to be no further executions within New Zealand. However, while the election saw a short-lived Labour government elected, capital punishment was not debated in Parliament again before the National party regained power after the 1960 election. In 1961, the National Party reaffirmed its support for the death penalty, although restricted its use to premeditated murders, and those committed during another crime or during an escape from custody. The issue of capital punishment generated intensive debate within the National Party—the Minister of Justice in the Second National Government, who was responsible for introducing the Crimes Bill 1961, Ralph Hanan, strongly opposed the death penalty, while Jack Marshall, the Deputy Prime Minister, had supported its use while serving as Minister of Justice and Attorney General, as noted above. Abolition and its aftermath: 1961 onwards Aware of growing public opposition to capital punishment, the National Party allowed its MPs to exercise a conscience vote in Parliament, and ten National MPs subsequently voted in favour of abolition. The result was a majority of 11 against capital punishment, 41–30. The ten National MPs were Ernest Aderman, Gordon Grieve, Ralph Hanan, Duncan MacIntyre, Robert Muldoon, Lorrie Pickering, Logan Sloane, Brian Talboys, Esme Tombleson and Bert Walker. The death penalty was therefore abolished for murder, being retained only for treason and other similar acts in theory. In principle, this meant that de facto abolition had occurred from that point onward. These last theoretical vestiges of capital punishment were abolished under the Palmer Labour cabinet in November 1989 with the passage of the Abolition of the Death Penalty Act 1989, and there were no further executions during the interim period. Passage of the Abolition of the Death Penalty Act ended all capital punishment in New Zealand. The Cook Islands, which based its statutes on New Zealand law, formally retained the death penalty for treason until it was abolished in 2007. The death penalty was never used in the Cook Islands. Occasional calls to reinstate capital punishment still occur, but no major political party has made capital punishment an element of any of their election manifestos since the 1989 Abolition act. As for minor political parties, the solitary exception was the fundamentalist Christian Heritage New Zealand, which has been defunct since 2005. A 2004 1 News Colmar Brunton poll found 28% were in favour of bringing back the death penalty, 67% did not want to bring the death penalty