Statutes Repeal Bill

We now move to clause 3. This is debate on clause 3 and schedule 1.

I am very happy to take a call on an amendment that I have put forward—Supplementary Order Paper 315; I am told that now is the appropriate time to debate that, so I certainly intend to take that opportunity—that removes blasphemy from our statute book. It is an amendment that is well overdue, and it is one that I was very interested in researching to make this contribution today. It was drawn to the attention of the then Minister the Hon Amy Adams, the Minister of Justice, back in 2015. Her response at the time was that whilst she agreed that blasphemy should be repealed from New Zealand’s statute book, she had “higher priorities”.

One can only assume from the fact that we are debating this bill that amongst her higher priorities were a repeal of the Christchurch-Lyttelton Road Tunnel Authority Dissolution Act, the Church Property Trustees (Canterbury) Indemnity Act, many, many finance Acts from 1930 onwards, the Customs Law Act of 1908, and so forth—all of these, it would appear, are higher priorities, because despite this matter being drawn to the Minister of Justice’s attention back in 2015 there was still no proposal by the Government to remove blasphemy from New Zealand’s statute book. So I welcome this opportunity for us to vote on this today, and to do this in a way that is clean and efficient and does not unnecessarily waste the time of the House.

First of all, for those who might want to raise an objection to the process—I will get into the substance in a moment—and say “Well, that should’ve been included in the bill in the first place.” and “It wouldn’t be good process to add this repeal to a bill after it has gone to select committee.”, I would point out two things: one is that there were only four submissions to the select committee process on this legislation, but the second thing, and perhaps more important, was that as a result of those four submissions, five additional Acts were added to the bill.

So this bill is already amended. It already has five additional Acts added to it that were not in it when it received its first reading and when it was first referred to the Government Administration Committee and submissions were called for. So if we are going to object to an additional provision being added around blasphemy, then are we also going to object to the five additional Acts that were added by the select committee? If that is the Government’s objection to repealing blasphemy as part of this bill, then it must also object to repealing the five additional Acts that were not part of the original legislation. So I just make that point, and I certainly hope that the Government members will be supporting this legislation.

To come to the substance of the issue, of course we should be repealing blasphemy laws in New Zealand. I was absolutely astounded that somebody in New Zealand could be thrown in jail for up to a year for blasphemy. We condemn other countries that use Draconian laws like this to do very Draconian things to people—we condemn them when they do so, and yet we have got a law on our own statute book that allows the Government of New Zealand to do just that. How is it consistent with the moral standing that we purport to hold internationally for us to condemn an action by another country when the New Zealand law allows us to do exactly that same thing? I think it is past high time that this law was taken off our statute book. It violates our commitments under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. New Zealand is a part of that covenant and we should live up to it. It violates our fundamental human right to freedom of expression.

There are things that people might say that might be regarded as blasphemous that some people might find offensive. They are absolutely entitled to tell the other people that—that they are offensive—but the idea that the person who said those things could potentially be thrown in jail for saying them is not consistent with our modern expectations around freedom of speech. In fact, the Attorney-General, Chris Finlayson, said that if the Church cannot defend itself against blasphemy, then, goodness me, it is in some trouble. I think that the churches are perfectly capable of defending themselves against blasphemy, and I do not think they need this law. In fact, they have told us publicly through the media that they do not need this law. Tolerance—and I believe in a tolerant society—cannot be fostered through prohibition. It is well past time for blasphemy to be removed from the New Zealand statute book.

I will just take a brief call, obviously in support of the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) in my name, SOP 319, which seeks to remove the sentencing council legislation from this repeal bill. Some good points have been made by Labour colleagues. I will not reiterate those. I will pick up a little where Mr Parker left off. I will just remind people of something of the history of the Sentencing Council Act. It derived from a Law Commission report that highlighted the importance—the necessity, in fact; it used that word, that a council of that sort was actually a necessity in New Zealand. That is quite strong language coming from a Law Commission report.

The bill was then enacted, became an Act, obviously, and has sat on our statute book ever since, without actually having been put into action to be implemented. I think that is most unfortunate. The council’s purpose, primarily, is to ensure consistency in sentencing. What it does not do in any way is impose the parliamentary will, if you like, on the judiciary. It does not seek to have Parliament take over the role of the judiciary or unreasonably influence it; far from it, in fact. It simply creates a forum where the judiciary can look at its own sentencing practice and establish some rules of engagement, if you like—some level of equity, some level of consistency.

