Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Sorry Madam Speaker. I was engrossed in the breaking news on Twitter about the wording of the Government's cannabis legislation bill. We've got the wording out and I want to come back to the wording and why it matters in my contribution on the bill because actually the reason we're having this bill is for that referendum which will be held at the 2020 election.But I want to make three points in my contribution. We're opposing this bill. The first is about the process. We think the process leading up to this bill was objectionable. We think it was wrong. We think it actually does make a difference and it is an important bill that's constitutionally significant. It's not constitutionally significant in the same way the Constitution Act 1986 was or the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 was but it is constitutionally significant and we think the Government should have consulted with the Opposition.Sadly as we're about to discover later on in the House today this Government is making a habit when it comes to electoral law of not properly consulting with the Opposition. I for one think that is regrettable. I think it is bad process. Of course our constitution depends on conventions and it depends on—to some extent—Governments doing the right thing when it comes to electoral law. That has not been the case when it comes to this bill. I think it actually undermines the argument that the Hon Shane Jones just advanced about there being no Cabinet conspiracy. Well that might be true for a National-led Government Cabinet but frankly the behaviour of this Cabinet when it comes to electoral law puts a lie to the claim that there would be no conspiracy. And I think members of the Opposition would be rightly fearful of a Cabinet arrogating to itself the power to set referendum questions like we see with this bill. So that's the first point: we think the process has been wrong from the start. The second point is we think this bill is wrong in principle and we think that Parliament should determine referendum questions not Cabinet. That's been the case since 1853; every previous referendum question has been set by the Parliament. Why does that matter? I want to advance three particular reasons to why we believe that. The first is that the questions matter and Chris Penk made quite a lot in his speech about that. The questions that are asked make a difference and we think that should be within the provenance of the Parliament because ultimately it will be the Parliament delegating to the people whether or not a particular thing happens. We therefore think it should be the Parliament that decides on the question put to the people. We think that's a simple concept we think it's the right concept and we think that the way in which the question is worded is important. Labour members previously have thought that to be the case as well. In the last Parliament I sat on the Justice and Electoral Committee as it then was as we considered the flag referendum bill or the New Zealand Flags—plural—Referendum Bill. People have forgotten about that. It was only three years ago but there were thousands of submissions. The Labour Party ran a petition website and there were 50000 submissions through it or some very high number. It was sat at committee for a long time and it was highly controversial. Actually it should have been quite a simple matter which was the question of putting to the people the various options for the flag or the possible new flag and then the second question: do you support the final option up against the current flag? But there was all sorts of heat and light.The key point I remember from that whole process—and it was actually the current Speaker who was particularly exercised about this Madam Deputy Speaker. The current Speaker was particularly exercised about the question because he said The question matters and we've got to get the question right." His particular argument at the time was that we should ask "Do you want to change the flag?" before we asked what to change it to. We had this long back and forth about whether or not you could vote whether or not that was legitimate because if you asked "Do you want the flag to change?" you might have an answer yes or no but of course a lot of people's answer would depend on "Well it depends what it is. I don't know if I'm in favour of changing the flag because I want to know what the change is."In the end the Cabinet and then the Parliament decided that we would have a two-stage process where everyone would vote on the various options. We had the Lockwood versions the two different Lockwood versions and then everyone got upset about Red Peak. It's amazing looking back at that time in our history when everyone became a vexillologist—which is a flag expert—and we were told by Gareth Morgan and all the self-proclaimed vexillologists out there that the way the Kyle Lockwood flag had been designed was inappropriate and you couldn't have a particular line in one way and it was appalling and there'd be international outrage and condemnation so we had to quickly change the law through urgency to put Red Peak into it. I mean it was a hilarious process in some ways. But the point is we had a long debate about the question and actually Labour members were exercised about the question and they were right so that's the first point. The second point is we don't think it's right that Cabinet should be able to set the number of referendums because under this bill—which actually does expire at the 2020 election but in principle it's wrong because Cabinet can set the number and of course that could potentially affect what happens at the general election. So that's the second point. The third point is that the legitimacy of the result depends on public buy-in and we think that having the bill go through the Parliament with the question debated through the Parliament is important. Now Shane Jones made some good points in response to this and I want to deal with some of those things. He said "Well look the Cabinet is not going to conspire. You're tilting at windmills you're seeing things that aren't there." Well you might well say that but actually frankly we don't have a lot of faith in the current Cabinet. We'd have a lot more faith in the Cabinet of a National-led Cabinet. But that's the point isn't it that political parties have faith in their own Cabinets? So that is a trite way of saying political parties trust their own people. Well of course but that's the point that you put it to the Parliament and at least the Parliament can have a say through it. The second point that he said is that well we've got the Regulations Review Committee that there'll be—and he went into quite some detail to say that there'd be an extensive process. The Cabinet would set something through Order in Council and then the question would end up at the Regulations Review Committee and there'd be submissions and people would come in and have their say and the Regulations Review Committee would investigate it. Well that seems to me to be an implicit admission that the committee process is important. If the rebuttal to "Cabinet can set the question and there's no select committee scrutiny" is "Oh no but there's the Regulations Review Committee and they can investigate it and have all these submissions and really get into the details" well that's an argument for having a select committee process. That's not an argument against—that's not an argument of a Cabinet setting it it's an argument for the Parliament setting it so he's actually undermined his own point. And actually we would just make the point that the Regulations Review Committee is not appropriate for that; it's not a body that has ever considered the wording of referendum questions. Yes it's true it considers Orders in Council a little bit like a court and—people like to mock the Regulations Review Committee but having spent three years on that under the wise chairmanship of the Hon David Cunliffe I've come to appreciate the [Interruption]—Mr Jones laughs but he's actually quite a—Hon Member: Easy easy. CHRIS BISHOP: Well it was a good committee because we had the Hon David Cunliffe and we had the Hon David Parker. Anyway I digress. I have a lot of time for the committee and it does a lot of good work but it is not the constitutionally appropriate body to consider referendum questions. It's just not. If you really wanted a committee to get into the details you should send it to a committee which is the point we've made from the start. The third point in closing is this is particularly inappropriate for the cannabis referendum. The real way to do these referendums is for them to be self-executing in the same way the End of Life Choice Act is. So Parliament has extensively considered that bill; people have their own views about the rightness or wrongness of it. It's now in law. It self-executes; in other words it comes into effect upon a positive vote plus one of the people at the referendum and if it doesn't it lapses. That's the right way to do it. That's what the Government should be doing on the cannabis referendum but they're not doing that. Instead we've got this draft bill the Cannabis Legalisation and Control Bill which has literally just in the last 10 minutes been outlined at a press conference. That will be put to the people and the question will be: do you support it or not? Well that's a good question. The problem is the 2020 election may result in a completely changed Parliament which will have to presumably if it's a positive vote deal with this bill. And actually parties may campaign on amending parts of it. Parties may campaign on not implementing it altogether.So the right way to do referenda is to pass the whole thing through into an Act have it as self-executing and have it coming into effect—not this halfway house Mickey Mouse solution which is what we have with this bill and that's why we oppose it."