Penk ChrisCHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's like déjà vu all over again as they say. The dividing lines in this bill are really around—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): Sorry the question is that the motion be agreed to. I apologise for interrupting.CHRIS PENK: Thank you Madam Speaker. The dividing lines in this bill that are invisible on the page but really sort of underline the way we should view this is the difference between principle and politics. This is inherent for example in the wording of clause 5 which amends the Electoral Act. Clause 5 concerns the registration of prisoners serving a sentence of imprisonment of less than three years. So it's that element of having a restriction according to the number of years that is a matter of politics as opposed to one of principle. That's the genesis of this legislation and in turn of course was the genesis of the equivalent legislation—the No. 1 bill" so-called—that we were discussing as recently as last week.Now fair enough reading the bill one might say that well politics is the art of the possible as it was famously said to be. But my message to the Government when I read this No. 2 amendment bill is that they cannot have it both ways. The Government cannot stand on its high horse and it's not a drunken horse such as we've just heard referred to in the Minister's speech—no inebriated equines in my contribution. But the Government cannot get on its high horse and say that it is a matter of human rights and consistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and the Treaty of Waitangi and so forth to give prisoners the right to vote if they define effectively prisoners as only those prisoners who have a sentence of less than three years. So that's the internal contradiction within the bill and that is the lesson that we have learnt these past several days regarding the Government—that the line between principle and politics is one that they have grappled with hard but have failed to grasp.The other lesson that we can take from the bill looking again at the wording of Part 1 in particular is the perils of passing such legislation which is technical in its nature as well as being of an electoral nature under urgency. I refer to the—how would we call that? Well it's very familiar—very very familiar—and the reason this is so familiar some of this wording is because we have seen it all before. I don't mean in some sort of general way of being able to predict the future or based on past. I mean literally we've seen it all before. All these words had come before us relatively recently and the reason is because having attempted to legislate these things into the law of the land on the statute book last week but having failed to do so for reasons that have been reasonably well thrashed out but may yet get a bit more airing today and so it is that we've come back here to have to have another go. It's more particularly the lack of time between the committee of the whole House stage and the third reading of the previous bill that has led us to look down on our respective desks in front of us today and say that the provisions really are pretty well exactly the same as that which the Government had intended before. A bit like a game of snakes and ladders the Government has rolled a six and raced forward but only to go all the way down to the bottom of the board. What I mean by that analogy powerful as it is—it was the best I could come up with; nothing to do with horses I'm afraid—is that what we've done as a Parliament and what the Government has done more particularly is rushed forward but moved further backwards. So rather than acknowledging the mistake that was made the lack of Government management on the benches opposite last week—rather than acknowledge that and move at an appropriate pace to fix up the problem to put it bluntly instead it forged ahead to a third reading to commend to the House a bill that it surely knew was unworkable indeed and nonsense. So it is that we've gone further back because we've gone all the way to the start of the board to square one. So here it is that we've been debating this bill and I use the term loosely—but debating the bill in readings one and two with the committee of the whole House interlude—for good measure—and the third reading to come later on.Again looking at the bill and seeing what lessons we can learn at this the second reading—not having had much of an opportunity to absorb the lessons of the first reading. But looking at that it's actually possible to note that given the issues raised in the bill—essentially the difference between prisoners who are incarcerated for less than three years and those who are incarcerated for three or more years—the lesson from this is that a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) to amend the last similar bill was inevitable. It was absolutely inevitable that be brought up and therefore it was inevitable that this bill would be brought up provided that one assumes in the first instance that the Greens would be honouring their position that they've held throughout that all prisoners should be able to vote—tick—and that the National Party would maintain its consistency of position which is to oppose anything that would make the passage of this bill into the law of the land or effectively the law of the land—and I use that word deliberately—as at the next general election. So the Greens have acted consistent with their principles and we've acted consistent with our position throughout. The clue is in the words of the bill that is now before us and every time that there is a distinction made—whether in explicit terms by the words or perhaps a cross-reference back to the Electoral Act—every time that the bill points out the difference between how prisoners are to be treated according to the length of time that they are incarcerated every time we can see that there has been a lack of an internal consistency logical consistency not just in the bill but in the Government parties opposite. It's that inconsistency that incoherence and that disjunction between the parties of Government that has expressed itself in the bill that we have seen before us today.The other interesting thing that one notes when one looks at the bill is the gap between the rhetoric and the reality. Again it's a pretty obvious gap if one is prepared to read between the lines and one knows a bit of the history of this legislation with the history of the legislation being not only its passage through the House today—as I anticipate it will go through—but more particularly the background last week and going back further. Gosh in the House today we've been canvassing back centuries' worth of tradition by the sound of it in various different levels. We've had members' bills brought up. We've had National Party history really being brought out on both sides of the House but more particularly on the part of the Minister of Justice. So just how he views that as a continuation of the long-held National Party principle that we should resist measures that are inconsistent and incoherent that's not very clear to me at all. So my question to the Government benches—and I oppose it only rhetorically now as Mr Falloon did and I know I'm on dangerous territory now. But as Mr Falloon did foreshadowing a line of questioning at the committee of the whole House stage my question—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): You do know that's a dangerous line so just back to the bill please.CHRIS PENK: OK thank you Madam Speaker. The bill does not achieve I think much other than to put right a problem that the Government created for itself last week. The problem was one of an anomaly but—Hon Scott Simpson: Does it achieve for the Greens?CHRIS PENK: Does it achieve for the Greens? I mean the interesting question posed by the member for Coromandel is whether the anomaly is fixed—at least that's what I understand he's asking. I'm glad that he's asked it to me otherwise I might have been tempted to ask it myself. The conclusion that I'd reach is that it fixes an anomaly in one point in sort of a technical drafting sense kind of way because we'll have a piece of legislation that cross-refers to the Electoral Act and makes that work and so forth but it doesn't solve the anomaly just looking at it in relation to the more substantive point which is that prisoners are supposedly being allowed the right to vote on the basis that they're being given human rights or civil and political rights. But we're talking only about some prisoners and not others.Hon Scott Simpson: The Greens will be very disappointed.CHRIS PENK: The Greens will be very disappointed when they read the clear working of this and realise what's going on. I can only wonder whether they will be unhappy enough with it such that they will put forward another SOP to effectively do the same thing as last week and then goodness knows how that all may turn out. But that's something I suppose that we have to look forward to us perhaps later tonight. In any case for now the position on this side of the House remains unchanged."