Clearly at the time it was a Labour Party bill—the Labour Government, then, as it was. It was supported by the Greens. It was also supported by the Māori Party, and I would hope that the Māori Party will support this SOP. Mr Sharples—Sir Pita Sharples, as he now is, and at the time this bill went through, the co-leader of the Māori Party—spoke very strongly in support of the sentencing council. The legislation that established the sentencing council went through with a raft of other justice bills, some of them quite substantive. Sir Pita Sharples made the point at the time—I think I quote him accurately—that this was the key measure of change in the justice system. Of all the points of all the changes that were being made back in 2006 and 2007, Sir Pita identified the establishment of a sentencing council as the single most important measure contained in all of those bills, for the very reason that Mr Parker began to discuss: the fact that we have got institutional bias in our justice system.

That is something I am sure we all regret. It has been acknowledged, at least by the Police and other parts of the justice system, and the sentencing council was a practical, pragmatic, positive measure towards ironing that out, to ensuring that judgments made are consistent, irrespective of other factors, not least of all ethnicity—so that if a Māori person in the Bay of Plenty offends in some way, he or she will be sentenced in the same way that a Pākehā person in Northland or the South Island would be. Not identically—no two cases are identical—but to get the level of consistency and consistent practice that is sadly missing, and it is obviously missing, currently. There is no guideline. There is no forum for judges, for the judiciary to debate this stuff.

I was in the UK last year and took the opportunity to speak with the head of the office of the UK sentencing council. Frankly, initially they were surprised that we do not have such an agency in New Zealand. There were some differences between the UK model and the model adopted here in this legislation, the Sentencing Council Act. In fact, the UK model is probably more authoritative—I was going to say authoritarian; that is wrong. The sentencing council in the UK probably, by my judgment, has more power to direct the judiciary than the model selected in our own domestic legislation.

At the time, again, that the legislation was passed, the National Party did oppose the legislation, but the Hon Chris Finlayson, in his third reading speech at that time, made the point that the National Party had come from a point of complete opposition to the whole notion to a point where it thought that actually, in principle, a sentencing council was probably a good idea. Mr Finlayson’s objection was that it was the wrong model. He claimed that the model as reflected in the legislation was unconstitutional. He used the word “odious”. But he also conceded at the time that there could be a model that would be acceptable to the National Party.

So the challenge I put to the Government is to support this SOP: to not repeal the Sentencing Council Act, but simply to bring an amendment to the Committee. Consult with the very wise and able Mr Finlayson—I am sure he would come up with something that would be acceptable, and, arguably, acceptable to all parties. Amend the legislation, by all means, but it would be a serious error, I believe, to repeal it at this stage. It has also been argued that in fact the repeal itself would be unconstitutional—or, rather, the failure to implement this legislation is itself unconstitutional. So I will leave that there. I certainly would seek Government support—all parties’ support—for this SOP.

I will just speak briefly to Mr Hipkins’ SOP 315 on the matter of section 123 of the Crimes Act, simply to say the Greens wholeheartedly support that. When it was first pointed out to me a few weeks ago that we had such a provision in our statutes, I found it quite extraordinary. It bordered on the medieval, the notion that we should have anti-blasphemy legislation. New Zealand is a more secular country than it has been in previous times, not overlooking the fact that many people do have a faith and practise religion. More power to them. I think anybody who consistently or publicly or loudly condemned or attacked any particular religion, any person practising a religion, any church, or any faith would very quickly find themselves at odds with the court of public opinion. I think they would be taken to task, even by people who may not practise a particular belief system.

But I think Mr Hipkins acknowledged that we are a fairly tolerant society, I think, and long may that continue. So I do not think it is at all necessary to maintain this very strange and sadly out-of-date notion of illegality of blasphemy. I think we can safely agree that this SOP would do no harm. It would take off a very peculiar provision in our law, and I think our statutes would be better for it. Thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity to make a contribution in the Statutes Repeal Bill debate. Firstly, I just want to begin by responding to a couple of things that members have said during this debate. Firstly, to the member Rino Tirikatene, I think this bill is actually a very well-researched—it is a very recherché—piece of legislation. Our advisers have carefully, methodically, and fastidiously fumbled through the musty, dusty statute book to find those pieces of legislation that either in their entirety have no continuing relevance or partially need to be repealed to tidy up the statute book. So I want to thank and congratulate our advisers, who have so ably assisted us.

