Peters Winston: Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Peters Winston: Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:610;Page:7713] 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 That should not be allowed to happen again because if it does I will hit the roof in this House. I have put up with it for a whole year and that sort of thing should not casually happen in this Parliament. 
There is something sinister about this bill but before I get to that I want to say this in respect of Dr Smith’s case which has been raised by Mr Dunne. The trouble is that this Parliament has so many parliamentarians with a rather scurrilous record of consistency on these matters. I can recall on going to the Privileges Committee and asking it to defend my rights being told to suck it and see. I had every right to ask the committee to do so and I then went to the High Court and proved that. Yet the committee rushed off to London to defend Mr Prebble even though he was not in Parliament. Do members see what I mean? The National Party can laugh but it now wants us to support Dr Smith when in my case it would not move a muscle—and worse than that it tried to bankrupt me and failed. Even today National does not apologise for that but now when somebody has said the words outside the House and is therefore incapable of getting sanctuary under parliamentary privilege National wants us to somehow support it. It is unusual for its members to be so—well I cannot use the word but it starts with “h”—on these matters. 
Members will recall that the Speaker needed to look at the evidence regarding Mr Duynhoven before he could make a decision. It would be most unusual for the Speaker to make a decision based on for example the Solicitor-General’s testimony evidence or opinion and I can tell members why he would not do that based on past examples. I do not want to bore the House with them now but there have been past examples of the Solicitor-General’s opinion being not worth the paper it was written on. However my point was that the Speaker said on 23 July that he wanted the matter to be referred to the Privileges Committee and that he would hear the House’s conclusion on it thereafter. I think that is a proper procedure. 
On seeing the evidence that Mr Duynhoven gave to us we as a political party gave the preliminary view that we would support the rectifying or validation of his position. But what has happened here is that the Labour Party has taken my party’s bona fides given in good faith and flung that back in our face. As a consequence we cannot support this bill. I say to my colleague Harry Duynhoven that we apologise for that but he should look around amongst his own colleagues if he wants to know why that is. We in New Zealand First were happy to support Mr Duynhoven’s particular or special and unusual position being corrected because his situation is not within the usual ambit that the original legislation and the amending legislation sought to cover by way of providing for a member of Parliament’s actions. From day one we said that if the evidence stood up we would be prepared to pass retrospective legislation to support Mr Duynhoven’s position. But sadly this bill flings that commitment back in our face. 
This bill will suspend the rules and the law for the whole of this current parliamentary term from the day that the results were declared until the next election. The question is why Labour would do that. I want to know which of the Labour MPs is secretly an offender against this legislation in a much more demonstrable palpable and obvious way than Mr Duynhoven. Who is Labour trying to protect—or is there more than one person? There is no reason for Labour to take the commitment that other parties have made to rectify Mr Duynhoven’s peculiar and special circumstances and then to do away with the law for the whole of this Parliament by way of a blanket provision. Who is the secret member—or members—in Labour’s ranks who has offended against the provision in section 55(1)(c) of the Electoral Act? Who is the Labour member who is covertly hiding behind the skirts of his or her colleagues and the aprons of his or her other colleagues and hoping to gain sanctuary under this provision without ever declaring himself or herself or his or her actions? Who is that person? 
I ask that person to own up today or to be seen in time to have abused the processes of Parliament to have improperly used the Speaker the Solicitor-General and the select committee proceedings and above all to have improperly used the name of Mr Duynhoven. Those are the facts. Who is this person—or persons—in Labour’s ranks who has sold his or her soul to a foreign power and does not want to tell us? That is what that person has done and is doing. 
This is not a laughing matter. Mr Duynhoven went to the Privileges Committee for his particular case. Yet the whole of Parliament—119 of us—are to be covered by this legislation as well. We in New Zealand First do not want that provision because we are all above board and kosher. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: You’ve checked too? 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: Yes I have checked. It was an unnecessary check because we are patriots. We do not call this party New Zealand First for nothing. We put New Zealand first—not second or third like Labour with its secret membership that obviously has dual citizenship and nationality from other parts of the world. The only reason Labour is doing this is that it has other members who are caught by this provision but who do not have what it takes to table that before Parliament. 
We intend to move an amendment to the bill to confine its application to Harry Duynhoven MP and to no one else. We will see whether the Greens are prepared to support that. 
Rod Donald 
: No way! 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: Why am I not surprised? I am not surprised that he said “No way!” because this issue concerns a principle and principle is not what the Green Party is about. 
Steve Chadwick 
: Stop talking double Dutch. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: Let me tell the member for Rotorua to talk to her legally educated husband and he will tell her what the issues are about. I know she is having difficulty in grasping the issues. She should have a chat to her husband and he will tell her what they are all about. He will tell her that the use of retrospectivity is thoroughly bad unless there are no offended parties as a consequence. The consequence here is that we do not know now how many other offended parties there will be as a result of the covert secrecy and the behind-doors activities that the Labour Party in these years of Government before it goes in 2005 is becoming notorious for. 
Dail Jones 
: Nandor. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: Is it Nandor Tanczos? Is it my friend Mr Choudhary? Has Nandor Tanczos got a Hungarian passport? Is our colleague Mr Robson clinging to his “Ned Kelly” passport? 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Keith Locke is Cambodian. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: And Keith Locke has a Cambodian passport given to him by Pol Pot. That is why the Greens are voting for this provision. 
I say again that Mr Duynhoven came to us and asked whether we would support him. We said that if the evidence stacked up and he was right yes we would. However that is not the case now. The Labour Party is now saying that having got that out of us it will now make this a blanket provision. It is abusing the principle of retrospective legislation and the principle of disclosure in this case but intends to pass this measure to suspend the law for the whole of this term of Parliament. That will not do. 
Mr Palmer a former Prime Minister and leader of the Labour Party—temporarily of course—came along and talked about the  
de minimis 
 rule.  
De minimis non curat lex 
 means that the law is not mindful of small things or trivial things. But this is not a trivial matter. In all the Western democracies the election and continuance of an MP or of a country’s Government are matters of grave and great moment. That is why that defence put up by Professor Palmer was bound to fail. I have one last question. Who over there on the Government benches are the secret members who owe allegiance—or who is the secret member who owes allegiance—to some other foreign power?