Smith NickHon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): Thank you Madam Chair. I want to respond to some of the points that the Minister in the chair made that are actually factually wrong by law. What we are debating on this amendment in my name is extending the functions of the Electoral Commission as set down in section 5 of the Electoral Act. The purpose of this amendment is to require the Electoral Commission to regularly report to this House of Representatives on these new provisions which so many New Zealanders so many experts and members on this side of the House so strongly object to.In the course of the Minister's contribution he made the incorrect statement that the Electoral Commission actually has responsibility for scrutinising elections. That's not correct. In fact any member of the Justice Committee would know right now that we have an inquiry into the 2017 general election of which the very purpose is to scrutinise the election and the way it was conducted. So on that point the Minister in the chair is simply factually incorrect.The second point that the Minister has attempted to make is that because the Electoral Commission has responsibility for the conduct of the elections—and I'm one of those that believes they do a good job of that—the Minister has argued that it would be inappropriate to extend that function to reporting to Parliament on the new provisions that are provided for in this bill. I think he's incorrect and let me tell you why. The reason the Minister is incorrect is that the functions that we're wanting to report on are functions that exist within Parliament. It is the leaders of parties that are going to be administering these procedures it is the Speaker who receives the notice that a member of Parliament is getting the boot and I don't see any conflict at all in the Electoral Commission presenting a report to the House on the way in which those new vacancy provisions of the Electoral Act that are proposed in this bill be provided for. So the argument does not stack up. The Electoral Commission is not actively involved in the process by which a member of Parliament is dismissed.Let's review how it occurs. The leader takes this view and the view is that the member has—this very vague term—acted in a way" that distorts the proportionality of Parliament. The leader serves a notice to the Speaker. The Speaker declares the seat vacant sends a notice across to the Electoral Commission and—depending on whether that member is a constituency member or that member is a list member—then either organises a by-election or in the second instance simply recalls the next member of Parliament on the listSo I say getting to the Parliament: what do Government members have to fear from the Electoral Commission being able to regularly report to Parliament on the administration of those functions. What is it that they are trying to hide? Now we know they're trying to hide quite a lot. We've had huge issues in the debate over this bill about matters being kept away from Parliament. Parliament may be interested: I received four inches of documents last night that I had requested under the Official Information Act (OIA). The disappointing part was that large parts including over this very issue of the role of the Electoral Commission were deleted from that OIA from a Government that says it is the most open and transparent—and not showed through in that OIA including the provisions in that OIA request around the role of the Electoral Commission that's relevant to this clause.So members on this side of the House have a very simple proposition. These provisions are unusual. We know they don't work well. Anybody that was in this House at the time when Jim Anderton was a party leader—we know it was a mess and an embarrassment. We know that it brought Parliament into disrepute. There were editorials in all the newspapers at the time that said that this showed that these very provisions were a nonsense—having Jim Anderton in Parliament pretending he was the Alliance leader and outside of Parliament saying he was a member of the Progressive Party. Having a role for the Electoral Commission to provide reports on that to the House would at least enable a mechanism by which we could ensure that the provisions of this bill might half-work. It's a very important check on the new powers that are being proposed."