The Government Administration Committee, as has been pointed out, did actually come across four additional pieces of legislation that we wanted to repeal in their entirety and another that we decided should be partially repealed, and they were the Education Law Amendment Act 1933, the Infants Act Repeal Act 1989, the Taxation Acts Repeal Act 1986, the Wellington City Reserves Act 1872, and section 4 of the Wellington City Reserves Act 1871. I do want to assure the member Mr Tirikatene that we were an assiduous select committee and we did go through looking for any other examples of obsolete and unnecessary legislation that can be safely repealed without unintended consequences.

But I think the difference between those very obscure, very prosaic, and very obsolete pieces of legislation—we are talking about bills that go back to 1781—and the legislation that is incorporated in Mr Hipkins’ Supplementary Order Paper to the Statutes Repeal Bill is that they had long since failed to have any continuing legal effect. I think the difference between that and section 123 of the Crimes Act is that it still remains part of our criminal code. For one, I am completely opposed to the idea that any form of crime of thought, or of speech, or of conscience should remain part of our criminal code on an ongoing basis, and I believe I spoke in my maiden speech in that regard. It is archaic that a country like New Zealand should prohibit speech of any sort in the way we do in section 123 of the Crimes Act, with a threat of imprisonment for those who commit blasphemy.

I have lived in countries where blasphemy, apostasy, heresy—whatever you want to call it—is treated with severe force in the criminal justice system. New Zealand, thankfully, is not one of those countries. Whilst it has been on the record book—well, it is in the Crimes Act 1961, but it has been on our statute book, incorporated from English law; and, actually, England has long since dropped it—there have been no successful prosecutions for blasphemy in New Zealand. The last attempted prosecution was nearly 100 years ago—the Maoriland Worker newspaper case, in which the Government of the day, William Massey’s Government, having failed to get a sedition prosecution for a pacifist article in the newspaper, attempted to use blasphemy. Even back in the early 20th century, the jury failed to convict in that particular instance.

There were subsequent attempts to seek blasphemy prosecutions in New Zealand, most recently for a 2005 episode of the TV show South Park, which was in bad taste, I will concede, and also a late 1990s art exhibition at Te Papa Museum, which depicted the Virgin Mary in a condom—again, it was in bad taste and it was not art of the sort that I enjoy. But in both cases the Government of the day—because the Attorney-General’s permission is required before blasphemy charges are able to be brought—decided there was no case to answer. I think this is something that should be dealt with in a way that is in line with the process that this House operates under, and I am very glad to understand that the Government will, in due course, be having a comprehensive look at tidying up the Crimes Act 1961. It is over 50 years old; it is in need of a bit of housekeeping in the same way that our wider statute book is getting housekeeping in this Statutes Repeal Bill.

In the same way that we are getting a wider set of housekeeping done, the Crimes Act will get a proper look, and I would point out that whilst we did not get a huge number or a deluge of specific submissions, because the vast majority of what we dealt with in the schedules of this bill are uncontroversial matters, I suspect that should the blasphemy provisions of the Crimes Act have been one of those that we went out to seek consultation on, there would have been a far greater degree of public interest and, therefore, a far wider variety and a greater number of submissions provided.

So I think, at this point in time, it does make sense for us to park this issue—as we have seen, there is no immediacy or urgency required, given there have been no prosecutions for blasphemy in the history of our country, thankfully. Actually, it does raise a very interesting question. When I was looking at this issue, I found that a number of countries have simply legislated to drop blasphemy from their statute books, and that is what happened in the United Kingdom. In Scotland, however, it is argued that due to a combination of human rights legislation coming into place and lack of use—the fact that the last prosecution for blasphemy in Scotland was in 1824—sufficient time has elapsed that the law has, effectively, become obsolete from lack of use.

