due to come into effect and as long as everyone abided by the rules there would be no prosecutions or problems. We could all carry on under the rules that Parliament lived under in reasonable circumstances for a number of elections. 
We are now faced with this legislation that will legitimise and legalise behaviour that was against the existing rules. There is no need for this legislation to come into effect from 1 January next year and to run for another 18 months. The existing rules were perfectly adequate. If people had abided by those rules then the Auditor-General would not have found in the way he did and we would not be in the situation we are in today whereby the Labour Party is trying to rort the rules.