Macindoe TimHon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Thank you Mr Chair. I was actually quite surprised that you allowed Minister Andrew Little to get away with some aspects of that call because he wandered so far away from the meaning of the word distorted".CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! That's my job not yours. Thank you.Hon Dr Nick Smith: As long as you're consistent.Hon TIM MACINDOE: OK I take that reprimand—CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! Dr Nick Smith the interjection on my ruling—the Chair is always consistent or tries to be and in his contribution and the Minister's contribution they did go fairly beyond both the proposed amendments. I in consideration of the member's long service to this House did give him some latitude but for the rest of the contributions to this part of the debate it's very narrow on the distortion to the proportionality of this part of the Act and the bill and I will ask members to stick to those.Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. The Minister in the chair has on several of the clauses and amendments that I have moved chosen to have a pretty wide-ranging debate so he can have a few flicks at me. I'm a big boy and I can take that—no problem at all. But what you cannot then do is say to my parliamentary colleagues that they can only talk very narrowly over the clause. So what National members of the House ask is that we don't mind what the rules are and we will comply with them but we do ask that they be applied consistently. If it is good enough for the Minister to raise quite extraneous matters about all sorts of comments which are not particularly relevant just to have a go at me I'm sorry but that same right should be available for members of the Opposition.CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): That was my very point but you can be assured that I will apply the rules consistently.Hon TIM MACINDOE: Thank you Mr Chair. Thank you for that explanation and I apologise to you for any inappropriate comment that I may have made before. But can I just check: is it permissible now for me to respond directly to some of the comments that the Hon Andrew Little made in his previous contribution—that would be acceptable?CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): As long as it's within the new clause 3A.Hon TIM MACINDOE: Well the Minister in the chair suggested that we had had as an example of distortion the findings of a previous MMP review. He made some extraordinary claims and the reason I want to refer to them is that at the time of that review I was the chair of the Justice and Electoral Committee. What I recall was that the Minister of Justice at the time was the Hon Judith Collins and she did her level best to consult right around the Parliament after the review had been conducted around the country to see whether there could be consensus formed on some essential questions that had been raised in the review. After doing that work she produced a table which showed that some parties agreed with this but others didn't. Some parties felt that way but others didn't and therefore where it was not possible to find consensus she published that material and showed that it was not possible to go forward.So the reason I put this on the record is that Mr Little has just tried to rewrite history by suggesting that somehow there was unanimity of view over a whole lot of these aspects. Well there was not and that is a matter of public record. It's documented. It's out there in the public domain. I could if necessary find the information that the Minister put out at the time but I just wanted to clarify that.Let me come back to what I think is at the heart of this particular amendment—which I strongly support—and could I make the point that times and circumstances change. That may be fairly self-evident but I think in the nature of this particular discussion it's important to put it on the record. Let's take for example the fact that there's a general election and a particular minor party goes to that election with strong support for what we might call three-strikes legislation. They feel very strongly about this and they come through the election and let's say they might have nine MPs in the Parliament at the end of it. But then they find themselves in a coalition arrangement with another party which is the major party of the Government and another minor party that's outside Parliament. This is all hypothetical of course but those two other parties might not agree with their position.So the point I'm making here is: what happens next? It is my contention that it's very difficult to make a cast-iron promise in an MMP election because no party in the 22 years that we've had MMP has been able to form an outright majority and therefore been able to come into the Parliament and enact every aspect of the policies on which they were elected. That very fact distorts an aspect of the proportionality of Parliament because it's in the nature of MMP Government that there have to be trade-offs. I do hope that the Hon Mrs Martin won't take objection to the word "trade-off"—Hon Tracey Martin: No that's perfectly fine Mr Macindoe. Trade-offs are fine.Hon TIM MACINDOE: Oh I can hear a chirp but I can't actually hear what she's saying. It is absolutely in the nature of MMP politics that there will have to be compromises. There is give and take and therefore that distorts the outcome of an election. So for the Minister to be suggesting that here we have a provision that is in some way objectionable—that Dr Nick Smith's amendment somehow is unacceptable—seems to me to fly in the face of reality. Should a party be absolutely bound by every aspect of its manifesto regardless of whether they can attract the support of their fellow members of Parliament—because the reality is they're not going to be able to do so—and should we hang them out to dry for that failure? Should we hang the Green Party out to dry for the fact that they came into this Parliament clearly opposed to any waka-jumping legislation? All of their records all of their public statements on that have shown over many many years that that's their position and yet they're now distorting the proportionality of Parliament by completely ignoring that by failing to take any calls tonight to justify their position and by letting down their supporters who I know are deeply hurt by what they're doing. Here we have this ridiculous position where the Government is trying to oppose the amendment of the Minister—[Time expired]CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Members before I call the Hon David Bennett I'd just like to draw to your attention that there is now a third amendment on this topic in the name of the Hon David Bennett which is also in order. It is also as I said part of this topic and therefore part of this debate."