I think you could argue that our blasphemy law could almost be in that category, having never been successfully used to secure a prosecution and not actually used at all for 100 years now. So on the blasphemy issue, I think that there should be a comprehensive and a structured approach, and due process should be followed, and we should get robust cross-party agreement on all of these issues, I am sure, when it comes to pass. But this is a statutes repeal bill, and it is important, I think, that we do have a good degree of consensus within this House when we are looking to remove bills, particularly if there have not been public submissions on those matters.

It is a pleasure to stand up and speak to the Statutes Repeal Bill. As I read through my papers in preparation for this debate, I was reminded of the great year of 1999. As Frank Sinatra sang, it was a very good year, for some very good reasons. The reason I was reminded of it was that it was my second year at law school and the year that I took public law. Probably, as a number of other members of this House might know, about the first case that you learn when you study public law is Fitzgerald v Muldoon, because it goes right to the heart of what our public law is about; it is such an important and seminal case.

Of course, that case is raised in the submission of Kenneth Keith, one of our most eminent jurors, which has been referred to by a number of other speakers, albeit perhaps not at the correct point of the debate. What I just wanted to develop off the points made in Mr Keith’s submission is that this is actually very, very fundamental. This actually goes right back to the 1688 Bill of Rights. We are not just talking about a bit of statute passed by this House; we are talking about something that comes down to us from the Mother of Parliaments, from that period in the 17th century when the modern parliamentary system, that all current Westminster Parliaments have evolved from, was being developed.

That Bill of Rights Act says this, in section 1: “That the pretended power of suspending laws, or the execution of laws, by regal authority, without consent of Parliament, is illegal:”. The reason I think it is useful to quote that is that often we think of executive abuse of power or executive overreach as doing something positive, something affirmative: going to war without parliamentary authorisation, extracting tax from the public without parliamentary authorisation, those kinds of things. But what the Bill of Rights makes very clear is that, actually, Parliament, the executive, not doing things that it should is also not correct. That is the point that Kenneth Keith makes. It is a point that Fitzgerald v Muldoon makes, because in the case of Fitzgerald v Muldoon it was the Prime Minister of the day, Robert Muldoon, not doing something that had been put in place by this House.

That is exactly the case here. That is what Mr Keith says, because the Sentencing Council Act was passed by this House in 2007. It went through full parliamentary scrutiny, members of the public made submissions, speeches were made in this House. It went through three readings. It was put on to the statute book, and there it has sat for 9 years, but it has not been enacted. We can say, well, OK, it is not something that has done terrible damage to someone, but the point is that that bill was enacted with a purpose. As my colleague David Parker started commenting on before, and as David Clendon spoke about before, that purpose was quite significant; it was about establishing the principle that we should have equality of sentencing across all people in our community and our criminal justice system.

Now, people may agree or disagree with that and, obviously, the incoming Government in 2008 disagreed with that; fair cop—that is why we have debates. That is why we put legislation to this Parliament and we hear both sides of it. But that legislation has sat on the books for 9 years and it has not been implemented. Mr Keith is very clear about this. He says: “That refusal to give effect to a statute in force”—this is in paragraph 10 of his submission to the committee—“appears to me to be a serious constitutional matter.” It just seems to me that the Government is sweeping that under the rug.

I would actually like the Minister in the chair, Maggie Barry, to answer some questions about this. Is the Government actually going to take up this point—which has been raised by Sir Kenneth Keith, OK? We are not talking just about a garden-variety submission; we are talking about something from Sir Kenneth Keith. A question that springs to mind for me is: is there some legal risk in this? Sir Kenneth Keith has said that this is a piece of legislation that should have been enacted. Well, if I am someone who has been convicted and sentenced during that period and the Government has not enacted something on the books that it should have, have I got some case to come back to that? I do not know the answer to that, but I think, given the points raised by Sir Kenneth Keith in his submission, we should hear from the Government about that.

So I support that Supplementary Order Paper 319, which we will no doubt hear more about from David Parker, to remove the repeal of the Sentencing Council Act from this legislation. I would urge all members of this Committee who care about due parliamentary process to give serious consideration to that when we move on to the debate later on. Thank you.

