Electoral Amendment Bill

When the Committee last considered this bill we were debating Part 1 and the Hon Maryan Street—[Interruption] Order! If members are leaving, would they leave quietly, please. The Hon Maryan Street had the call and has just on 4 minutes remaining if she wishes.

When we left off the debate on this bill, the Electoral Amendment Bill—it was interrupted by the close of business last Tuesday night—I wanted to make a couple of points about the Supplementary Order Papers that are on the Table in respect of this bill. When the bill first came to the Justice and Electoral Committee it had in it substantial clauses—between clauses 24 and 38—that really put into the law what was until then, and is still now, an administrative practice. It was an administrative practice that we have come to know as the EasyVote card. The clauses were about the enrolment confirmation card, popularly known as the EasyVote card, and they allowed for the administration of that to be written into the legislation. Instead of being just an administrative convention or a practice, the clauses actually gave a purpose to the EasyVote card—the enrolment confirmation card, as it is referred to—in the struck out parts of this legislation.

There are three Supplementary Order Papers in front of us at the moment. The one in the name of Holly Walker seeks to reinstate clauses 24 to 28, 31 to 34, 37, and 38. So Holly Walker’s Supplementary Order Paper 420 simply seeks to reinstate those struck out clauses. Our further consideration of this bill and of the Supplementary Order Papers that have come up have caused us to think it would be a good idea to do what the Minister of Justice originally intended. We would like to know why the Minister is now not supporting a Supplementary Order Paper that basically reinstates her original proposal. I do not know why that is. I cannot imagine that the Minister of Justice, Judith Collins, is routinely rolled by her caucus on any matter, but if that is the case, then I would appreciate it if she advised the Committee of that or, at least, if one of her colleagues got up and explained to the rest of the Committee—particularly those colleagues who are on the Justice and Electoral Committee—why the select committee struck out the things that the Minister originally intended. It was for a range of reasons, which elude me now.

On reflection, we considered that clauses 24 to 36 relating to the enrolment confirmation card should be retained. I would like to see Holly Walker’s Supplementary Order Paper pass. I have a feeling—more than that, I have had an indication from the Minister—that that is unlikely to happen. I regret that, because the Labour Party now finds itself in the position of wanting to oppose this bill. Having supported it because these kinds of measures ought to be multipartisan and ought to be supported—these kinds of proposals around electoral law ought to be presented and passed in this House in a multiparty way. But if this continues to be excised from the original text and Holly Walker’s Supplementary Order Paper is not approved by this Committee, then the Labour Party has now reserved unto itself the right to vote against this legislation. That is a shame. The rest of the bill is OK. The rest of the bill is fine, particularly now that the silly bits about rosettes and streamers have been taken out of it because there was no good reason for having those there in the first place.

Anything that puts an easy way for people to vote into the law and makes it more certain ought to be encouraged by this Committee. It ought to be encouraged. I cannot think of a reason—unless it is something that serves the National Party’s interests only—why the EasyVote card or the enrolment confirmation card process should not be written into the legislation. It is convenient. There was no evidence given at the select committee, in my recollection, of any wholesale fraud. There were one or two instances of fraud around the use of EasyVote cards, but the system caught them. It worked. Those instances that have happened on behalf of both the Labour Party and the National Party were caught in the process, so wholesale fraud cannot be a reason for the deletion of these clauses.

If that Supplementary Order Paper of Holly Walker’s goes too far, then I suggest that Andrew Little’s Supplementary Order Paper 417, which tries to reinstate only clauses 24 to 27—again, the Minister’s original intention but not as far-reaching as all the clauses that Holly Walker’s Supplementary Order Paper covers—should be accepted. If that is not acceptable to the members opposite, then please tell us why. Why is it that the enrolment confirmation card cannot be cemented in law? It is an administrative practice, it is true, and it will continue to be an administrative practice, because there is nothing in the original legislation that this bill amends that refers to it. It is an administrative practice, but why not cement it in the law and make it a legal right that people have an EasyVote card that they can present to a returning officer or polling clerk who then takes it from them so that it cannot be used again and there is no mistake about who that person is? It covers off issues of disability. It covers off issues of ethnicity, of people with English as a second language, of names not being able to be understood or interpreted correctly by a polling clerk. It covers off all of those issues, and I cannot understand why this should be deleted and not reinstated.

