Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. I rise in opposition to this motion to shorten the select committee process for a bill that is well let's see some 83 pages 160 clauses to be consulted on with the public in a couple of weeks. I want to put an argument that I think members on the Government side of the House might actually have some sympathy with and it's this: a shorter consultation period actually favours the rich. It favours the well-resourced. It disadvantages the people who are not rich and don't have good resources and let me tell you how that happens. You see this committee is going to be given a—Hon Chris Hipkins: I thought ACT was going to abolish the RMA.DAVID SEYMOUR: We're hearing from the Minister of Education Chris Hipkins of Remutaka that it's somehow relevant that ACT wants to abolish the Resource Management Act. And he's correct: ACT would like to replace the Resource Management Act with much better legislation. But that's not the point I'm making and if Chris Hipkins from Remutaka would listen a bit more and talk a bit less he might get an education in spite of himself.As I was saying this rushed process disadvantages poorer New Zealanders with less resources and it advantages the rich well connected and well resourced. And how does that happen? Well there's only 14 days for the select committee to report back. That means if they're going to hear from any actual New Zealanders from outside of this Parliament and outside of the civil service and the bureaucracy then they're going to have to call for them to make their submissions let's say in the next five or six days so that the select committee has time to actually hear them then think about what they've said and report back to this House in 13 days.So let's ask ourselves who is going to be best prepared to make a submission within the next five or six days. Well it's not going to be Main Street" it's not going to be the average New Zealander because the people that know about this bill and already have opinions—you only have to search the internet. Google this bill and what do you find first? Russell McVeagh. Russell McVeagh have opinions on this legislation. They've read the Cabinet paper. They presumably are reading the legislation right now since it was released so late only a few hours ago earlier today. Their clients will have an opportunity to have an influence on this bill. And who else is out there with commentary? Well Bell Gully. In fact all of the "big four" law firms have already started work on this bill.So what this rushed process is doing—and I think members in the Government benches should really think about this—by legislating at such a rapid rate is they are creating a system where people who retain the best lawyers and the best lobbyists and the best consultants have a chance of influencing the outcome. The average person who's proud to be a New Zealander who's grateful we live in a democracy who is grateful to live in a country where we each get to send our representative to this House where each of us is asked and has the opportunity to comment on legislation it makes—they're not going to have a show. They're not prepared. They haven't read the Cabinet papers. They haven't read the legislation. Most people didn't know this was happening and why should they with their busy lives? But the highly paid lawyers and lobbyists retained by the rich did.This is an extraordinary proposition for a Labour Government to foist on New Zealand. I think they should seriously consider if they want to keep legislating in this way. It's part of a wider malaise that has occurred throughout this COVID-19 crisis. The sequence that applies to the COVID-19 Public Health Response Bill and to this bill and to other legislation that's been rushed through under urgency goes like this: the crisis occurs and the Government is behind the eight ball when it comes to doing the policy work. They haven't done the analysis. They don't know what the answers are. And then even if some of them figure it out they can't agree across their coalition partners. We saw that on the issue of rates regulation for commercial leases. And then if they've finally all managed to agree and stop squabbling amongst themselves they've got to get the legislation drafted and then they've got to do their PR on it. Then they finally bring it to this House where the people sent by the public of New Zealand—who actually pay the bills—get to scrutinise it and that's the last thing on their list. Because they have been so slow in developing the COVID response and so insipid in the responses that they give those people who actually want democracy find that their part of the process gets compressed. There's no opportunity for anybody other than those highly engaged lawyers and lobbyists retained by the wealthy whom I mentioned earlier to seriously understand what this bill means and to then consider how such changes might affect their community or their business. We're basically for all intents and purposes suspending the participative democracy that we're all so proud of and grateful to have in New Zealand.Once the legislation actually gets to select committee once the call is made for select committee considerations people have only a few days to do all of it. Overwhelmingly they're not going to do it. But even if people with busy lives who have jobs and maybe kids and all sorts of things going on managed to get a submission in on this 83 pages of legislation well then they find themselves in a position where they've got to struggle to be heard. The poor members on the Environment Committee if they're lucky are going to have a couple of days sitting in urgency hearing one submission after another trying to compute what people are saying work out how it is relevant to the bill and what sort of changes they might make to change the bill to improve it and of course they are simply not going to have the time to do it. Why? Because they won't have had time to get advice from their officials at the Ministry for the Environment—because they're part of the process too. They won't be able to loop those guys in.So the prospects of positive changes from this bill coming out of the select committee process are almost nil. I'd put it to this Labour-led Government that it would be more honest to have just said "We aren't going to do a public consultation." What they could have said is "Look there's no meaningful opportunity for people to participate and the opportunities to participate in such a rapid process are inherently inequitable because it's only those who can afford to retain specialists lawyers and lobbyists who are highly networked who are actually connected enough to do this at the speed it's happening." The Labour Party should say "We don't like consultations that aren't meaningful; we think that erodes trust in the democratic institution of Parliament. And we certainly don't like processes that are inequitable. The whole foundation and point of our party was to stand up for the working people."—who are much less likely to have any opportunity to be represented in this process the Labour Party's created. They should have said all that and said "We're just going to be honest we don't really care about public consultation or participatory democracy. We're just going to rush it straight through under urgency all three stages wham bam thank you Madam Speaker." That would have been more honest from the Government. Thank you Madam Speaker.DEPUTY SPEAKER: I don't think you should bring the Speaker into that."