Little AndrewHon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): Thank you Madam Chair. It is a pleasure to be back debating the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill. I do just want to correct the last member who spoke on one point—and that is the collective noun parliament" doesn't apply to parliamentarians; it applies to owls. It is a parliament of owls.I do want to assist members opposite because it is clear that there is some difficulty in reading the legislation and so the debate we're having at the moment is about distortion of—members opposite have referred to the issue of distortion. Of course that is not the end of the phrase that is used in the bill. Clause 55D(a) of the bill refers to members who have "… acted in a way that has distorted and is likely to continue to distort the proportionality of political party representation". The distortion does not stand on its own. So for Mr Penk who is concerned about distortion and talks about distortion of intention there is nothing in the bill that refers to a distortion of intention to the extent that an intention can be distorted. But certainly the proportionality of representation can be distorted.The Hon Nick Smith asked a somewhat absurd question: could somebody who holds a press conference meet the definition of distorted proportionality of representation? Now it is true that much of what Nick Smith says nowadays has to be taken with a grain of salt. So for the last two days in questions and in statements in this Chamber he has stated that there is a joint media release from Young Labour and the Young Nationals and what have you—there is no such joint statement. Here is the thing that he is referring to—it is the political page of Salient the student magazine for Victoria University. No joint statement—something totally made up by the Hon Nick Smith. Now at some point somebody in the National Party caucus is going to have to pull Nick Smith aside and say "Nick it is important to be factually accurate." But that is not a joint statement. I am very pleased to say that VicLabour goes on to say how important this coalition Government is.When we ask the question about distortion of proportionality we have to go no further than the decision of the Supreme Court in the Awatere Huata case where they said the resignation of a member of Parliament from their party is enough to constitute distortion of proportionality of representation. So the other case or the example that the Hon Nick Smith brought up of now Dame Tariana Turia leaving—she resigned from the party and resigned from Parliament precisely because she said "My mandate from my constituency does not allow me to support what the party I'm part of now in Government does and I will go back and test my mandate." It was the honourable thing to do. And she was proved to be right. She was standing up for what her constituents in her seat of Te Tai Hauāuru believed in and required her to stand up for.Hon Gerry Brownlee: She had a seat. What about a list member? If that member resigned tomorrow he's gone.Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Now we come to—I think members need to control their anger—a very important point which is that there is a difference between constituency MPs and list MPs. For the purposes of this House every MP is equal. Every MP enjoys the same privileges of this House but not every MP comes here through the same channel so that is a big difference. The real point that the Hon Gerry Brownlee made however in his contribution was to ask whether if a New Zealand First MP spoke out against a policy would that constitute distortion? No because the words of the bill are very clear. The distortion has to relate to proportionality of representation of the Parliament. Speaking out of turn does not distort proportionality of representation of Parliament. The Supreme Court has made that very clear.Then we come to the example about the splitting of The Alliance. Well actually in the splitting of The Alliance no one actually left their party. They might have spoken at odds in the gilded halls of The Alliance offices at the time but no one caused a distortion of representation. So all those issues are dealt with.Mr Mitchell in his contribution and indeed his previous contributions has raised a number of issues all of which I have responded to. It would help if he raised a new issue for me to respond to. I'm not going to respond to the same issues several times over. But again he refers to the words "acted in a way that has distorted" but he does not complete the phrase which is "the proportionality of … representation in Parliament …". All those issues are covered off. The very detailed examination that the Justice Committee gave the bill covered all that off and it's been covered off again today."