Hughes Darren: Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Hughes Darren: Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:654;Page:3637] 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Senior Whip—Labour) 
: 
 My friend the Deputy Leader of the House misinterprets what I mean. I am not discussing closure motions. We have dealt with that issue the Chair has ruled on it and we accept what you said. We are talking about the difference between proposed new parts and amendments.  
The Committee of the whole House used to consider a bill clause by clause. Indeed if the Government forgot to move a part by part motion then we would be subjected to hours and hours in Committee as it worked through clauses. It was always a challenge for Government whips to make sure a Minister moved a part by part motion. We have moved away from that situation to an assumption that the Committee of the whole House will always consider bills part by part and that amendments relate to clauses—as we have seen so far. It is completely different when amendments are put down that create new parts as we see here. An amendment to create a new part is a separate debatable question as opposed to individual amendments on clauses which are not debatable questions; they are questions taken at the end of a debate alongside the Minister’s amendments and other members’ amendments. It is a completely separate area. Your comments that these proposed new parts are just like amendments is the point the Opposition is raising with you. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I say to the member with all due respect that the whole structure of his argument is based on a wrong assumption. The fact is that whatever name the member puts on these amendments—whether he calls them “parts” “model parts” or whatever—they are all amendments. Each one is an amendment. An amendment that has “part” on it has exactly the same status in this Committee as an amendment that takes out one word and substitutes another. It is an amendment—it is nothing other than an amendment to the bill. It is no different. It is irrelevant whether the member calls the amendment a part; it is still an amendment. However the Chair instead of having a very narrow debate on an amendment has given consideration to the fact that the amendment has a substantial amount of clauses in it which is why we had multiple speeches on the amendment and did it slightly differently from any other amendment. That is the point we are at. 
I reiterate two things. Firstly the Chair will be the sole determiner of the debate and will then simply allow the Committee to make its own decision about whether the debate continues. Secondly the Chair’s decision will be driven by two things: whether there has been relevance and whether there has been undue repetition. So there are two criteria: relevance and repetition. If members are relevant and are providing fresh material then the Committee will continue to debate the part. The moment it changes—there is repetition and relevance goes down—then the Chair will start to look at a closure motion.