If Holly Walker’s Supplementary Order Paper is defeated by this Committee and if Andrew Little’s Supplementary Order Paper is defeated by this Committee, I commend my own Supplementary Order Paper 416 to the Committee, which simply allows, by the amendment of clause 24, for somebody to verbally give or confirm their name or present an enrolment confirmation card. So they can say who they are or give over an EasyVote card. At the moment, the bill says they have to do both, and that begins to present a barrier. That begins to present a barrier for people with all kinds of disabilities and for people whose names are difficult for polling clerks to understand—that kind of reason. It would make absolute sense for this to became an “or” and not an “and”, because the bill as it stands says that electors have got to verbally confirm their name and give such other information as is necessary to find their name on the roll. Those two things and those two things combined can be a disincentive and can disadvantage voters.

I am very pleased that this debate on the Electoral Amendment Bill was carried over until today, so I can have a chance to make a substantive contribution and to reinforce the contribution of my colleague Metiria Turei when this debate started last week. I want to thank the Hon Maryan Street for her contribution just now in defence of my Supplementary Order Paper 420, which seeks to reinstate the clauses of the bill that were deleted by the Justice and Electoral Committee relating to the use of the EasyVote card. There are three key things I want to say here. The first is that the Green Party is generally in support of the provisions in this bill, and we have undertaken over many years—and including in this process—to work constructively towards sensible modernisation of our electoral law and to do so, wherever possible, by consensus.

I sat on the Justice and Electoral Committee, which undertook the review of, and inquiry into, the 2011 general election, which gave rise to the process that has become this Electoral Amendment Bill currently before the Committee. That select committee undertook an inquiry into the election. It heard from a range of submitters about all aspects of the 2011 general election, and, by consensus, we worked on that committee to come up with a number of recommendations to put to the Government where we thought there needed to be changes in time for this year’s general election 2014. One of those changes that we recommended after hearing evidence from the Electoral Commission was that the EasyVote card should be allowed to be used as a confirmation that a voter has cast their vote. That was recommended to us by the Electoral Commission. It outlined to us how that would streamline its processes on polling day, how that would speed up the process for its staff, and how it would make for a smoother and better experience for voters. And the select committee, by consensus, adopted that recommendation when we were hearing evidence in the inquiry. Therefore, the Government responded to those recommendations.

Amongst many other things in this bill that we support, one of the recommendations was that that be written into law, and that is what was in the first draft of this bill, which we passed in this House at its first reading. The bill was then referred back to the same select committee to consider the details of the bill itself. Unfortunately, I was on parental leave while the select committee considered this bill. If I had been here, I think I would have argued very strongly against the select committee’s decision to delete the clauses relating to the EasyVote card. I was not present for those discussions, so I cannot speak specifically to the concerns raised, but my understanding—and certainly it is reflected in the select committee’s report—is that members were concerned about electoral fraud and that “We consider that the proposed provision for a new process known operationally as EasyVote Express would in effect lower the threshold for casting a vote, increasing the potential for fraud and harming the integrity of the voting process.”

What I think has happened is that some very well-intentioned members of that select committee have, under a misapprehension, become concerned that the provisions in the bill that my Supplementary Order Paper reinstates would, in effect, make fraud more prolific with the EasyVote card and would make it easier to access one or easier to use it. I am not sure exactly where the concern stems from, but there seems to be a concern that somehow it would make it easier for people to pretend to be someone they are not when they go to cast their vote, and that that might increase the risk of electoral fraud. That is a legitimate concern, and it is a concern that I understand and I share. Certainly, we should be concerned to minimise the instances of electoral fraud wherever possible. But that concern has, in my view, manifested itself in a very harmful and unhelpful mechanism whereby the select committee seems to have agreed to delete all of these clauses related to the EasyVote card, and I would put it to the Committee and to the Minister of Justice that we are really throwing out the baby with the bathwater here.

If we go back to first principles, we look at what an EasyVote card is and what it is for. It is simply a card that contains the name and address of the voter and the page number and line in the electoral roll where their name can be found. It makes it easier for the staff at the polling place to find them on the electoral roll and issue their ballot paper more quickly. It is not an ID card. It is no different in any mechanical sense from turning up at the polling booth with no ID at all and simply saying your name and your address. It just makes it quicker and easier for the polling booth staff to look up your name. It does not make it any easier to record a fraudulent vote. For example, if somebody took it upon themselves to vote in someone else’s name, they could go along to any polling place and do that by giving that person’s name and address. There would be no difference whether they had their EasyVote card in their hand or not. The EasyVote card neither increases nor decreases the risk of electoral fraud taking place. I think that is something that is really important for this Committee to understand, when considering the amendments on the floor today.

