We will all be happy? I would like to thank Kgoshi Mokoena, the Chairperson of the Select Committee on Security and Constitutional Affairs, and the members of that committee for the time and effort that they have put into finalising the Bills before the Council today. I know that the members of the select committee, despite their very busy schedules, had to make time to visit their respective provinces to brief their provincial legislatures on the provisions of these pieces of legislation and to confer negotiating and voting mandates on their delegations to the Council. The abolition of floor- crossing also requires amendments to be effected to regulations that have been made under the Public Funding of Represented Political Parties Act of 1997.
I would like to thank the members of the ad hoc joint committee, consisting of members of the portfolio and the select committee, for the prompt manner in which they have dealt with and approved the required amended regulations.
Lastly, I would like to mention that the Portfolio Committee on Justice, in its report on the General Laws Amendment Bill in the NA in August, recommended that my department should conduct a review of the system of repayment of unspent balances of monies to the electoral commission with a view to submitting amending legislation, as necessary, to Parliament at the earliest opportunity, and I undertake that we will do so in due course.
It is therefore a pleasure for me to rise on behalf of the ANC, on this occasion, to give unrestricted and unconditional support to the passing of this Bill. May I also just say that when the debate took place around this same Bill in the NA, I made it very clear that the issue of floor-crossing is not something to gloat or fight about.
I think there was a time in our history when there was a need to introduce floor-crossing. It was necessary to break certain political logjams that existed at the time, as was raised particularly by the DA at the time. What it helped us do was to at least loosen up those logjams and to stabilise the political environment.
That experiment now is over and, in a way, I am personally very glad that it is over and I know my party is also glad, because, unfortunately, the one thing this did prove to us is that our political system is not mature enough to be able to deal with this kind of issue.
There can be no doubt that the sight, particularly at the local government level, of people swopping parties merely for the sake of positions and their own self-interest was an unedifying one. I think all the parties were involved in this. I do not think any of us can point fingers and in a way we should be glad that we have tried the experiment.
It was necessary at the time, but it is over now, so let us try and deal with it and rid our politics of this unedifying sight. Things are tough enough already for politicians in the way that we relate to people and our society. We do not need this kind of unedifying process where politics is merely used in the self-interest of individuals, because that is what floor- crossing allowed.
In so far as it helped us to achieve certain things, it was good, and in so far as it is now something of the past, I hope that all parties will support the demise of this experiment that was necessary at the time. Thank you very much. [Applause.]