Mark Ron: Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
Mark Ron: Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:610;Page:7797] 
RON MARK (NZ First) 
: 
 This is the first time I have spoken in this debate and I want to cap a couple of issues prior to the vote being taken. First I am going to ask this Government and its members to please please allow the members of Parliament who want to be dissociated from this bill—who have moved amendments to allow our parties to be excluded—to have that right. Could the Labour members please not exercise the tyranny of power that they have by being a majority collective with the Greens tagged on to deny us our right to exclude ourselves from the privileges they seek to ordain themselves with. We do not want it and we do not need it. Labour members should respect that request and allow our vote to carry. That is the first point. 
The second point is that many members have asked who this other person is or other persons are that this bill is now clearly designed to protect. It has occurred to me that this person must be one of the favoured few at the top echelon of the party because Harry Duynhoven—hapless Harry “two-flag” Duynhoven—is not one of the Prime Minister’s most favoured. Harry Duynhoven had to go kicking and screaming to get an Associate Minister’s job. Harry Duynhoven was in the same category as Dover Samuels Taito Phillip Field Janet Mackey and all those who sit slightly to the right of the Labour caucus who are not looked upon with favour. Therefore the only reason this Government is moving to protect Harry Duynhoven is that there is someone more senior who is in the same position and who has not come forward and identified himself or herself. 
That means that it is a senior person—very likely a list person which means he or she could not win a by-election because there would not be one—and that brings the suspicion very very narrowly down. It is easy to dispel any suspicion. All the Minister has to do is stand up and truthfully and honestly tell the Committee who that person is and stop wasting everybody’s time. The talkbacks are going crazy right now. The one thing that MPs have been slated for in the  
Sunday Star-Times  
and everywhere else is their protection of their perks. The worst thing that has now been seen out in public is that they are protecting their jobs—protecting their jobs when clearly they have broken the law. 
 I want to bring this notice to the attention of the Committee that I have had handed to me by the Hon Matt Robson. It states that Sir Howard Morrison and the Manaakitanga Aotearoa Trust are coming here with a group of young people on 12 August. Young Maori leaders who are role models are coming to Parliament to present their kaupapa and to present who they are. They are looking for leadership—for principled leadership—and for role models. 
What are we going to show those young people when they get here? I ask the Green Party whether we are going to show them that our principles are malleable that we will adjust our principles when one of our people breaks the law; but when one of those young people breaks the law will Metiria Turei go forward and change the law to help them? Of course she will not. The Greens will do it to protect that lot over there because the Green Party has become the new lackey party jumping to Helen Clark’s call. The only thing the Greens are saying is: “How high Helen and when can I come down?”. That is it. The Greens would defy gravity on instruction from Helen Clark because their principles are malleable. 
There is a simple message that I state as a law and order spokesman who deals with young people: one cannot go out and demand of young people that they adhere to the law that they accept their punishment when they have breached it and that they front up and take total self-responsibility for their actions if here at the highest court in the land when a member of Parliament breaks the law we simply change the law. 
And when a member of Parliament has broken the law and is too afraid to come out and put up his or her hand and say: “Don’t worry Harry Duynhoven I did it too.” we expand the change in the law to cater for that person so that that member never ever has to be identified. That is not an example that my party and other parties want to beparty to at all.