Penk ChrisCHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you Madam Chair. I'm grateful to have the opportunity to engage in a debate that's clearly hugely important on a number of different levels. The substantive risks and the stakes could hardly be higher as the Hon Michael Woodhouse has alluded to. But constitutionally too this is a hugely important moment for our democracy our nation State—dare I say it. I don't want to overdramatise but we face a very fundamental question in this House today of who makes the rules as a distinct question from who makes the rulings. It might sound almost too obvious to say but we need to consider very carefully the role of the legislature in legislating and the role of the judiciary in adjudicating. Comity goes both ways. It's not acceptable for a Parliament to tell the courts what to do in any individual case but so too it is true that the courts should not do the role of lawmaking in the sense of the laws of the statute book. Indeed they are to apply them and they are of course to interpret them as necessary in an individual case and interpretation may take the form of preferring in the event of ambiguity an interpretation that's consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. That's all fine. That is all right. That is all proper. Indeed that is all good. But what we have here in front of us is not only a piece of legislation and a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act report but also a Supreme Court judgment that together present a very troubling picture in terms of a degree of confusion that I believe has now arisen in relation to specific cases the interpretation of the Acts of Parliament and dare I say the attitude—and it doesn't give me any pleasure to say—of some members of the bench in relation to the respective roles of these branches of Government.Speaking to Part 2 particularly of the bill colleagues have raised a couple of technical difficulties in relation to proposed clause 11 of Schedule 1 in clause 5(7). The member from the ACT Party Nicole McKee raised what I think is actually a really good point in relation to the apparent effect of clause 11 which is to say that in relation to the particular appellant in the case D v New Zealand Police the law is not to apply to that person. It seems to me an open question whether or not intended by this Parliament whether the particular person who is the particular appellant in that case may be exempted from the effect of this law going forward—so not even addressing the question of retrospectivity in terms of the offending that he or she—and I understand he—has apparently undertaken but actually going forward as well. I think the construction of clause 11 if I've understood its effect correctly may erroneously—and that is to say: in a way that's unintended—excuse or exempt that particular person who was the appellant in that case from such judgment going forward. God forbid that he should behave in such a way again that would place in danger the children of New Zealand such that that would even become a relevant question. I hope that it's a merely academic point. I hope that it's a moot point. But nevertheless it's an important one for constitutional reasons and I give credit to the ACT member Nicole McKee for having raised it in this committee. That's an additional argument in favour of the withdrawal the removal of clause 11 as has been recommended and indeed tabled by Simeon Brown. My other question mark is in relation to proposed clause 12 of Schedule 1 in clause 5(7). I think I'm right in my understanding but I would be grateful for any guidance the Minister can provide in this regard. I think what we have here is an overriding of any inconsistent other law so any law arising from that particular case is going to be overridden by clauses 1 and 5 to 8 of Schedule 1 notwithstanding that clause 11 as it currently stands says that those don't apply to that particular appellant. So we've got almost a situation of competition between two different clauses there but I think I'm right in saying that the intent of the Minister and no doubt the Parliament as a whole will be to say that that case has no precedent value but in respect of that particular person it should apply.