Mapp Wayne: Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
Mapp Wayne: Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:610;Page:7773] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (NZ National—North Shore) 
: 
 The point that has been made about every single member of Parliament applying for citizenship of another country is why this bill is so wrong. Why on earth would the Government put legislation into this House that enables every member of Parliament to apply for citizenship of another country if he or she is entitled to do so in the next 2 years? What on earth could be the public policy reason behind that? 
It is actually even worse than that. If the Government is hiding someone that person probably was involved in that action between the last election and now so why does the bill not have a closure date of tomorrow as Mr Dail Jones has suggested? Even that would be too wide because it would still protect that secret person whom we know is out there who is not willing to confess. 
The Government is going even further than that. For some absurd reason Labour wants all members of Parliament irrespective of their parties to be able to go out there and get any passport they want if they are entitled to do so. What could be the public policy reason for that? It is even worse than that because if one looks at the suspension of section 55(1)(b) one sees that it also enables every single member of Parliament to take an oath of allegiance to another country. Many passport applications do not require that but this Government is going further. So we would have the extraordinary spectacle over the next 2 years of members of Parliament—who are purportedly representing the interests of the people of this country having sworn allegiance to the Queen of New Zealand when they took office as members of Parliament—taking oaths of allegiance to other countries. That is the effect of suspending section 55(1)(b). It is truly extraordinary. What on earth is the public policy reason behind doing that? 
The previous Minister in the chair Rick Barker who is a man who is not learned in the law demonstrated that by saying that we have to suspend the section for that period to protect Harry Duynhoven; that if we do not do that we save him now but he would not be saved thereafter. That is a complete misapprehension. We would not agree with this legislation in any event but if it related only to Harry Duynhoven for instance he would be covered for the balance of this Parliament—that would be the effect of the legislation. To have these provisions go forward to the end of this Parliament is to cover people prospectively in the future for future applications. There can be no logic in that at all. 
The Government will say that the existing legislation is old-fashioned and quaint that it is a kind of weird notion that members of Parliament should solely have allegiance to our country and to the people of our country and that that ought to be subject to review. Perhaps the Government does believe that. It could put that provision to the Justice and Electoral Committee as indeed it intends to do but none of that has anything at all to do with Mr Harry Duynhoven. If there were any case at all for this legislation which there is not then it should be tightly circumscribed and the Government—if it has any integrity in its understanding of oaths of allegiance and the taking out of passports—should at the very minimum be voting for Mr Dail Jones’ amendments. 
I turn now to our fundamental objection. The people of New Zealand decide who is in this Parliament. They do that by voting at elections and when there is a vacancy the proper course is to have a by-election. That is what happens in other Parliaments. Parliamentarians in other Parliaments do not rush around spending 1 percent of all parliamentary time on special legislation to save the bacon of not only someone like Harry Duynhoven but some unknown person or persons. What happened to Ms Chal of the United Future party? She came in disappeared and another person came in. That is what the law is supposed to be.