I think that the Justice and Electoral Committee has been labouring under a misapprehension and has got it wrong here. As a consequence, we are throwing out the baby with the bathwater. We are throwing out the ability for the Electoral Commission to make a change that would make it much easier for it to run things on election day. What it would like to see is not a mass expansion of the use of the EasyVote card, it is not making electoral fraud any easier; it is simply adding a scannable code to the EasyVote card that would allow Electoral Commission staff to scan the card after the voter has handed it in, as a record that that voter has voted. In fact, it would make it easier to catch out instances of fraud because instead of waiting until the electoral roll could be manually collated and could have people’s names drawn off with a ruler, it would electronically record whether someone had voted yet or not. So if someone attempted to vote twice or someone else attempted to vote in their name, it would show up much more quickly under the proposals before the Committee than under the status quo. So the Electoral Commission had a very sensible idea to have scannable cards in order to collate the roll electronically, to make it much easier to tell whether someone has voted twice, and to make it happen much more quickly, and the select committee has essentially thrown that out.

As Maryan Street pointed out in her contribution just now to the Committee, the fact that the number of parties in the House have now identified this as a problem and are suggesting reinstating these clauses should not be controversial for the Minister of Justice because all we are seeking to do is reinstate exactly what she initially proposed in the bill. The select committee members thought about it. They made a recommendation. A number of parties in the House now consider that recommendation to be wrong and they are asking that we simply revert to what the Minister had in the bill in the first place. It should not be controversial for the Government to adopt the changes that a number of the Supplementary Order Papers on the floor of the Committee are recommending.

I really implore the Minister and Government members to take this seriously and to listen and let common sense prevail, because, actually, we could have consensus across the House, as it is always best to do on electoral matters, if they were willing to return to the bill as originally drafted. I think that that would be a significant improvement on what would pass if we allowed the bill to pass without these amendments.

The Electoral Commission was a long way down the path of its planning for the 2014 election, and it was planning that election on the basis that it would be able to use the EasyVote card with a scannable code on it to electronically collate the roll. If we do not allow it to do that, I put it to the Committee that that is a missed opportunity to streamline electoral processes, and it is based on a misapprehension—an understandable fear about electoral fraud, but, fundamentally, a misapprehension—because there is nothing in the proposal that would make it any different, from a user perspective, to use the EasyVote card to cast the vote. It would not change that. It would not change the risk of electoral fraud one bit. So all we are doing is throwing out what would essentially be a really useful streamlined mechanism for the Electoral Commission based on an unfounded fear about electoral fraud. I think that would be a real shame. So I really implore members across the Committee, especially Government members and especially the Minister in the chair, to consider this seriously and to consider reverting to the bill as was originally drafted, which is what my Supplementary Order Paper 420 would achieve.

The other concern we have is around the inadvertent disenfranchisement of disabled voters by another change that was made by the select committee. These are the changes referred to by Maryan Street in her Supplementary Order Paper 416 and by my colleague Mojo Mathers, and that is the idea of asking a voter to verbally confirm their identity at the polling booth. This, again, was a late addition to the select committee and it was born out of concerns about electoral fraud. But it appears that very little consideration has been given to the impact that this would have on voters with speech impediments, with hearing impediments, and on voters for whom English is a second language. We consider that for many people it would make it difficult or impossible for them to comply with the new requirement. The flippant response that seems to have been written into the bill is that they can confirm their identity with a gesture if they are not able to do it verbally. I put it to the Committee that that is very disrespectful for people in that position.

I would like to turn to the sections of the Electoral Amendment Bill that deal with donations to political parties and donations to candidates.

💬 Paul Foster-Bell: What about the leaders’ campaign?

If the member would just hold his tongue for a moment, I could elucidate for him the aspects of this that I wish to talk about. I want particularly to talk about contributions to candidates and political parties, or donations to candidates and political parties that are made up of contributions. To put this into context, this would be a situation where one person goes around and collects from a number of their friends a whole lot of cheques and then presents those in a bundle to a political party. There are a number of ways they could do this. They could, for example, host a dinner. They could host a dinner and they could collect from all of the people who attend their dinner—

💬 Kris Faafoi: This is a hypothetical, right?

