O'Connor SimonSIMON O'CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): From one O'Connor to another but one wishes to speak and not close things down. Madam Chair you and the Minister in the chair Andrew Little will know probably quite well by now that I have a great love of languages having learnt quite a number and of the importance of words. Obviously as we are looking at this new clause 3A and the discussion around distortion of proportionality one thing that's been missed in the discussion to date is actually the very nature of what distortion is.So I intend if I might in the next four and a bit minutes to try and drag that out because I think we cannot as a Parliament discuss the distortion of proportionality without first and foremost understanding what distortion is and then how that applies actually to what is known in philosophical areas as the hierarchy of understanding.So distortion ultimately comes from the Latin dis" to pull apart and "torquere". Torquere means effectively to twist and to pull out of place. Where the Minister probably needs to first engage is—most of what he has proposed and even colleagues with their Supplementary Order Papers are proposing it is that this distortion is about twisting but when you go back to the original Latin and torquere it also is the root word of "torque" when you think about engines. It's about stability actually. As much as we want to stand here today and say the word "distortion" is about twisting the proportionality the original word in "distortion" torquere means like the torque of an engine or of a wheel; to hold firm; to actually be in one place. So the challenge I suppose Minister is that there is a paradox in the wording that's been chosen in your general policy statement and now in clause 3A that actually distortion as much as it means to twist also means to force and to hold and to stand one's ground. That's the original Latin and that's where we come from in the English.The other though is that distortion sits within a hierarchy. We're talking here about proportionality but you cannot talk about proportionality without talking about where that stands and that's in terms of our Parliament and in our democracy. The very great philosopher called Bernard Lonergan talked about the figure and the ground. In other words you can't talk about a figure without seeing the ground before them. Very simply Minister and to the person in the Chair you can't see me as a figure without having the background. So when we look at this distortion of proportionality there's been a big talk that New Zealand First is worried it might lose its own support and therefore OK we're going to talk about the distortion around proportionality. But actually in passing this bill we are fundamentally going to now distort the Parliament.So if proportionality is supposedly at the top of this hierarchy of needs what does that mean to our Parliament—the distortion of Parliament and distortion of democracy? If we're going to hold solely firmly to the distortion of proportionality as is suggested in new clause 3A what is that proportionality going to do in terms of distorting Parliament? Fundamentally Parliament is about our representation. I'm not going to repeat what a number of colleagues have touched on but a number have expressed the problem that as they attempt to represent as an individual—yes as an individual within a party; within I suppose their own constituency where that's applied—proportionality is going to actually override their purpose as a parliamentarian.Then continuing down the distortion line if proportionality becomes the primary need and if for some bizarre reason it overrides Parliament that becomes a distortion a twisting. I would suggest without being far too dramatic that the distortion of proportionality affects ultimately the distortion of democracy. And it's sad that in the last week we've seen so much of an aggressive attack by liberals primarily from the left but not exclusively to attack the fundamental tenets of democracy—"I will only allow someone to speak if I agree with them." It's absolutely shocking. It's absolutely shameful.The heart of this attempt to talk about proportionality will ultimately in this hierarchy of need distort the Parliament. It no longer is representative; it works to the will of a party leader and it's no longer really at the heart of a democratic process. It distorts that as well because democracy is actually—well actually I won't get into the Latin of "democracy" because of course as the Minister will know democracy is a Greek word. Fortunately I've learnt Greek as well—maybe I can use that in the next five minutes. The whole thing of democracy is "demos"—it's the people. The thing is about people when it comes to proportionality—[Time expired]"