Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you Mr Chair. I will say this about Deborah Russell and that is at least she's showing a little bit of passion for the debate. She's about the only one who we can be sure is awake over there and while that intervention was somewhat inarticulate and my ears are still bleeding at least she made some kind of contribution that wasn't a motion that the question be put. But I do hope that she actually wants to back that up and take a call and say why she feels so passionately about the intervention of Dr Smith.But I agree with Mr Macindoe—it is good that the Minister in the chair Andrew Little has been there for an extended period of time. He has really locked himself in he is taking calls and I certainly appreciate that. Although I want to come back to his last contribution which was in clause 5 it's very important that I just reference that in order to make the point I want to make in support of the new clause 5A and in particular Supplementary Order Papers 58 and 59.Mr Little in response to my intervention said that rather than weakening the hand of an electorate MP—the ability of an electorate MP—his or her hand is strengthened by the fact that if on conscience they go against the party will and the party kicks them out then they can go back to the electorate and have that mandate retested. Only here is the flaw in the argument: let's assume that that does happen and the member stands as an Independent and wins the seat. The paradox to that is that the very thing that the Minister in the chair says is designed to be maintained which is the integrity of the proportionality of Parliament would be even further undermined.CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): And after two minutes this part—Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Which is the very good segue into what I wanted to make about—CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): No no. Let me finish please. This is about the amendments inserting new clause 5A—how the courts treat the bill. So you need to address those issues.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: That's exactly right but at this stage we don't know how the courts will treat the bill. The point is that if a by-election was so poorly run that actually the person responsible for distorting the integrity of Parliament could well be the member of Parliament that ran the by-election or the leader of the party that lost the by-election—and Mr Little is not prepared to say actually what in section 55D(a) would constitute a distortion of the proportionality of the political party.CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): We're debating Supplementary Order Papers 58 59 and 90 on the insertion of a new clause relating to how the courts treat this bill. We have gone past clause 5. Please direct your comments to these.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: If a member is not happy with the circumstances that led to their expulsion from the party and therefore from Parliament they have no recourse. They have absolutely no way of challenging the decision of a tyrannical party leader who forces his or her caucus members into a two-thirds majority to turf someone out. That is unconstitutional. But even more so if that person does not have the right of recourse to the courts to at least review the decision—and the fact that there is such a vagueness about what would constitute the expulsion from Parliament; indeed the Minister in the chair would not say that one definition is voting against the party line. In fact Mr Ball was used as a hypothetical example of voting against a party line and wanting to take a judicial review on that.Actually in the Prebble v Awatere Huata case the question of loyalty to the party and voting along party lines was put to the courts. The court said they could not determine that but it was Huata's submission that she had never voted against the ACT Party's position and therefore that will not be enough in and of itself to constitute upsetting the proportionality. It could be any number of things and the person affected by that decision has no recourse by a judicial review no recourse under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and that is the sort of framework we see in the very countries on which this bill is modelled and I think Zimbabwe is the best country that springs to mind.