—it is a hypothetical—some very large cheques. Let us say, $5,000—let us just say that they take $5,000 from each of their friends who attend the dinner, and they say that that is the ticket price for attending the dinner. They bundle all those up and they donate those to a political party. What is very clear from this legislation is the principle—let us say that they held it in 2010. Back then, for instance, the disclosure threshold was $10,000. What is very clear from the law, both in the provisions of this bill and in the principal Act, the Electoral Act 1993, which it amends, is that if any one person paid for more than two tickets, then they would have to be declared separately. They would have to be itemised out because the bill is very clear that contributions have to be identified. The people contributing to that have to be identified as well, not just the person who is making the overall donation but the people who are contributing individually to that if it exceeds the threshold. So anybody in, say, 2010 buying more than two tickets at $5,000 each to a dinner would have to declare it. It would have to be declared.

I want to know whether, in fact, the Government is willing to live up to that, because it is very clear that exactly that happened. A dinner happened in 2010 where people paid $5,000 per head to attend. Any person paying for more than two tickets—any person paying for more than two tickets—would have had to be declared to the Electoral Commission. If they were not, then there was a clear breach of the electoral law. The law has been broken—the law has been broken—because nobody other than the person who collected the donations was declared on the National Party’s return of electoral expenses. So if the National Party knows that one person paid for more than two tickets, it is clear that it has willingly and knowingly broken the electoral law. If somebody, for example, bought a table at that dinner and their name was not declared alongside the name of the principal donor, then the National Party has knowingly and willingly broken the electoral law.

Of course this matters. This matters because we have a situation where we have a Prime Minister—who is also the leader of the National Party, of course—who believes that anybody who tries to conceal where their money is coming from is being tricky. Well, the same standard applies to the Prime Minister. He is being very tricky when he tries to duck for cover and says that he is not going to reveal where the National Party gets its money from, but he thinks that the Labour Party should reveal where every cent that it gets is coming from. That is an absolute double standard. It is a very tricky double standard.

I want to know whether the National Party is going to live up to its commitments and the values that this bill represents, because this bill and the clauses around contributions to candidate and party campaigns are very clear. It is about transparency, and it is about making sure that the public of New Zealand know where political parties are getting their money from. But we do not know where the money that the National Party gets is coming from. So John Key on the one hand says that he thinks anybody who tries to conceal where their money is coming from is being tricky, even if, in fact, they do front up in the end and say where the money has come from. If they front up and they say where the money has come from, John Key still wants to attack them and fling mud at them, but he is not willing to front up and say where the National Party’s money is coming from. That is a clear double standard. I want to see the Prime Minister live up to his own standards—something that thus far he has proven unwilling to do.

The principle here, again, is transparency. It is a level of transparency that the Prime Minister is not willing to live up to. Under these rules—Part 1, clause 46, for example, which deals with the return of candidate donations—it is clear that where somebody submits a donation that is made up of contributions and any one of those contributions exceeds $1,500, the person making the donation has to identify the name of each contributor, the address of the contributor, the amount that they have contributed, and the date on which the donation funded from the contributions was made. That same principle applies to donations made to political parties. Therefore, if somebody knowingly submitted to the National Party a donation of, let us say, over $100,000, and that person knew that any individual contributor had contributed more than $10,000 to that overall donation, then they must have listed down the name, address, contact details, etc. of each contributor who gave more than $10,000 to that donation. If they have not done so, then they have clearly broken the law.

I want to know from National Party members whether, in fact, that is the case. I want to have an absolute guarantee from National Party members that no single contributor—no single person attending that dinner—paid for more than two tickets, because if they did pay for more two tickets, the National Party has knowingly and willingly been a party to the breaking of electoral law. I look forward to full disclosure from National Party members and absolute assurance that nobody paid for more than two tickets, because if they are not willing to give that, it clearly means something is not right. It clearly means that they are now aware that they have broken the electoral law, and what are they going to do to put that right? If no National Party member is willing to stand up in the Chamber and give us an absolute assurance that nobody attending that dinner paid for more than two tickets, everyone in New Zealand has an absolute right to ask why that is. Why is it that no one from the National Party is willing to give an absolute assurance that nobody paid for more than two tickets? If National Party members are not willing to do that, they are clearly not willing to stand up and say the party did not break the law because they know that it would not be true—because they know that it would not be true. In the absence of that reassurance in this Chamber, the public of New Zealand are left with no other conclusion than that the National Party has broken the law.

