Woodhouse MichaelINTEGRITY SPORT AND RECREATION BILLSecond ReadingDebate resumed.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you Madam Speaker. I am pleased to rise in support of the Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill at second reading and to confirm that the National Party will be supporting this bill through its remaining stages.I join with the Minister for Sport and Recreation in firstly acknowledging the collegial nature that the Social Services and Community Committee embarked on. I'm not a permanent member of that but I was quite heavily involved for this item of business—well chaired by Angie Warren-Clark—and the committee navigated some quite interesting I think aspects of this bill. It came to the committee in pretty good shape and I think it's come out of the select committee in better shape thanks to the very good submitters that we had—and I want to thank them—particularly those who submitted on what the bill actually did and those people were overwhelmingly supportive of the idea of a sports integrity framework.Now by way of background I think the genesis for this has been sort of twofold and the confluence of two sets of inquiries. One was the two Heron reports into aspects of Cycling New Zealand first in 2018; and then I think in 2021 following the tragic passing of Olivia Podmore. Then of course also the Integrity Working Group's work that predated that second Heron report and was reported back to the Minister and Sport New Zealand in April last year. So the bill itself is really the product of that.Although I think it's also fair to say that this was the story of two Olivias. Because while I think we all remember Olivia Podmore I want to acknowledge and reference the bravery of another Olivia: former Commonwealth Games gymnast Olivia Jobsis. Now Olivia Jobsis went public three or four years ago with quite stark revelations of her experience as an elite athlete—Commonwealth Games gymnast—revelations that included fat shaming; improper conduct including sexual conduct; psychological abuse; and mental manipulation. She appeared before the committee with Gymnastics New Zealand and that was a very very important submission because Andrea—the chief executive Andrea Nelson; sorry I should have known that—and Sally McKechnie and Olivia Jobsis came and told us firstly about the profile of Gymnastics New Zealand where 90 percent of the athletes are under the age of 12 and 79 percent of them are female.That really brought into sharp relief the importance of making sure that the bill was sufficiently robust and strongly reflective of child-friendly processes when we think about an integrity framework. I think by and large we certainly listened very carefully. I think the committee has made recommendations that do to a large degree reflect those concerns of both Gymnastics New Zealand and others where there are a high number of elite and pre-elite athletes who are nevertheless very young.Now I mentioned the issue of those who submitted on the bill. But we had a number of submissions where there were concerns about aspects that the committee concluded—and was advised—were outside the scope of this bill. This related to the issue of transgender participation in sport particularly women's sport and the concerns on both sides of that discussion about the questions of participation being reconciled with safety and fairness.I think it was fair to say that we had tensions on both sides of that discussion that were not reconciled. Indeed thankfully I think the committee didn't need the Wisdom of Solomon because those issues—important though they are—are not being addressed in this bill. I think it's important to set on the record that that is the case and it will be over to individual sporting codes to decide how best to deal with that within the guidelines that Sport New Zealand have provided already.But I do think it was emblematic of that discussion a question that I asked a submitter from inside out where I asked if it was possible to express concerns about fairness and safety of biological women and children in sport without being labelled transphobic and if so how? That was a question that didn't get an answer. But certainly the person I was questioning acknowledged that that was an important issue.It is my hope that we can get to a point where we can have legitimate concerns on both sides of that argument raised without epithets being thrown. Unfortunately if we look at social media and other aspects that has I think got to the point where there are two discrete echo chambers and we need to fix that. Nevertheless this was not the place to fix that. I want to acknowledge though that they were concerns and the sports integrity bill will not resolve them—that is over to the sports organisations themselves.I was also very pleased to see some exemplars of what a sports integrity framework might look like from Sport Integrity Australia because the Australian sporting authorities are ahead of us and we were given examples of for example Swimming Australia a child safeguarding policy a National Integrity Framework guidance on the improper use of drugs and medicine. These are exactly the sorts of things that New Zealand sporting codes will have to deal with and I hope we don't have to reinvent the wheel.As policy makers we can be a bit like a kleptomaniac—we can steal good policy where we see it globally. I say that because I do have some concerns about the cost of setting up a framework like this albeit that the best way to invest in an integrity framework is to invest in education and prevention rather than investigation and sanctioning. I do hope that the body—when it is up and running fully and has its codes in place—invests most of its time in education and prevention because that will be the best for welfare of our athletes.I do want to come back to the Heron report because some of the things that we did here were about winning at all costs measuring success by medals and then sort of reverse engineering what's required to get there. I think what the second Heron report talked about was to say Well if you do it the other way around if you get the processes and the framework right medals will follow success will follow" and I tend to agree with that. So let's use what excellent work Australia has already done and set that as the standard for New Zealand.I want to attach myself to the comments of the Minister of sport in his second reading speech before the dinner break around the excellent work Drug Free Sport New Zealand has done and that the building into the sports integrity body of the Drug Free Sport organisation is not a reflection that they aren't doing an excellent job. In fact it's quite the opposite. I think it's an endorsement of that because I think it's around that that the integrity body will be built and I commend the work they've done. So with those comments the importance of safeguarding children the importance of moderation and cost—oh and I think the third issue that was a concern to me at first reading was the voluntary nature of the codes when they came through and I still have that concern. I think they were alleviated to some degree but I think the integrity framework will work best when there is a very very high level of participation and compliance by sports organisations to those codes. So I'll accept the need for them to be voluntary but I think we should be watching that closely to ensure that there is a high level of compliance. But with those comments I'm very pleased to continue to support this bill at second reading."