Prebble Richard: Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
Prebble Richard: Electoral (Vacancies) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:610;Page:7808] 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (Leader—ACT NZ) 
: 
 The ACT party rises to oppose it and the fact that the previous Government speaker can speak on a constitutional measure of this importance in one sentence shows the contempt with which the Labour Government is treating this Parliament our constitution and the public of New Zealand whom it now does not believe it needs to be accountable to. I am a strong supporter of our parliamentary system and of the Westminster Parliament. I say to the House that what we—and I say “we” because every MP is implicated—Parliament are doing today will do great damage to the reputation of this institution and to the concept of parliamentary democracy and the concept that we as a Parliament are under the law but we are going to do a lot of damage to a lot of people as well. The Hon Harry Duynhoven who has been proud to be the highest of the high—and only another MP knows what a majority means—and has been proud to have a majority of 14000 will in about an hour’s time have a majority of three. He will have gone from the highest of the high to the lowest of the low. 
And of course he will be regarded not as the MP for New Plymouth but as the MP for a majority of members of Parliament. That is a terrible thing to do to him. Those who advised him to take this course rather than take the honourable Westminster course of resigning are no true friends of Mr Duynhoven or of this Parliament. But it has also damaged other reputations. The Attorney-General who is supposed to uphold the law has damaged her reputation. Nobody can possibly credit the sorts of statements that she has been making as being proper statements of the law. The Leader of the House has damaged his reputation because he should be the Leader of the House. 
I have to say that I am starting to sympathise with Mr Peters. I had better look more carefully at immigration when the immigration Minister can tell us that she cannot understand section 55 of the Electoral Act which the Solicitor-General told us was a clear unambiguous piece of legislation with a beneficial purpose—and what was that? The beneficial purpose was to ensure that every member of Parliament owed allegiance to the public of New Zealand and not to a foreign power. 
Let me just state what the law is. When I look at the Electoral Act I have admiration for our Parliament. The law is quite simple. We do not discriminate against people who have dual citizenship. But what we do say is that they then must swear allegiance when they become an MP and as an MP they must not exercise their foreign citizenship and they certainly must not take it up. That is a very good sensible rule. We have a member of Parliament who says he did not give it a thought and has broken it and as a result of that we have now rewritten the law for him and damaged our reputation. When I first came into Parliament Mr Speaker—and you will remember this—there was a major court case. It was called  
Fitzgerald 
 v  
Muldoon 
 in 1975. 
What the Chief Justice then said was that the pretended power of suspending of laws or the execution of laws by regal authority without consent of Parliament is illegal. It is in the 300-year old bill of rights and he said that it is still part of our law. The judge quoted that: “The principle of parliamentary sovereignty means neither more nor less than this: namely that Parliament thus defined has under the English constitution the right to make or unmake any law whatsoever.” And further it states: “No person or body is recognised by the law of England as having the right to override or set aside the legislation of Parliament.” 
We have done that too have we not? The legislation of Parliament in the Electoral Act section 129 “By-elections for members representing electoral districts” states in subsection (1): “If the Speaker is satisfied that the seat of a member elected to represent an electoral district has become vacant the Speaker must without delay publish a notice of the vacancy and its cause in the  
Gazette 
.” I just say to you Mr Speaker that everyone in this House including those people who abstained today all know that that seat has been vacant and that it has been vacant for more than a month. If the Prime Minister when she learnt about it on 4 July had advised that within 12 hours she had suspended Mr Duynhoven’s warrant then that would be what I call “without delay”. I do not call waiting a month “without delay”; and the case of  
Fitzgerald 
 v  
Muldoon 
—and the Labour Party used to be very much in favour of that court case—has been trampled over today. 
I just make this point when we talk about Mr Duynhoven’s being very popular. It is very true that he is popular but his reputation has taken a terrible pounding in many ways and one of those ways is as a Minister. The Government I understand went back to see whether he had exercised any authority that could be challenged—whether he had actually done something as a Minister that could be challenged in court. Do members know that the Government had to go back to April to find such a decision? I used to make half a dozen such decisions before breakfast! 
What do these Associate Ministers actually do? Why is Mr Duynhoven getting a ministerial car and an office if he has not actually made any decisions that could be reviewed? What the Government has done to Mr Duynhoven’s reputation I think is appalling. If he had gone on television last night and said: “My colleagues want to pass a piece of legislation to rewrite the law and let me into Parliament. But I recognise that even though I did not know it I was making a mistake I take responsibility for it and I have tendered my resignation. I am leaving it to the good people of New Plymouth to decide whether to return me.” then I think he probably would have been returned with a huge majority. But he did not take that honourable Westminster course and those who had advised him not to were not doing him a favour. 
We are left with the great suspicion that there are Labour members of Parliament who have actually done far worse things than Mr Duynhoven who did know what they were doing and who have sworn allegiance. We are in the interesting situation where every single political party has gone back and checked its MPs and has said: “We are not affected.” ACT party members—and New Zealand First followed us—said that we do not even want to be covered by this bill. We moved amendments and I greatly object to the Green Party’s demands that members actually have the right to swear allegiance to overseas countries. 
Mr Keith Locke may want to join the Taliban as he now will be able to within an hour but no one in the ACT party wants to do that. I find it an outrage that the Labour majority is forcing that upon us and in doing so is lowering the standing of this Parliament. As a result of what has happened today damage has been done to the Speakership to the Attorney-General to the Leader of the House and to Harry Duynhoven—and to all of them because we do not know who the traitors are. We just know that there are people in the Labour Party who are voting for a measure to enable them to swear allegiance to a foreign State. 
Let me make it quite clear that I think as an MP that MPs who do that are traitors to New Zealand. Members have an obligation to serve the people of New Zealand and as the Bible says we cannot serve two masters. But that is what Parliament has decided—[ 
Interruption 
]—eight times in the past. 
And now we have the Minister of Immigration who says she cannot even understand the law. This is a very sad day for the New Zealand Parliament.