The National Party broke the law, and now National Party members are not willing to front up. Not only are they not willing to front up and adhere—

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order! I am listening very carefully to the member, and he has really launched into what might be a general debate when he should be talking about the principles of the bill. By all means, he can make comparative illustrations, but he has gone beyond that.

In that case, I will talk about the penalties for knowingly participating in breaching this law, because there are penalties in this bill for people who knowingly file false returns and knowingly do not submit the information that they are due. If anyone in the National Party was involved in that, then the penalties that they would be subject to are clearly spelt out in this legislation—clearly spelt out in this legislation. That is, of course, probably one of the reasons, I think, in the case of candidate donations—if it was a candidate donation, it would be $40,000. That would be the penalty that they would be liable for. I am not entirely sure where the section is—a party secretary who, without reasonable excuse, knowingly filed false information would be liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding $40,000.

Clearly, if the National Party, again, under this bill, was aware that one person paid for more than two tickets to that dinner, then it is now liable, under this bill, for a fine not exceeding $40,000. I am not surprised that no one from the National Party is willing to open themselves up to that by basically standing up and giving the reassurance that, in fact, the National Party did not breach the law, because increasingly there is evidence to suggest that that may well have happened, and they are not willing to deny that. So I am looking forward to the rest of this debate. I am looking forward to hearing those reassurances from National Party members, although, of course, I will not be holding my breath. I will not be holding my breath because it is clear that John Key and the National Party are not willing to adhere to the standards that they have set for others. They are not willing to adhere to those standards themselves.

I move, That the question be now put.

Can I endorse the comments made by my colleague Chris Hipkins, because what we see in the Electoral Amendment Bill are provisions that are designed to bring more openness and integrity and transparency to the making of donations, yet either the bill fails to guarantee this or National has failed to live up to the requirements under the old legislation, let alone under the new legislation that is being introduced. The point of the Committee debate is to have the Minister in the chair answer questions. So questions have been raised by Chris Hipkins, and I would invite Craig Foss to answer those questions. They are valid questions. They are integral to the bill that is before the Committee, which is designed to bring honesty and integrity around the question of donations to parties. But there are two other questions that I would like Mr Foss to address specifically. They are quite straightforward.

The first question, Mr Foss, is why does this bill, which came into the House with specific provisions that would provide statutory underpinning for the EasyVote card that were endorsed by the Justice and Electoral Committee, which did the inquiry into the 2008 election, and that were endorsed by the Minister of Justice in her first reading speech—why were those provisions relating to the EasyVote card removed from this bill on the instructions of the Minister or of Cabinet to the National members of the select committee? We have had no answer to that question. The EasyVote card, according to the inquiry done by the Justice and Electoral Committee, had considerably improved the efficiency of election day processes. It said that there was no risk that this would facilitate dual voting, because there were safeguards against dual voting. So it cannot possibly be an argument that the EasyVote provisions have been removed because they would facilitate electoral fraud.

The committee made it clear that we should make the changes in this electoral bill that were recommended in the bill as introduced to this House. Then the Minister endorsed it herself. She said it was “Another important change”. That is what she called it in the first reading debate. She said that “Another important change enabled by this bill is the greater use of EasyVote cards during the voting process.” Then the Minister Judith Collins set about explaining why the EasyVote card was so important. It was a record that the ordinary vote had been cast. It allowed the cards to be used as a declaration for special votes. She said: “This new use of EasyVote cards will simplify and speed up the issuing of ordinary and special votes.” The Minister of Justice was quite straightforward when she came into the House—we needed these provisions. The provisions have gone, Minister, so I ask Minister Foss why those provisions have been taken out, because no clear explanation has been given.

In the absence of a clear explanation, we must assume that the Republican Tea Party faction has started to infiltrate the thinking of the National Party. The EasyVote card, as the Minister said in the first reading debate, makes it easier for people to participate and it improves the efficiency of the system. Does the National Party not want more people to participate? Does the National Party realise that more people participating counts against the self-interest of that party? Is the National Party putting the self-interest of its electoral benefit ahead of the right of people and the encouragement and promotion of people to perform their civic duty of casting a vote? If that is not the explanation, Minister Foss, what is the explanation? Throughout the Committee stage of this House, the Minister has not risen to give an explanation on that point. What is the point of having a Committee stage like this if valid questions are raised that the Minister refuses to answer?

