Penk ChrisCHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you very much Mr Chair for the opportunity to speak at this the final day that we'll have in the committee of the whole House in relation to this bill.I'd like to focus on some principled arguments in relation to the referendum Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 287 but first I'd just like to make a comment briefly in relation to the title of the bill and more particularly Mr Seymour's comments that it would be unfortunate to effectively have wording in the title of the bill that was different from the provisions of the bill itself. However what is unique in the current circumstances is that the committee has been asked—indeed urged—by Mr Seymour to consider a referendum question that would have in front of the voters only the title of the bill. That is as much of the bill as most people who would be making a decision at the referendum would have read of it. So if there is ever a situation in which it would make sense to have a bill with a title that does what it says on the tin—notwithstanding the provisions within the Act or the bill—then this would be that situation. But I'd like to focus as I say on the arguments around having a referendum and whether that should be appropriate or not.Mr Seymour references a situation in which the Electoral Act was ratified by referendum and we can think about other situations in which it has been appropriate historically to have a referendum of all the voting public of New Zealand to decide a question before them. Those are most appropriate when there is a simple matter or a matter that relates particularly to the conduct of the democracy. MPs have a conflict of interest when deciding on electoral matters or voting system and so on—for example the introduction of MMP—and so it's appropriate to remove that decision making from their hands. That is exactly what took place in that situation that Mr Seymour has described and I think it's not an appropriate comparison or helpful analogy in the context of what we have before us today.Other arguments regarding the referendum—I'll just highlight for the sake of clarity I hope what these different arguments will be and then I'll see how far I can get along those in the next 2½ minutes within this current call. The first is essentially that members of Parliament should do the work that they're paid to do—that almost sort of stands for itself but I'd like to speak about the phrase that's gained some currency regarding temporarily empowered politicians and the New Zealand First view on them. I'd also like to highlight the fact that the End of Life Choice Bill—that phrase end of life choice" does mean different things to different people and I may or may not get to that detail but other colleagues no doubt will pick up that theme if not. Next I would be talking about the tyranny of the majority and the outsized effect that the passage of the legislation would have on some citizens as compared with others. Also I'll talk about the effect on the election that we will have roughly speaking in 12 months from now and the fact of course that the public has already had an opportunity for input on the bill. Just turning to the first of those now—simply that MPs should do the work that we are paid to do. The comment by Jenny Marcroft and her colleagues in New Zealand First in placing forward an SOP that says that politicians are not appropriate decision-makers in this case emphasizes that we are temporarily empowered. Well the temporary empowerment is an appropriate feature of democracy and of course if this House were to make a decision in relation to the end of life choice that the New Zealand public in their wisdom didn't approve of and wished to elect a different set of representatives at the next general election or some subsequent general election then of course they'd be free to do so as well.Any MP who does not wish to do his or her job in this place could make the empowerment very temporary indeed and resign their position if that is their attitude to representative democracy of which they are of course a very important part. For better or worse MPs have considered this bill at considerable length over at least the last couple of years but of course longer in the context of the discussion that pre-dated the drawing from the ballot of Mr Seymour's bill. We've had experts and advocates talking with us about the implications of the bill as they see them and of course we've had that advocacy from both sides of the argument and quite rightly so.So we are well-equipped whether or not we would make decisions that every member of the public would agree with and of course it would be the case that there would be a split out there in terms public opinion just as there is a split inside this Chamber and in a representative democracy that's appropriate."