SpeechHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you Madam Speaker. The Attorney-General and I have a few things in common. We both hail from the most beautiful part of Aotearoa. In fact I think the member was born in Roxburgh—is that right?—which was actually founded by a Woodhouse and his brother my great-great-grandfather who found gold in the Teviot River. We both love this place and have been here a wee while. We also like really complex policy challenges. I have been impressed with Mr Parker's approach to that over the years. It was my privilege to be a member of the Privileges Committee in both the 52nd and 53rd parliaments when this issue first arose. I must confess that I was probably a bit glib about it when it first came before the Privileges Committee and at the Attorney-General's response to it where he and the Minister of Justice had taken a Cabinet paper that I wondered whether at that time was necessary. In the ensuing two years I became not only satisfied that it was but very pleased with the level of engagement and discussion that the committee embarked on through this bill process. As the Attorney-General has said we heard from some very very eminent jurisprudence scholars and that very much helped our consideration of this bill.The Attorney-General has talked a little bit about other jurisdictions and I think it's worth reflecting on that because I think we have a very sound constitutional framework in this country even if we don't have a constitution but it has some particular features in it. Other countries have different structures namely a bicameral system and I think if we think of Westminster and the process of passing legislation through both the Commons and the House of Lords it's not unusual for various reasons for the Lords to send a bill back to the Commons and say We think you should have another look at these aspects of the bill." That's kind of a belts and braces approach that we don't have because of our unicameral system. The Minister mentioned the United States. He's probably right about the outcome but actually the process and the constitution that they have is a very important one also.Hon David Parker: But impossible to change.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Yes that's right. And that's why I don't support a constitution. I think we have a good framework in place because actually it's a handbrake on executive power and congressional power because it basically says "The Government shall pass no laws that could do certain things." And that's the difficult discussions they've had about the First and Second Amendments and the 14th Amendment over the last few years. But we have a proportional system that with the exception of this Parliament has actually acted as I think not the same kind of scrutiny but I think perhaps a moderator of in some cases and perhaps an enabler in others—and I'll come to the three-strikes stuff in a minute—but it actually enables this Parliament together with the requirement of the Attorney-General to provide a vet on the impact of legislation on the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act for us as a Parliament to actually have those conversations before legislation is passed.Now the courts' role in that after the event and the Supreme Court ruling that's basically been the catalyst for this legislation is I think important but it's also really important that we remind ourselves that this place is sovereign. We have exclusive cognisance. We have the ability to pass laws even if in the opinion of either the Attorney-General or subsequently the courts there might be a finding that there is a breach potentially—or an inconsistency rather; not a breach—with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. This is really important because in my experience passing bills that are a bit edgy in respect of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act generally carries with it a consideration of those issues as we pass the bill. I think the three-strikes legislation is an example of that. The legislation on prisoner voting rights that precipitated this process is also a good example of that. And of course the deprivation of liberty is indeed a prohibited thing under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act unless it's justified under section 5 I think it is incarceration for convictions is the obvious one.Now when it comes to the prisoner voting rights issue of course previous to the member's bill that was passed some years ago and now that that's been repealed if someone is facing a sentence of three years and one day they lose their right to vote but if they have a sentence of two years and 364 days they're now going to retain the right to vote. I mean that's a finely balanced thing. I don't think anybody reasonably could say that one is a deprivation of rights and the other isn't but Parliament has made a decision and Parliament should be sovereign.Hon David Parker: But one's more arbitrary than the other. That was the court's point.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Yeah well it is an arbitrary number and people will always fall one side or the other on that.Now you've got to wonder—one wonders—whether the courts might in their sentencing obviously restricted by the Sentencing Act consider some of the impacts of a harsher sentence vis-à-vis a lighter sentence.I know as former Minister of Immigration that the courts wrongly—because Immigration New Zealand can still consider deportation regardless of whether a conviction is entered—sets aside convictions because it believes that the punishment outside of the court sentence might not fit the crime. So courts do have a little bit of activism they can embark on and I have no strong opinion on that one way or the other. But the point really is that this place does need to remain sovereign and I think we've landed in a pretty good place both with the third reading of this bill when it's passed and also the next order of the day which the consideration of a sessional order which will lay out in Standing Orders what should happen when the courts do declare in their view an inconsistency with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. That was something that the Privileges Committee looked at in some detail with the assistance of the Standing Orders Committee to make sure that a convention that's almost entirely I think being followed that legislation doesn't set out what this place should do or how it should do it; that is rightly the domain of members of this House through the Standing Orders process. I think we've struck the right process for dealing with this.Some of these things could be very complex and we've set an arbitrary time limit on it for the Government to respond to declarations of inconsistency and report back to the House. I think it's worth pointing out that for many of those that will be well within an appropriate time frame. But there could be some really complex situations that may require a longer period of time and the process the Standing Orders I think have allowed future Governments to report at the six-month point but then give the issue more time. I think that's an entirely appropriate response.Like the Attorney-General I don't think this is something that we're going to be troubled by too terribly often but when we do we now have I think a sensible framework for being able to consider the declarations that the courts may make. I continue to aspire to I suppose the hope that this Parliament will also take the Attorney-General's section 6 vets very seriously and consider them in our deliberations of future legislation as I think we have by and large in the past. But I think the court's intervention in this area has actually reinforced the need to take both the Attorney-General's opinion and the court's judgments on these things very seriously. I'm confident that we'll be able to do that."