There is another question I would like the Minister to address when he takes the call, and that is the question of why this bill omits any provisions relating to coat-tailing of MPs into this House by a party that fails to reach the 5 percent threshold, but does get one member elected from a seat. When we introduced the MMP system in this House, we set a threshold of 5 percent for a reason—that you needed to achieve that level of support to be represented in the House. Included in that was that if you had one member of Parliament elected from an electorate seat, then they could get the proportion of votes that their party overall achieved translated into further MPs. That might have been well intended, but what the initiators of the MMP system never imagined was that one party would rort that system to get people into this House with greater numbers than can be justified.

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: What about Jim Anderton?

I ask Nick Smith why it is so right that the ACT Party, in 2008, got five members of Parliament elected on 3.65 percent of the vote and the New Zealand First Party, which got more than that, with 4.05 percent of the vote, got no members. That destroys the principle of proportionality. That undermines the electoral system. In the referendum at the last election, 58 percent of New Zealanders voted for a continuation of MMP, but they voted for a continuation of MMP on the assumption that the Prime Minister would keep his word, have a review of the electoral system, and act on the recommendations of that review. So I ask the Minister, when the independent Electoral Commission recommended that the coat-tailing provision be removed because it was rorting the system, why the National Party has ignored that advice from the independent Electoral Commission.

Why has it ignored constant public opinion that has consistently said that this ought to be removed? When it polled people, time and again people said that the one thing that they thought was wrong about MMP was the coat-tailing provisions. Why is the Electoral Commission’s recommendation to remove coat-tailing not included in this bill? It is a fair question. It deserves an answer. I challenge the Minister in the chair not to sit there silent with his head bowed, but to get up and answer the questions that are validly asked. It also rorts this parliamentary system when we have a Committee of the whole House—where the point is to go through clause by clause and to have the Minister answer questions validly raised—and when the Minister stays stuck in his seat. My challenge to the Minister is to answer those questions.

How does he prevent the rort that is going on with electoral donations? These provisions in the bill do not seem to be enough to stop what the Waitematā Trust has been doing—for example, giving $1.25 million each election to the National Party, with no identification of the people who benefit from National Party policies being direct recipients of what is effectively a bribe by way of an election donation. It should be transparent; it should be clean.

Why have the EasyVote card provisions been removed from this bill, when the Minister of Justice herself said it would strengthen the democratic process? I ask why the Government has refused to act on public opinion and the independent Electoral Commission’s advice that coat-tailing should be removed, and with it the likes of Rodney Hide and John Banks, who take their place in this House only because they were gifted their seat by the National Party—the National Party that has rorted the system in order to maintain itself in power. It is that straightforward. It is that dirty. Those coat-tailing provisions should have been removed, and Nick Smith should take the call, if the Minister in the chair remains silent, and he should explain why those provisions have not been included in this bill.

Why does the National Party want to rort the system? Why does the National Party want to stop the EasyVote card provisions, designed to encourage New Zealanders to get out and do what they ought to do, which is to cast a vote to participate in the democracy, to have a stake in the democracy? EasyVote card provisions were included in this bill as introduced. The National Government overrode the select committee system, and instructed the National members on the Justice and Electoral Committee to take those provisions out, and not a word of explanation or justification to this House was made about why they did that. Electoral law reform is special. It should be aimed to get consensus—

I move, That the question be now put.

The question is that the question be now put. Those of that opinion will say Aye, to the contrary, No. Party vote? The Clerk will conduct a party vote.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. New Zealand First has not yet had a speaker in this debate, and it—

Order! I am on my feet. There have been over 20 calls. During my time and the time that I watched it, there was no attempt by New Zealand First to take a call. That may not be the case. The Committee will now determine whether it wants the debate to continue. [Interruption] I have already ruled. The member will—[Interruption] I have ruled. The member will sit. [Interruption] The member did not listen and I have ruled. [Interruption] No, I do not need any assistance. The Clerk will now conduct a party vote.

Because this is an electoral matter, something which is constitutional, I move, That the Chairperson report progress to obtain the Speaker’s ruling regarding the acceptance of a closure motion by the Chairperson.

Motion agreed to.

House resumed.

Speaker Recalled