Parliamentary Debates (Hansard) - New Zealand Parliament

16 May 2009 Local Government (Auckland Reorganisation) Bill 3635
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Senior Whip—Labour): I raise a point of order, Mr
Chairperson.
Sandra Goudie: Mindless!
Hon DARREN HUGHES: I say to Mrs Goudie that I have a point of order. This is
very serious point of order, and I want to word it as carefully as I can. We are in
Committee and it is a Saturday morning. The Opposition has put up a lot of
amendments and new parts by way of amendment. Obviously, some are more detailed
than others. This particular new part, Part 10, is very important to the Opposition
because it directly affects the lives of 6,500 people. My point of order is that on the last
part considered by the Committee, if we include the time taken on points of order, a
closure motion was accepted within 40 minutes of the Committee’s considering a brand
new part that had never been near a select committee and had not been distributed to
members until today.
The point I am making is that I understand that there will be pressure on both you
and the other Chair of the Committee to get this business through as quickly as possible.
I respectfully say that a part must be given the due consideration of this Committee,
regardless of whether it is a Tuesday afternoon, a Wednesday evening, or a Saturday
morning. I think that we need to have the chance to debate our new parts, which have
not been to a select committee. The level of public scrutiny—
Hon Simon Power: This is outrageous! It’s your discretion; he shouldn’t be telling
you this.
Hon DARREN HUGHES: The Deputy Leader of the House can interject. I said at
the beginning that I was trying to take a careful but serious point of order to reflect to
the Committee exactly how we feel about this, which is that this particular part is of
importance to us. I am not challenging your ruling, Mr Chairperson, because there has
been no ruling. There is no closure motion before you; we are at the beginning of the
debate on this part. I respectfully submit to you that the previous part was shut down
very, very early. I want an assurance that that was not a tariff simply because we are
meeting on a Saturday morning, which appears to be the reason for the Government’s
sense of urgency about the closure motions.
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): The first point I make is that the Chair
will not feel pressured about accepting closure motions. I do not feel pressured in any
particular way. I observe that I consider these new parts to be in a slightly different
context from the parts that have been tabled in the House, because those were on notice
and so on, and these are not.
Secondly, I am guided—and I am sure that the other Chairs have been guided—by
content. We need to concentrate on the subject matter at hand. I have said that I will be
quite liberal and let people make other comments as they go through the parts. If
someone makes an interjection and the member responds, that is fair enough. But we do
not want the rest of the speech to be on the interjections; we want to be on task.
Thirdly, I assure the member that there is no tariff. A closure motion having been
accepted for the previous part does not mean that this is the rate that we will carry on for
all other parts. It will be about the content of the part, the content of the speeches, and
the way that the Committee conducts itself. The length of debate can go up; it can go
down. But content will be important.
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): I raise a point of order, Mr
Chairperson.
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): The chair again, Mr Mallard.
Hon TREVOR MALLARD: The first thing is that I do not appreciate comments of
that sort. I do not think it is helpful.
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Rick Barker): Fair enough. I apologise to the member.