Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National): Every now and then New Zealand seems to go through a constitutional crisis—call it a crisis call it an inflection point. We had one in 1976 when Rob Muldoon turned up after the 1975 election and purported to suspend the provisions of the New Zealand Superannuation Act and said to public servants No need to pay anymore—I've decreed it." The High Court sorted that out in Fitzgerald v Muldoon and I'm proud to say I have a copy of the judgment in my office. After the 1984 election again Mr Muldoon had to be sorted out by the National Party caucus and that led of course to the Constitution Act 1986. Now we have a similar crisis where either through conspiracy or a cock-up—and I'm one that tends towards the conspiracy element of this—the Government has sought to entrench a matter of public policy into New Zealand law. It was a constitutional collusion a collaboration between the Green Party and the Labour Party—and frankly I thought better of the Greens. I will tell you something for free: Rod Donald and Jeanette Fitzsimons would not have gone along with this constitutional chicanery. Here's the test: if the National Party had got up and said "Three strikes is fundamentally important to the National Government and the public policy of this country and we're going to collaborate with ACT and put into law that the three strikes sentencing regime is so fundamental so critical to the confidence that people have in the judicial system"—Hon Eugenie Sage: Point of order. Other speakers in the debate have been reminded to stay on the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP).CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Can the member bring it back to the entrenchment in this SOP.CHRIS BISHOP: If the National Government of the time or a future National Government had done this the Greens would be up in arms—and I'm responding specifically to what Eugenie Sage raised in her speech. They would be up in arms and rightly so because entrenching a matter of contentious public policy in law and making it more difficult for a future Government or future Parliament to repeal is wrong.So my question for the Minister is a really simple one: what on earth were you thinking? What on earth possessed the Government to think that this was appropriate or constitutional? We have three particular concerns about this that I want the Minister to address. The first is the process point—it was done under urgency and a long stretch of urgency. It's not correct that the Government was trying to pass 24 bills but they certainly were trying to get the House to deal with around 24 or maybe 25 bills at the time. And quite rightly it was a long stretch and there were people in the House for that long stretch and it's not appropriate that something so constitutionally significant should be dealt with in a long stretch of urgency.The second point is the point I made around precedent. What precedent does entrenching a provision like this set into law? I made reference to other things that other Governments might consider to be important and the constitutional scholars have rightly made that point.Then the third point is the undesirability of having non-constitutional provisions entrenched into law because there are just five or six parts of our constitution that are entrenched and that's at a 75 percent majority—nothing else other than one provision of the Constitution Act 1986 and the Electoral Act 1993. It is undesirable as the Law Society and various other public law commentators pointed out to entrench non-constitutional provisions in legislation.I have a further question for the Minister. How did this come about? What we have at the moment is like that Spider-Man cartoon—everyone in the Government is pointing at everyone else and saying "They're to blame." Jacinda Ardern says this is Nanaia Mahuta's fault. Nanaia Mahuta says "It's nothing to do with me. I'm blaming the Finance and Expenditure Committee." David Parker says "I've always been opposed to entrenchment." and then everybody just wants to hang it on the Greens and ultimately it was their SOP in the first place."