Prebble Richard: Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
Prebble Richard: Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:610;Page:7738] 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (Leader—ACT NZ) 
: 
 In Britain the Attorney-General is not a member of the Cabinet in order to make sure that he or she does not give party partisan advice. After listening to that contribution made by the Hon Margaret Wilson I think we ought to look at that too. We have a bill to in effect elect a member of Parliament. It is a change to our constitution. We heard an extraordinarily partisan speech from the Attorney-General. Either she believes what she said in which case the courts in New Zealand have a terrible Attorney-General or worse still she does not believe it. I think that she does not believe it because she had a go about honorary consulship. 
Margaret Wilson voted for a section of the Privileges Committee’s report that stated that section 55 of the Act is not triggered by “appointment as an honorary consul or the acceptance of a foreign award or honour nor to owing a ‘local allegiance’ which arises by virtue of temporarily residing in a foreign country.” She voted for that and then she decided to make a cheap political point—not one that an Attorney-General should make and certainly not with regard to a section as serious as that one. This bill is damaging a lot of reputations. It is damaging Parliament’s reputation because for the first time ever we have decided to elect a member rather than leaving that to the people of this country. 
I want to address some remarks to Mr Duynhoven and I hope he is listening to this debate. I have known him for a long time and I do not think I have ever given him—consciously anyway—bad advice. I believe that he has been given some appalling advice. This process is shredding his reputation. Mr Duynhoven is very proud of the fact that he has a majority of 14000 or something like that. He is the highest of the high. I have had the position of having the biggest majority in Parliament. As MPs we all know that it is a great feeling. Mr Duynhoven is proud of his majority and he worked hard to get it. Yet by tonight he will have a majority of 21. He will be able to name every one of them. Some of the people whom he would not cross the road to support will put him in Parliament. He will have a majority of 21; he will be the lowest of the low. 
That is Harry Duynhoven’s choice. He does not have to do that. The correct advice in terms of the Westminster system to have given to him was that he should resign. Harry Duynhoven can still do that. He can save his reputation by going from wherever he is and handing in his resignation. Why should he do that? We are told by his colleagues that if he puts his case in front of the people of New Plymouth he would be re-elected and I think that if he trusted them he would be too. He would be able to walk back into this House after being elected by the people of New Plymouth rather than after being elected by MPs. Mr Duynhoven should ask himself whether he really wants to be elected by members of Parliament. That is the advice he should have received from everyone. The Lord only knows why he decided to go to see Sir Geoffrey Palmer for advice. If he had gone to see David Caygill he would have said the seat was vacant and the honourable course of action was to resign. But instead Mr Duynhoven went to see Sir Geoffrey Palmer. 
I say to Sir Geoffrey Palmer that it is a matter of great shame that a former Prime Minister of New Zealand seems to think that the worst aspects of Washington lobbying firms and law firms are what he wants to spend his time engaged in. No doubt he is happy with his Mercedes-Benz. However Sir Geoffrey Palmer should be more concerned about his reputation. The committee was shocked by the representations made to it. If members would like to read the section of the report on the  
de minimis non curat lex 
 principle they will see we decided to strengthen it when we rejected those representations by stating we “unanimously rejected” Sir Geoffrey Palmer’s advice. I do not believe any member of the committee thought that Sir Geoffrey Palmer believed a single word that he said to us. He should be somewhat concerned about his reputation. 
Sir Geoffrey Palmer actually said to us that Dutch law should apply in New Zealand. I thought he made the case as to why a member of Parliament should not pledge allegiance to a foreign State. Who would think that Dutch law should apply in New Zealand were it not for the fact that an MP had pledged allegiance to a foreign State? New Zealand law should apply here. The moment that Sir Geoffrey Palmer walked out of the room not one single member thought that Dutch law should decide who is elected in this Parliament. None of us supported the arguments he put forward. 
We had a bit of a debate about whether Sir Geoffrey Palmer has ever won a court case. I live in west Auckland where we are sprayed because of the painted apple moth. The people who live in the area around me are not wealthy and they have asked me whether Parliament would change that programme. I have said that it would not do that. So they went to see Sir Geoffrey Palmer who took a huge fee off them and said that he could fight it. Yet they are still being sprayed. The only case I know of that has ever been lost before the Waitangi Tribunal is the case where Sir Geoffrey Palmer told a group of poor Maoris that the kiwifruit was a taonga. Even the Waitangi Tribunal thought that that was a stretch. I say to Sir Geoffrey Palmer that the money is not worth it and that he should think about his reputation. 
Let me go on to see who else is being shredded. Our Prime Minister who has been very silent today learnt about this matter on 4 July. How long did she take to decide that she needed to act? That day—4 July—Mr Duynhoven’s warrant was suspended. We have known about the issue for a considerable period. The law states the Speaker must act “without delay”. The Prime Minister acted without delay in taking 12 hours to suspend Mr Duynhoven’s warrant. Have we taken 12 hours? No we have not. We all know that the seat was vacated on 11 June and here we are on 7 August. Our reputations as parliamentarians are being shredded because nobody believes that we are acting without delay. 
But I want to go further than that and say Mr Duynhoven has put the Speaker in an impossible position. When Mr Duynhoven’s colleagues said we should have a bill were they actually trying to help him? Of course they were not. They know that he would have won a by-election. The reason that his colleagues are getting this bill through is to protect some MPs who were not prepared to be upfront and go to see the Speaker. Why is Mr Duynhoven lending his name to that? He should not do that. He should resign. 
 But I will go further than that and say to Mr Duynhoven that much as I like him he was not as upfront as he has tried to pretend to be. When he turned up to the committee I asked him for a copy of the application. He said he had it. Although I asked him for it it has not arrived. I asked him when he really applied for the first time but we have not had an answer from him. It turns out that Mr Duynhoven had a number of attempts to get Dutch citizenship and one of them became lost in transit. The fact of the law is that the moment Mr Duynhoven filled out that form and sent it off it triggered the application of section 55 of the Act. If he did do it earlier than he has said his obligation to resign becomes greater. 
Let us consider other matters. The most controversial bill this year—the prostitution bill—went through on Mr Duynhoven’s vote and he was not validly a member of Parliament at the time. That ought to concern him as well. 
I say to the House that here is a member of Parliament who has said that he did not give the matter a moment’s thought. I accept his word on that. But do I think that is the right thing for a Minister to say? Of course he should have thought that citizenship was worth a moment’s thought. He did actually know it was important because an hour after he sent the form off he thought perhaps he should tell the Prime Minister about it. If he had gone to see the Prime Minister an hour earlier he would not be in this position. I say to Mr Duynhoven that we should not be in this position either. He should tender his resignation today.