O'Rourke Denis: Royal Succession Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Rourke Denis: Royal Succession Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 02 July 2013. Volume:691;Page:11452. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First):This Royal Succession Bill is one of the most unusual bills before Parliament this year. We do not often get to debate the potential future chief of State of 16 different countries but this is an important change for the New Zealand constitution and it is good that New Zealand First has had a chance toconsider this constitutional change and debate it. It is very sad of course and utterly unacceptable that the consideration of other constitutional changes now being considered by the Government being those generated by the National - Māori Party confidence and supply agreement have excluded New Zealand First. New Zealand First will support the Royal Succession Bill but we have grave concerns about the constitutional changes being considered under the current process to implement the National - Māori Party agreement.Of great concern is the very biased make-up of the 12-member Constitutional Advisory Panel that is managing that process. There is also a cross-party reference group that does not include New Zealand First. The panel will make recommendations to Pita Sharples and Bill English who are the responsible Ministers and then to Cabinet in November this year. These parties may then try to ram another constitutional bill through Parliament and the issues to be discussed in that are much greater in weight than those we are currently considering this evening. They include a written constitution the size of Parliament the size and number of electorates the length of the parliamentary term Māori electorates including the Māori electoral option—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! We are on a bill that does not cover those points so I will ask the member to concentrate on the bill. He can mention those things but it must relate to the substance of the bill.DENIS O’ROURKE: The reason I am mentioning them is simply this: we have much greater issues before us this year in terms of the New Zealand constitution than we are dealing with this evening and those constitutional changes are much greater in weight than the Royal Succession Bill we are talking about this evening. We in New Zealand First will be taking great note of those including flawed concepts such as incorporating the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi whatever they are supposed to be—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! [Interruption ] Order! The member will sit. I just mentioned that the member must concentrate on the bill. It has been 2½ minutes and the member must focus on what this bill is and I would ask the member to come back to it.DENIS O’ROURKE: Well Mr Assistant Speaker if you had given me a chance I was just about to move on to that—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Sit down. Do not challenge the ruling of the Chair or the Speaker. If one wants to do that I will terminate the speech. You have 7½ minutes going and I will ask the member to come back to the bill.DENIS O’ROURKE: I am very happy to come back to the bill because that is what I was about to do anyway.We will be supporting the Royal Succession Bill. It implements changes to the royal succession agreed by the 16 realms of which the Queen is sovereign. These changes do modernise historic royal succession rules firstly by ensuring that the royal succession is not dependent on a person’s sex and it also allows an older daughter to precede a younger son in the line of succession. In other words it abolishes the archaic concept of primogeniture. Regardless of when the bill is enacted it will apply for all royal births after midnight on 28 October 2011.The bill also removes the current restrictions that bar from the throne people married to a Roman Catholic. These barriers can no longer be justified. The change will apply to all marriages where the person concerned is alive thereby reinstating some people into the line of succession. But of course there is no change to the law under which the monarch must be a member of and the head of the Church of England. In this respect the law will remain discriminatory. That is not appropriate in this day and age and ought also to change. But we in New Zealand First accept that New Zealand alone cannotachieve this while we retain the constitutional monarchy which we share with 15 other countries.Lastly the bill abolishes the requirement of the Royal Marriages Act 1772 that all descendants of King George II must seek the Sovereign’s consent to marry. It also introduces a new requirement that the first six people in line to the throne must seek the Sovereign’s consent to marry. There are likely to be hundreds of descendants of King George II who were or are unaware of the marriage consent requirements of the Royal Marriages Act 1772 and whose marriages are therefore technically invalid. The bill therefore also validates the relevant earlier marriages for purposes other than royal succession. So for that reason also New Zealand First is happy to support the bill.Although New Zealand First does support the bill it does so without approving the continuation of religious discrimination in the way the monarch is still required to adhere to under current arrangements. We also await with interest the more substantive changes to the New Zealand constitution which I suspect will be foisted upon us later this year.