Sowry Roger: Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
Sowry Roger: Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:610;Page:7804] 
Hon ROGER SOWRY (Deputy Leader—NZ National) 
: 
 From time to time we get involved in some very heated debates in this Chamber. They are debates that have an ideological background they are on policy issues and this is the right place for them to take place. I have always been proud to be a member of this House and to take part in those debates and issues. One does not have to agree with those on the other side. 
Today for the first time since I came to this Parliament I felt ashamed of the way this House has been treated by the Labour majority. I felt ashamed that a coincidence has arisen whereby the Speaker has decided not to make a decision until next week on the Privileges Committee report thereby giving a window of opportunity for the Government to change the law for Mr Duynhoven. It has done that so that Mr Duynhoven who has breached the law who has vacated his seat—in the determination of the Privileges Committee the Clerk of the House and the Solicitor-General—will be deemed not to have done so because the weight of the majority of his colleagues in the Labour Party is to change the law rather than adhere to the law. 
That is not a precedent we should be proud of. That is not something the Minister says is fair. In the Committee stage no changes were made despite for the first time in my experience MPs getting up and pleading that they did not want this change for themselves. This change to the law does not affect anyone outside this Chamber. It only applies to MPs in this Parliament; not in any previous Parliament nor in the next one. It is only for this Parliament. National does not want to be covered by this law. New Zealand First does not want to be covered by this law. ACT does not want to be covered by this law. We are happy for the law to stand as it is. But Labour decided that not only would it change the law for Mr Duynhoven but also it would change the law for all members of Parliament. 
Why would Labour want to do that? To answer that question one has to go to Dr Cullen and find out whether any other Labour MPs have breached this law. Despite every party asking time and time again Labour refused to answer it. Labour voted along with the Greens to make sure this law went right back to the first swearing in of MPs in the Parliament. It did not go back to when Mr Duynhoven breached the law but way beyond that. 
Rodney Hide 
: How do you explain that? 
Hon ROGER SOWRY 
: The only way one can explain that is that somebody else has been caught up in this as well. New Zealanders have a right to know who that is. It is a serious issue because if it were a Minister then a Minister has been sitting in this Chamber making decisions signing papers and being party to making regulations that we are effectively validating through the back door. There is no validation legislation here that says that the Minister whichever one it is who has broken the law needs those regulations validated. The Government does not want to go through anything messy and honest like that. It wants to validate it for everybody so that the Labour culprit can get away with it. 
That is outrageous. It is impossible to imagine that happening in another democratic Parliament in the world. I wonder how the Clerk of the House will explain this at the next Commonwealth Clerk’s meeting in trying to make us look like a leading parliamentary democracy in the Commonwealth. When the people who have been a party to this go home tonight they will not feel in their stomachs they have been part of some great victory. The people who have been a party to this wanted to make sure that the law was changed in such a way that not only does it protect Mr Duynhoven whose case we all know about but also protects somebody else whose case we do not know about and may never know about— 
Rodney Hide 
: Never. 
Hon ROGER SOWRY 
: Not ever. That is an outrageous situation to be in. I have never seen us spend so much time on a piece of legislation for one individual let alone a member of Parliament. I also make the point that the retrospectivity of this legislation which goes way back to when the House was sworn in also allows for unknown people to get off. That is quite unusual. 
I really regret that the House has been placed in this position. I believe and I want to say this to you Mr Speaker because you were not here last night that I think you have to ask yourself about the role you played unwillingly or unwittingly in allowing a window of opportunity like this to arise. It never needed to happen. The law is absolutely clear. The Speaker must declare a vacancy when it occurs. I understand you will have been receiving advice on the issue and I want those people who are giving that advice to also reflect on this. What has been done here today cannot be undone. What has been done here today is a precedent for a Parliament in the future to make decisions about an individual MP’s right to sit in this Chamber. We have no formal written constitution and that may be the weakness we are being exposed to at the moment. That may be the problem. But I think what we are being exposed to is a Labour Party that did not want to fight a by-election and told us that Mr Duynhoven would win anyway so there was no point and we should just change the law. What a pathetic excuse! 
Does that mean if it was a list MP or a marginal MP or Mr Parker on a slim majority Labour would not have used that excuse and we would have had a by-election? Does that mean we have a different rule depending on the size of one’s majority? Does that mean if someone comes in here with a large majority and then breaks the rules that person should not worry about it because the rules will get changed so that he or she can stay because there is no point in having a by-election? That is not what parliamentarians should believe. The Labour Party should not be scared of a by-election. No politician should be scared of a by-election. I think that is what has driven this issue. I think Mr Prebble was dead right. The word “Timaru” has never been far from Labour’s minds on this issue. 
This is a very sad day for this Parliament. This debate will be written up in parliamentary journals. It will be looked at around the world. No one else will find a democracy that has gone to such lengths to protect one of its own who is named and one who is unknown but who happens to be in the Labour Party. That much we know because the Labour Party simply refuses to deny it. I think that is outrageous. I think New Zealanders will believe that that is outrageous and they deserve a lot better from a democracy.