Prebble Richard: Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Prebble Richard: Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:610;Page:7715] 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (Leader—ACT NZ) 
: 
 This is a very serious bill. It will amend the Electoral Act and I remember being told in law school that the Electoral Act is part of the constitution of New Zealand. It is a constitutional document; it is not an ordinary piece of legislation. We have to remember we do not have a written constitution in this country and we do not have a second Chamber. The guardians of our constitution of our Westminster system and of our rule of law are the members of Parliament in this House. There is no doubt that legally we could declare this Parliament—all of us—to be re-elected for ever and there would be nothing that the courts or the public could do about it. 
Rod Donald 
: I so move. 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE 
: I have already heard the Greens say they think that is a good idea. 
I say to the House—[ 
Interruption 
]—and to the member who is interjecting that we as a Parliament should be very very reluctant to make a change to the constitution without having full public participation in it. Can anyone say that putting in a change in the law—a retrospective change—under urgency constitutes public consultation or proper discussion? I say that the process we are following will be a very dangerous precedent. I have attempted to find out whether there is any Commonwealth Parliament or a Parliament that we would like to associate ourselves with where a similar situation has arisen and the Parliament has decided to pass under urgency a retrospective piece of legislation. I cannot find one. There have been Australian members of Parliament who have lost their seats under a similar provision but there was no attempt by any Australian Parliament to do what we are doing. 
So I say again to Government members that to change the constitution without having the consensus support of this House is a very dangerous thing to do. Yes technically we could change it with a majority of one but is that the right thing to do? I say it is clearly the wrong thing to do. 
I also need to say that the Privileges Committee which is made up of senior members of this House listened to evidence from the country’s chief law officer the Solicitor-General. Was his advice ambiguous? No it was not. He said that section 55 of the Act is unambiguous that its meaning is clear and that its purpose is beneficial. Its purpose is to ensure that no member while sitting in this House gives allegiance to a foreign country. He said that that section had been reviewed by Parliament frequently and he pointed out that there had been an amendment to it within the last decade. So we cannot say it is a section that we have not looked at. Then we have the Clerk of the House who the Speaker told us today is the best Clerk in the Commonwealth. What was Mr McGee’s advice to us? He said that the section was quite clear and that Mr Duynhoven by his actions had made the seat vacant. There was no doubt about that at all from both those officials. 
Members should realise that the MPs on the committee came to a different view. But by the time we had finished we had the situation of the Green MP who had come to the committee feeling sympathetic to Mr Duynhoven but who said no that was the law. We had Mr Dunne whose opinions I do not often have much time for but he said that after he had listened to those opinions to Mr Duynhoven and to Geoffrey Palmer he was in no doubt that Mr Duynhoven had offended against that section of the Act. The Rt Hon Winston Peters had also reached that opinion. I had reached that view too and so had the National members. 
So given that we have already looked at the bulk of the committee who said that section 55 of the Act was ambiguous? This should worry us. The Attorney-General who should be the guardian of the constitution and should be our senior lawyer basically said to the committee that she had no faith in the Clerk of this House or in the Solicitor-General and that she thought—Waikato law school—that this section of the Act was ambiguous. The Leader of the House who likes to tell us how clever he is told us that he had difficulty in understanding it. The Minister of Immigration who is supposed to be in charge of deciding who should come to this country then tried to tell us that she could not understand that section either. 
Two interpretations of that are possible. One is that those three senior Ministers may really have difficulty in understanding the law—and is that not a worry? Or alternatively they were playing politics with a matter of the constitution and with the integrity of this House. I say to those three Ministers that if that is what they were doing then they owe a far greater duty to this Parliament and the country than any duty that they owe to their party. 
The view of the Solicitor-General and the Clerk was quite clear. It was that the seat was vacated that the law should take its course and that it was for the electors of New Plymouth to decide whether they wanted to re-elect Mr Duynhoven—not the MPs in this House. The electors may or may not elect him. 
Hon Damien O'Connor 
: They would! 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE 
: Is the member saying to us that the Government would not have introduced this bill if Mr Duynhoven was an unpopular member? Is it all just because he is popular? Is there a different law for popular and unpopular members? It appears that we are being told that. I say the people of New Plymouth can decide whether Mr Duynhoven is popular. 
But since the member has interjected I ask whether he can deny that the Labour Party has a deep and abiding fear of by-elections. No Labour member of the House who was in Government when the Timaru by-election happened has ever forgotten that. I thought the Labour Party could not lose Timaru. I did not know there were any National Party voters in Timaru. [ 
Interruption 
] I might have helped but by God we found some National voters and those Labour members have never forgotten it. 
Do Labour members want to have a by-election on the foreshore issue? I believe that that is the real issue here. We have a Government that does not want to have the inconvenience of a by-election. It cannot be a question of the cost. The National Party said it will cost $3 million to put this bill through. According to my maths it comes to $1.9 million. That is what it costs to put Parliament into urgency. In contrast a by-election is very very cheap. 
Who are the other members who will be affected by this legislation? I want to know that. Is it Mr Barnett Mr Choudhary Dr Cullen—he told us that it was not him—Mr Field Mr Gosche Luamanuvao Winnie Laban or Mr Sutton? 
Hon Damien O'Connor 
: Is it Mr Prebble? 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE 
: I give the House an assurance that it is not a single member of the ACT party. We asked Labour Party members in the Privileges Committee to give us that assurance and they would not. 
I believe we are doing something that is absolutely despicable. Harry Duynhoven has at least owned up. When he said he did not have a clue about the matter I believed him. He said that he had not given the matter any thought and in his case I believe him. However there are dishonourable members of Parliament—and I use the word “dishonourable”—who have given the matter some thought and who have asked the Government to pass a general blanket exemption from section 55 of the Act. Maybe it is to allow Mr Keith Locke instead of just being an advocate of the Taliban to actually go and join it because under this provision he will be legally allowed to do that. What we are doing is wrong and it is a disgrace for this Government to violate our constitution in this way. 
Debate interrupted. 
Sitting suspended from 10 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Thursday)