I would like to thank the member Paul Foster-Bell for taking a call and contributing to the debate, although I would suggest that his 5-minute contribution illustrated the point. The point of a statutes repeal bill is to remove laws that are not being used. His argument that this law around blasphemy has not been used and therefore should not be included as part of the bill because it is unnecessary negates the purpose of the whole bill that we are debating in the House. In fact, the same argument could be made for all of the repeals that are being done as part of this legislation—that they are not being used so why not just leave them where they are? That is the whole point of a repeal bill. It is to remove laws that are no longer required. If a law against blasphemy is no longer required, and I would put forward very strongly that it is no longer required, then it should be removed as part of this process, because that is the whole point of the process. But I do at least want to acknowledge the contribution that Mr Foster-Bell made.

I am disappointed that the leader of the ACT Party, David Seymour, has not made a similar contribution to this debate. Having puffed out his chest and said that he was going to be the great hero to remove blasphemy, it is interesting that when it comes down to the hard work of actually debating it and the cameras are not on him because it is not 2 o’clock and it is not question time, suddenly he does not seem to have any contribution to make to the debate. So good on Mr Foster-Bell for at least making it to the debate.

I want to reiterate why this is important, and the fact that the churches themselves are arguing that this law is no longer required. Catholic Bishop Steve Lowe of the Hamilton diocese said, and I think this is very important: “It is when we grapple with the great questions of spirituality and life, with mutual respect for the opinions and beliefs of others, that we grow as a healthy community.” It is a fantastic sentiment. I absolute embrace that and I absolutely agree with it. The idea that we have a law that says that one person’s views are superior to another’s, and that one person’s views could land them up in jail in order to protect the feelings of someone else—that is not right. It is something that we should act on, and simply saying that this law is not being used, and therefore there is no rush, is ridiculous. We are dealing with dozens of Acts that are no longer relevant or that have not been used, and we are giving them the priority of Parliament’s time today, and yet the Government is not willing to give the repeal of blasphemy sufficient priority in order to pass the repeal legislation.

In fact, it is not even a question of that, because it is getting priority—because I have tabled it. It is being debated anyway. The Government has created some bizarre justification for not supporting the repeal of the law of blasphemy, which just does not make any sense at all. It actually negates the purpose of a statutes repeal bill. Saying that the law is still in operation but not being used and therefore should not be repealed is simply bizarre, and it is simply weak.

In fact, I go back to Bill English’s own comments, where he said “We could get rid of them. Laws that overreach on addressing robust speech are not a good idea.”, and yet his Government, including Mr English himself, is now, according to his colleagues, going to vote against the repeal of blasphemy. It is another example from him of a complete failure of leadership, because he is saying one thing, and when it comes to voting in the House he is doing another thing. He is not showing leadership on the issue. It would not actually take much. This is something that I could imagine a John Key—like Prime Minister would simply shrug off and go “Oh well, it seems probably about time that they got rid of it. We’ll vote for that.”, because it actually makes sense to do so. There is no great constitutional crisis in the process that is being adopted here; it is actually what this process is designed to achieve—the removal of laws that are no longer relevant and that are no longer needed, and blasphemy is well and truly in that category.

I want to finally end—because this is rather humorous, and it is always good to end on a humorous note—with the comments of the Attorney-General, Chris Finlayson. I have managed to find them now. He said: “People have often asked me what I thought of the Life of Brian. Was it blasphemous? Well it probably was but it was funny.” And I think we should embrace that particular spirit. He goes on to say, in typical Chris Finlayson style: “Well, frankly, if a 2,000-year-old religion can’t stand up to someone like Stephen Fry, they may as well shut their doors.” I think the churches around the country embrace that sentiment too. They are saying they do not want this law. They are saying it is archaic. They are saying it is time for it to go. I challenge members on the National Government benches to vote with their conscience and remove this law.

I move, That the question be now put.

No, I am going to hear from Rino Tirikatene.

I am pleased to speak on clause 3. We are dealing with the substantive repeals in schedule 1. I want to focus on the Sentencing Council Act. I agree that, you know, there are many historical or redundant pieces of legislation here that, quite literally, we can do away with. But the Sentencing Council Act is sort of tucked in, and I believe the Government surreptitiously snuck it in there, just to see whether it could get it quickly repealed. I think that is wrong, because that is a really important piece of legislation.

