Chauvel Charles: Motions — Food Standards—Folic Acid in Bread 
Chauvel Charles: Motions — Food Standards—Folic Acid in Bread 
[Volume:667;Page:14350] 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 I will begin by associating myself with what has been said already by Moana Mackey on the merits of the issue. New Zealand tried the voluntary fortification of commercially produced bread. It was a failure. Bread producers just ignored the voluntary standard and nothing happened. It was right to do what Annette King did in September 2007 which was to join the Australians and move towards mandatory fortification. 
The decision of the Minister for Food Safety Kate Wilkinson to delay mandatory fortification will lead to the birth of many more children with birth defects in this country. Bowing to the commercial interests of big producers will have that cost in human terms. For that reason it was a cruel decision and certainly one that is not consistent with the Minister’s statutory duty to uphold and protect the public health. 
It was also a flawed decision as the view of Labour members recorded in the report of the Regulations Review Committee on the amendment to food standards shows. In particular the consultation process adopted by the Minister was seriously flawed. It was far too short and its results were treated without any real regard. The facts are these. A discussion paper was issued on 22 July 2009. Submissions were required some 3 weeks later on 12 August 2009. It has been suggested that the consultation period was limited by the looming deadline for mandatory fortification which was September 2009 but there is simply no reason that the Minister could not have just extended that deadline to allow for a more realistic time frame for submissions to be made. But she did not so submitters had just 3 weeks to respond to the discussion paper. Worse than that was the way in which submissions were treated so much so that the inevitable conclusion must be on an objective review of the evidence that the outcome of the entire exercise was predetermined. 
The discussion paper set out three options regarding the 2007 food standard: maintain it revoke it or delay its implementation. Of the 123 submissions received after the 3-week consultation period fully 61 sought to retain the status quo but those submissions were simply disregarded by the Minister. 
If we look objectively at the process that I have just described we see that no scrutiny committee doing its job properly could uphold it. But the Regulations Review Committee dividing between its National and its Labour members unusually on this occasion did uphold that process and the majority—the four members of the committee who appeared at the time of the vote from National—voted to uphold the process. This goes to the nub of the issue that I will deal with in my speech as chair of the Regulations Review Committee. The issue is the effectiveness of the committee as it is currently constituted. 
Originally when the committee was set up at the beginning of this Parliament it had three National members three Labour members and one Maori Party member. The seventh member of the committee was Rahui Katene from whom we have just heard. That is the right way to constitute a scrutiny committee under an MMP Parliament. There ought to be an equal number of members from the two major parties and then there ought to be a third party member who can bring some independence to the process of the deliberations of the committee. It also helps that by convention we have an Opposition chair of the Regulations Review Committee. This means that the committee can work in a non-partisan way. It can look at the questions of procedure before it and try to bring some independence to the scrutiny with which the committee is charged. But earlier this year Rahui Katene announced that she was too busy to continue to attend meetings of the committee. That is fair enough— 
Hon Rodney Hide 
: Bit uncharitable. 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: I am not trying to make a partisan point here I say to Mr Hide. I understand that it is hard for smaller parties to stretch their resources across the committee commitments that are expected of them. So it is not a problem in itself that the member announced she was too busy to keep coming to the committee; the problem is that she did not resign. 
Hon Rodney Hide 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I am sorry to interrupt the member on his feet. I accept the point he is making but I ask you this. We are not allowed to refer to a member’s presence in the House or more particularly the member’s absence from the House. I believe that the same rule applies to a select committee. 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: Speaking to the point of order I am not in any way referring to the absence or presence of a member in the House or at a committee meeting. I am describing objective facts about the decision of the member to no longer come to the committee. I am sure that it is not an announcement that member would dispute. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I would like to say that I am entirely fresh with all the Speakers’ rulings on this matter but I will say this. It is not always an absolute rule that one must not refer to the absence of a member. It is an open rule and a general one but I took it from the member’s speech that it was in no particular way a direct criticism of the member concerned. People in this job are very busy and everyone here in this House knows that members cannot do every job that is before them. For someone to say that he or she is too busy to do that is in my opinion perfectly acceptable. It is much better than the alternative which is for a member to continue to say he or she will do the job but not do it because of a shortage of time. I did not see it as being a personal reflection on Rahui Katene. It certainly was not the tenor of the speech. From that point of view I have no objection to the member continuing. 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: After Rahui Katene announced she was to withdraw from the business of the committee she did not resign from the committee but instead arranged with the National whip to be permanently replaced by a National member a different member on different occasions on the committee. The problem from the point of view of the independence of the scrutiny committee is that it now has a permanent majority of National members. For that reason the laughable consultation process to which I have referred was approved by the Regulations Review Committee with Labour members dissenting as I say in a very unusual move. The decision of Ms Katene to withdraw from the committee and allow herself to be permanently replaced has ramifications beyond this debate today beyond the issue of whether the Minister and her consultation process should have passed muster in the committee. 
We undertake routine scrutiny of every regulation that is promulgated by the Government. Every piece of delegated legislation that becomes part of the law of this land comes before the Regulations Review Committee for scrutiny. The Canterbury emergency orders are all coming to the committee for scrutiny by special arrangement of this House so that the public can be assured that the House will give proper scrutiny to those extraordinary orders. 
My plea to the Maori Party is to take responsibility for membership of the Regulations Review Committee seriously. I would love to see— 
Rahui Katene 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I fail to see how this line fits with the debate. I think the member is straying too far away from the subject of the debate and he needs to bring his remarks back to the debate. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I will allow the member to continue because he is describing for me anyway the process by which the committee came to its decision and the workings of the committee which is part of the reason why we are today having a debate on a disallowance motion. I will allow the member to continue. 
Paul Quinn 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The speaker said quite correctly in his last statement that the Maori Party did not take its responsibilities in this House seriously. I think that reflects badly on the workings of this House and that party. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I say to the member that his point of order fails on two counts. Firstly a member cannot take offence on behalf of another member just as a member cannot take offence on behalf of another party and secondly taking something seriously or not seriously is I would suggest an entirely debatable point. If the member feels offended by that I look forward to him not making similar allegations himself in the future. 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: I would love to see Rahui Katene back on the Regulations Review Committee. 
Hon Member 
: Get out of the gutter. 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: I am not sure whether that was Amy Adams or another member asking me to get out of the gutter but I hope that she and other members of the Regulations Review Committee would acknowledge my attempts to chair that committee in an objective fashion. If not then I will redouble my efforts. 
The speech we heard from Rahui Katene today was superb. It dealt with the issues that ought to have been dealt with in the committee. If the member had been present in the committee for the hearing the debate and the discussion the committee would have benefited greatly from her presence. But unfortunately she abrogated her responsibility as a member of the committee and gave to the National whip the right to appoint her replacement on every occasion. That means that we do not have an independent scrutiny committee in this Parliament. The Regulations Review Committee plays an important role in our constitutional arrangements and its members some of whom are present in the House generally do an incredibly diligent job in trying to exercise seriously the responsibilities that they have. 
The fact remains that it is hard for a Government backbencher to resist the will of the executive. That is why the committee was set up in the way it was at the beginning of this Parliament with no Government majority and with an independent chair. Only by restoring the independence of the committee can the House be truly assured that the committee will do its job properly particularly with the pressing public importance of the Canterbury orders coming before it. 
I will conclude on this note: if we do not see that proper balance in the committee restored by either the Maori Party doing the right thing or the Business Committee taking charge of the issue then I certainly cannot guarantee that this will be the last debate of its kind during the life of this Parliament.