Penk ChrisCHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you sir for the opportunity to speak on the referral motion to the select committee in relation to the Referendums Framework Bill. In response to some points made by Mr Jones I want to start by noting that his characterisation of an efficient use of the select committee's time—he's referring to the determination made by Minister Little along that line—surely it is for the select committee itself to determine the best use of its own time. That is indeed what its constitutional role is: to act independent of the executive to the extent that the select committee is a creature of Parliament. As such it's absolutely crucial from a constitutional point of view that it maintain that separation it maintain that independence and to be allowed to do its work unmolested by the dictates of the Minister of the day in relation to a particular decision or a set of decisions that that Minister—you know reasonably in one context—might make for political reasons along with his Cabinet colleagues. So we then ask ourselves: is the amount of time that the select committee is going to have to consider this particular bill appropriate? We'll have less time—half as much time in fact. So the question then becomes: is it appropriate that these matters be accorded less time? Surely that's only the case if the matters themselves are less important. If anything the opposite is true: the matters that will be subject to deliberation ultimately under this bill bearing in mind that referenda questions will not need to come back to this House—obviously the answer is yes. These are if anything more important matters: matters of life and death matters of drug policy and whatever one's views on that we must surely agree that it's important to allow the select committee enough time to understand how these things will relate to the matter—no small matter—of the general election of 2020. Mr Jones spoke about effectively a winner-takes-all philosophy whereby that side of the House having won the election enjoys a mandate to run the country. Of course that is true as far as it goes but that doesn't change the fact that it's constitutionally inappropriate for the executive to be directing Parliament—in this case a particular select committee—to operate in a particular way that is extraordinary. Further to that point regarding a mandate from the 2017 election that Mr Jones claims that would have a lot more weight if it were true that all the parties that now form Government had in fact campaigned on all these matters. New Zealand First didn't campaign on several matters that now appear set to go to a referendum. So it is rather rich for him to claim a mandate in the context of seeking to truncate a process on the basis that they've already got the authority from the good people of New Zealand. It's that three-stage process: not only the election—electing members of the House of Parliament by the people in New Zealand—but the selection of the Government by the leader of New Zealand First and then the collection of policies that have gone into that. It's relevant to note absolutely that in none of these was the New Zealand First position which now seems to be maintained as a matter of electoral mandate ever exposed to the New Zealand people for an airing. I dare say that many would-be voters of New Zealand First would perhaps have thought differently about the way they cast their vote thereby changing the mandate claimed by Mr Jones if they had known what was planned. My next point is again essentially one of rebuttal. We've heard from the Government side of the House that it's appropriate to have a lesser time of scrutiny by the select committee for this bill because it's simply important to establish some machinery for referenda—as though that were impossible for the House itself to come to. I don't need to belabour the point that we've previously made about the fact that on every single occasion previously it has been this House that has done exactly that. For particular referenda questions it has done exactly that and so the departure from convention—the breech of convention indeed—is unnecessary and is therefore contributing to the general sense of arrogance and ignorance that has characterised the speeches we've heard opposite today on this bill.Allow me to make a couple of final points. I don't need to take my full 10 minutes. In relation again to the comments of Mr Jones he speaks as though political parties are the centre of the democratic universe. Well in fact it's the people of New Zealand who are the centre of that particular universe and it is we their representatives in the House as a whole—not of course the National Party beyond the percentage that we gained in the election which I acknowledge obviously enough for the record was not a majority in itself. But the fact that we are hearing in effect something along the lines of: We won. You lost."—and I note by the way that's not necessarily a direct quote but it wasn't far off. The notion that we've heard from Mr Jones is that it's a matter of political parties winning or losing—effectively on another level from whether the people of New Zealand should lose out by having their select committee of their Parliament having a full and proper chance to speak on these matters. That's really the point in terms of democratic mandate that Mr Jones misses whether deliberately or not. Finally—and again I say I don't need to take my 10 minutes on this because the debate has been raising a lot of these issues very clearly from various colleagues of mine—the shortened process due to tightness of time frames ahead of the 2020 election should not be an excuse or reason for truncating the process in this way. It was always the case that there was going to be an election in 2020. It was always the case that 2020 was going to follow 2019. It was always the case that 2019 was going to follow 2018 and if that seems like too obvious a point it seems to have been lost on the other side who failed to anticipate the ticking of the clock the turning of the pages of history. The calendar turning over in an entirely predictable way seems to have passed them by until suddenly now they need to act and in an unseemly rush. Whether that's due to accident or design I wouldn't like to say but the people in New Zealand can have their view whether it's cock-up or conspiracy. But in any case it's pretty untidy to say the least. It's a hopeless way to conduct the process of this House and therefore our democracy. So for that reason along with others on the side of the House I'm very strongly opposing this motion to refer the bill to select committee for a much-truncated period of time than would otherwise be the case."