Penk ChrisCHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you Madam Speaker. We've heard some interesting valedictories tonight: Alastair Scott Sarah Dowie Paula Bennett and now Tracey Martin. I've been accused I suppose of being part of the category of National Party MPs who are in a traditionally National Party electorate. I don't use the words safe seat". The member said that you could put up a block of cheese with a blue rosette and it'd win—blue cheese obviously. Let us just hope it is tasty cheese and that I become better with age which isn't always the case in this place.Anyway the bill that we have before us—and I congratulate the Rt Hon David Carter for bringing it to this House—does a very important thing: it removes that which is no longer needed. We could actually say more accurately that it removes that which was never needed in the first place and colleagues on this side of the House have made a very eloquent case along exactly those lines. But if the bill were needed we can say very firmly that it is not any more because the reason for it having been passed in the first place was clearly an insurance policy against ill discipline of New Zealand First MPs and I don't think we will be troubled by that spectre haunting our political landscape very much more in some 51 days from now.I think that one very significant aspect of the Electoral (Integrity Repeal) Amendment Bill can be found in the name: electoral. The point about electoral law is not politicians; it is the electors. The word "elector" is in the name of the Act and the amendment bill that is before us. It is for the electors those who vote—that is to say the citizens of New Zealand. It is their decision making in a democracy if a democracy is to be the rule of the people that must count when it comes to appointing representatives in this House of Representatives.So it is that we examine the principle involved. We've had the example as outlined I think by the Hon Dr Nick Smith of the Northland by-election in which Mr Peters gained that seat—only briefly mind; but that's been a pattern over the years too. He gained that seat in contravention of the principle that he would hold and delay the bill that the Government brought to the House. He went against that principle by saying that he wanted to represent the people of that seat despite the electoral result at the previous general election and yet that's the basis supposedly of this whole regime that was brought in by the Government at the start of this term.We've heard very clearly tonight in the speech by the Hon Tracey Martin the basis on which the governing parties made their decisions in relation to the bill and her exhortation to the Green Party to keep their word or some phrase along those lines. So I too will be very interested to see what happens in relation to them. I am quietly confident that the principles of the Green Party will be re-remembered and brought to the fore once more and I am tempted to cut my own remarks short to bring forward that interesting moment that we will enjoy.Speaking of interesting moments I note that the situation of a member of the National Party who departed the National Party caucus but not Parliament earlier in this term I would suggest is a very instructive one. It is the exception that proves the rule. It is the proof in the pudding of the National Party's principled stance as articulated at the time by the Hon Dr Nick Smith and others that we do not believe that the electors of any given electorate should have their wishes disregarded as expressed at one election. So it is that when the member for Botany decided that he would strike out on his own—to put it kindly—we said in effect that the people of Botany would have the chance to choose at the next election who would represent them. So they do have that choice and that is one for them to make having made a previous choice along those lines previously.The fundamental question in relation to this is if a member of Parliament is said to have departed from the party manifesto on which he or she stood who gets to make that decision: is it the member of Parliament himself or herself is it their leader or should it be the people? It is the people it is the people it is the people who make that decision. So the platforms on which we are elected will be standing again at the election. The people will decide. That's as it should be. I support this bill."