Shaw JamesHon JAMES SHAW (Minister of Climate Change): Thank you Madam Speaker. Much as it galls me to be lectured on principles by a man who has none the night that I am going to be voting for a bill that he is sponsoring through the House we are supporting this piece of legislation to repeal the Act at fault here. I would like to start actually by some of the comments that Chris Bishop made in his contribution earlier when he said that he thought that you know we want MPs to be able to say unpalatable things—and he should know because Dr Smith says unpalatable things pretty much every time he opens his mouth. Now we were asked by the previous speaker to reflect on a bit of history here and I'd like to do that from the perspective of the Green Party. Because the sort of faux concern that I've had from members of the National Party about this about the state of our principles I think bears some correction. The Green Party has obviously long opposed this kind of legislation and Dr Smith did mention Rod Donald former co-leader of the Green Party when he said that he thought that was the most Draconian obnoxious antidemocratic insulting piece of legislation ever inflicted on this Parliament and that it would turn MPs into robots"—those are the words of Rod Donald. Now I would say that perhaps there are more Draconian more obnoxious more antidemocratic and more insulting pieces of legislation that have passed through this House over time and I would say that MPs have turned into robots well before the party-hopping legislation came to pass but I agree with the gist of what it was that Rod Donald said. It is an obnoxious antidemocratic piece of legislation and it does deserve repealing. The reason that we supported it at the start of the previous Government was because there was a blind negotiation between New Zealand First and the Labour Party and between the Green Party and the Labour Party. We did not know what was in the New Zealand First agreement until after it had been published and what that meant was that we were absolutely committed to changing the Government because nine years of the previous National Government had really seriously run the country into the ground. We needed to do something about climate change and the water crisis and the increasing crisis of poverty and widening inequality in this country so on balance given that this legislation only affects the job prospects of 120 people versus the state of the country we felt that we ought to honour the agreement that was negotiated between Labour and New Zealand First.Now during the course of that Parliament of course New Zealand First taught us a number of lessons a number of times—that it was the letter of the agreement and not the spirit of the agreement that mattered to them. And because their agreement did not include a clause that prevented us from voting for the repeal of that legislation when the Rt Hon David Carter's bill was drawn from the ballot we supported it. And I was very pleased to be able to support it. I think it is a shame that the numbers have changed such that we are unable to be able to repeal it now. I do want to say that when the original bill went through in 2018 I was very pleased that the Green Party negotiated into that legislation a number of natural justice clauses to do with the process that would have to be gone through because the draft bill didn't have any process at all—it was really just up to the leader to discern who they were going to biff out of Parliament. We did manage to negotiate those in and those processes make it extremely difficult for a party or a party leader to eject one of their MPs from Parliament—but not impossible.In terms of the Attorney-General David Parker of course you know there's been this kind of much thrown around quote "a chilling effect on the expression of dissenting views by MPs" and I thought that Mr Bishop made a good point that actually you'll kind of never know because those views aren't expressed. So I would argue and it's been sort of mentioned that countries like Zimbabwe Pakistan Sierra Leone have other pieces of legislation that are analogous to this and you have to ask: is that a club of countries that we want to belong to? I would say no it isn't. So we should be repealing this piece of legislation at the first opportunity that we have.Now the Green Party executive made a decision some time ago that we would not exercise as a party this piece of legislation. I would challenge the National Party executive or board to do the same.Hon Dr Nick Smith: They have.Hon JAMES SHAW: Oh I'm pleased to hear that Dr Smith. I do note that when they went through all of that trouble with Jami-Lee Ross they didn't exercise the opportunity to use this legislation. I don't know about ACT or Te Paati Māori; the only party who support this is the Labour Party. Now this has gone from being Winston Peters and New Zealand First's piece of legislation to the Labour Party's legislation supported only by the Labour Party—and it is the only party that is committed to being able to use it. So the Labour Party MPs who are voting for this bill tonight need to know this legislation is aimed at you. You are the only MPs who are at risk of being thrown out by your party leadership if you fail to toe the line because the other parties who do not support this have committed to not using the clauses in this piece of legislation.The ghost of Winston Peters lives on in the Labour Party sadly. We thought that we had exorcised that particular demon from the House but there's still a few demons to go Dr Smith. So I have to say that I do think that it is frankly egregious that the Labour Party—who only brought this in at the behest of Winston Peters in order to secure a deal to throw out the previous National Government—now find themselves in the extraordinary position of supporting this frankly appalling piece of legislation.So as I have said the Greens will vote for this bill to repeal what is an odious attack on democracy. We are one of only a few countries in the world that have this kind of legislation—to throw MPs out if they fail to toe the party line—and I do think it is a great shame that simply because there is one party that happens to have a majority in the House by itself this legislation will live on until the next term of Parliament when we will give it another crack to repeal it then."