As addressed by my colleague the Hon David Parker earlier, we need to really look at the high incarceration rates of Māori. A lot of that stems from, obviously, the sentencing from our judges in the judicial system. If we just look at the numbers, they are appalling. New Zealand is renowned as having a high incarceration rate among OECD countries. When we look at it, we have got a population of 4.6 million, we have got a prison muster of 9,400, and 50 percent of that prison muster is Māori. So we have to really look at this, because Māori make up 15 percent of the population. This has been happening for generation upon generation. I would have thought that the sentencing council would have been an ideal mechanism to provide the judiciary not just with out-and-out directions—no—but to provide guidelines and principles for those judges to apply, because we are talking about a lot of regional variation. We are talking about from Te Tai Tokerau, up in the Far North, right down to the Bluff. There are a lot of different judges, a lot of different jurisdictions, and a lot of variation in sentencing. Who bears the brunt of that sentencing? The numbers speak for themselves—50 percent of our prison population is Māori, and yet Māori make up 15 percent of our total population.

If the Māori prison population were to reduce to the average rate, our prison population would halve. That is all we would want as a society: to see that prison rate come down so we could see a reduction. We would not be needing to build $1 billion prisons. We would not be needing that. We would be closing prisons. The sentencing council was a critical part in that. For this Government to sneak that piece of legislation—sure, it has not been activated, but it has been passed and it is law. What the Government is really showing is that there is a total lack of policy. You know, there is a screaming-out area where policy and leadership is required to address the high incarceration rates of Māori, and the disproportionality. And what does this Government do? It is more concerned with building more prisons than supporting a sentencing council. And if it does not support the sentencing council, then what is its alternative? What is its policy? It should be, instead of repealing this Act outright, debating this. It should at least be amending the Sentencing Council Act, or at least having the debate. I mean, there were four submitters on this bill, when, really, this is a critical piece of legislation, which they are just quietly wanting to wipe off our books.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

To conclude, I would like to just implore the Government to support Mr Clendon’s Supplementary Order Paper 319, which retains the Sentencing Council Act. It would be a very important institution if it were given life to. I would encourage the Government to do something. This is a serious problem, around the high incarceration rates of Māori. We could do with a sentencing council, or, if not, failing that, we could come up with something, because too many Māori families are affected. The numbers speak for themselves; they are appalling. Thank you.

I wanted to take part in the debate on two of the Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) that are in front of us. The first one is the blasphemy SOP, SOP 315, if I could put it that way. New Zealand First would support that change. We feel that it is contrary to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. One of the sections in that Act refers to “freedom of thought, conscience, and religion”, and clearly this so-called crime of blasphemy is contrary to that. Similarly, it is contrary to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which contains similar declarations of freedom. It is out of place in 21st century New Zealand, because I think that few people these days would accept a prosecution for blasphemy. In fact, I do not even think it is possible to properly define in this day and age what blasphemy would be, because of the huge cultural diversity we have in the country. So, quite plainly, this is a section in the Crimes Act that is thoroughly out of date, incapable of prosecution, and should be dispensed with forthwith, so we will support the elimination of that.

However, turning to the sentencing council SOP, New Zealand First will oppose that SOP because we think that the Sentencing Council should be removed, not just because it has never been used but because it is probably incapable of ever being used. Having said that, I will say the reasons why. First of all, when I look at that particular Act, I see in section 8 what the purposes are, and the purposes are to produce guidelines about sentencing and parole to promote consistency, and so on, and to enable development of sentencing and parole policy to be based on a broad range of experience and expertise. It is difficult to understand exactly how that would work and what sort of policy would come under that section. So I can understand why it has never been implemented, because it seems to me a particularly difficult piece of legislation to put into place.

When I look at the functions under section 9, it talks about guidelines on sentencing principles, whatever they may be; sentencing levels, which I think actually are for Parliament to decide and not that council; particular types of sentences, which, again, I think is for Parliament to decide and not that council; and so on. It also, in section 9(1)(c), talks about assessing and taking account of the overall costs and benefits of the guidelines. I have no idea why that exercise should be undertaken or why it should be undertaken by that council. Then, in section 19, it says: “Any guideline (not being an inaugural guideline) may be disapplied by resolution of the House of Representatives passed within 15 sitting days …”. So the House can then undo whatever it is that the council decides to do. I think it is a nonsense piece of legislation, I think it is impractical, I think it is inappropriate, and it is certainly not New Zealand First policy, so we will vote against it.

Clause 3 agreed to.

Clause 4 Amendments to, and revocations of, other enactments