Power Simon: Standing Orders 
Power Simon: Standing Orders 
[Volume:627;Page:22358] 
SIMON POWER (National—Rangitikei) 
: 
 The National Party will be supporting this motion through Parliament this evening. This has not been a matter free of controversy nor has it been a matter that has progressed smoothly and without hitches. As the Leader of the House pointed out initially lack of support across Parliament meant that this matter was introduced by way of statute. It then became clear as any Political Science 111 student would know that a separation of powers argument was definitely going to enter into the fray with the judiciary moving into areas concerning Parliament which was not appropriate. All parties on the Standing Orders Committee whether or not they agreed with the content of the bill concluded that the delivery of this outcome was far and away more satisfactorily done by way of Standing Orders rather than statute. 
There have been long discussions over the wording of these particular provisions and what they have meant—particularly I have to say around the timing of the lodging of an MP’s return depending on whether an election was held and on which side of July. I will acknowledge Rod Donald because it is fair to say that that member put his back into this particular provision and over a long period of time worked to convince the Standing Orders Committee of the merits of it or a variation thereof. Whilst Mr Donald did not always manage to achieve the result he wanted I think it is probably fair to say that the intent behind the drafting of that particular provision was largely due to his efforts around that committee table. 
Other amendments have been included particularly around the definition of family members in terms of debts owed to a member by those family members—how wide that definition should be. We had some interesting discussions about the width of the definition of family that would not have been out of place in some other select committees but the Standing Orders Committee which is not known for its emotional outbursts worked its way through those definitions pretty carefully. 
Late in the piece an issue arose around debts incurred in the course of business and whether those debts should be included if they would be settled within a standard business time period of approximately 90 days or thereabouts. Amounts around quantum of debt in the original legislation were amended by the Standing Orders Committee. Interestingly long discussions were held particularly with the current Speaker’s predecessor the Rt Hon Jonathan Hunt about members’ roles in organisations that apply for funding through Government agencies. This was quite a complex matter because a number of MPs are patrons of organisations in their electorates or in the areas they represent and it took some time for members on the Standing Orders Committee to come across a formula that would work to prevent members who are simply patrons from having to declare interests as opposed to members who were part of the management or the governing body of those committees clubs or institutions. 
So quite a lot of thought went into these matters. I think the key though is that to be consistent with other jurisdictions an amount of transparency around members’ interests was always inevitable in some shape or another. I think that using the mechanism of the Standing Orders is an appropriate way to do that.