Parker David: Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeParker David: Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 21 October 2015. Volume:709;Page:7419. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): I want to reinforce what the Hon Phil Goff has said in respect of facilitation payments. It beggars belief I think that we have got ourselves into the position under this legislation where we are not covering off and prohibiting facilitation payments. The influence of countries like New Zealand in the world can either be positive or negative or neutral. I like to think that we are a country that would uphold high standards and help other countries to get their standards to be better by doing the right thing in New Zealand and encouraging improvement in standards in those countries. Transparency International is quite right: David Clendon’s Supplementary Order Paper ought to be supported by this Committee. If the Government does not support that Supplementary Order Paper it should say why. Is it saying that the United Kingdom has got it wrong and that other countries that are banning facilitation payments have got it wrong? As the Hon Phil Goff has said what is illegal in New Zealand is illegal because it is improper. Small bribes are improper and ought to be illegal.Can I address a couple of other issues that I would like commentary on from the Minister of Justice. The first relates to the narrow definition of “foreign public official”. Members will be aware that currently there is controversy which the Auditor-General is looking into as to whether the payments that were made to the Al-Khalaf Group by the New Zealand Government amounted to improper payments. It is notable that the people to whom those payments were made who exerted influence on whether Saudi Arabia acceded to a free-trade agreement in the Gulf were not public officialsthemselves but were people of influence in Saudi Arabia who could block a free-trade agreement. In my opinion the definition of whom New Zealanders should not be able to pay facilitation payments or bribes to needs to be wider than the narrow definition of “foreign public official” that is currently in the legislation and I think that it is wrong that we in this Parliament have so narrow a definition that we would not catch the sorts of payments that we have been concerned about in respect of the Saudi farm debacle.In that instance we had a very powerful person in Saudi Arabia who was disaffected first with the Labour Government and then with the National Government for their having a ban on the export of live sheep to Saudi Arabia. That person was a close friend of the then Minister of Agriculture in Saudi Arabia and there is no doubt that he has made speeches which are a matter of public record to say “Well why should New Zealand come wanting a free-trade agreement?” and asking why he should cooperate with New Zealand’s getting a free-trade agreement in Saudi Arabia when from his perspective New Zealand was blocking the export of live sheep to Saudi Arabiafor slaughter.He made his protestations clear to the Labour Government and we said: “No we disagree. We’re going to regulate for what we think is the right thing in New Zealand. We’re going to ban that.” The current National Government may have created impressions that it was going to go differently—it probably did—but in the end the current National Government said that it would renew those bans on the export of live sheep for slaughter which was its sovereign right to do in New Zealand and we actually think that it made the right decision. But this disaffected businessman was blocking the advancement of free-trade arrangements with Saudi Arabia to the detriment of the New Zealand trading relationship.That does not justify that person being paid off. That is what the Auditor-General is looking into at the moment: whether the allegation which I think is made out on the papers is the true underlying nature of the payments that were made—whether a $7 million upfront payment to the Al-Khalaf Group which did not buy $7 million of value was actually paid in order to buy the influence of that person in order to stop them blocking the advancement of free trade with New Zealand. That sort of payment is improper and yet this piece of legislation does not cover it because the definition of the “foreign public official” in Saudi Arabia is too narrow and applies only to people who are effectively public servants rather than to other people who can exercise influence over those public servants. Again in addition to the point that was made by Transparency International which the Hon Phil Goff has also made there is that point as to why this legislation does not go far enough.I think New Zealand is facing more pressures relating to corruptionthan we used to both within the country and outside. It is partly a consequence of the world becoming a more competitive ruthless place. It is also partly a consequence of some of the different norms if I could put it that way of some of the more recent immigrant populations that have come to New Zealand. That is not to call all immigrants corrupt. That is not to call immigrants corrupt but it is true—David Seymour: Clarified just in time.Hon DAVID PARKER: Actually if you do not want to face the reality that there are higher levels of corruption in India and China than there are in New Zealand then Mr Seymour you are naive. It is true that there are higher levels of corruption in countries like that than there are in New Zealand and we have got to be very very careful that we push against those practices becoming prevalent in New Zealand.I have those comments made to me by senior members of the business community in Auckland and these are pressures that we in this Parliament must guard against—we must guard against. The vast majority of immigrant populations from all countries including India and China are good people but there are exceptions—[Interruption] Yes Russia is another example where there are corrupt practices that are more prevalent than we want them to be here. We have got to guard against that sort of conduct becoming prevalent in New Zealand including when we have trading relationships that are from New Zealand into those countries. That is why this sort of legislation is absolutely important—so that we push against those sorts of practices becoming prevalent in New Zealand.Just in the last couple of weeks we had the example reported in the newspapers—and this goes to clause 5 of the bill which relates to trafficking in persons—where someone in New Zealand was passed a note by someone from an eastern country saying that this person was effectively being held in servitude in the prostitution industry and that her rights were being abused. I hate it when I read those sorts of things. I want our Government officials our police and our customs and immigration people to have all of the powers that they need to push against the sort of reprehensible behaviour where people are exploited and are effectively held in servitude. I was somewhat dismayed to see the response of the police to that. They would not even go in there and investigate the allegation despite the fact that a New Zealander—at considerable risk to his own reputation given that he had been visiting a brothel—actually said that he had been passed a note by a person in that brothel to say that that person was being exploited having been brought in from an eastern country.That sort of thing happens more often in New Zealand than it used to. It is not as prevalent as it is in overseas countries but it does happen. The OECD has pointed out that it cannot believe that New Zealand is so free of corruption that we have never had a prosecution in New Zealand of a New Zealand business person accused of bribery of overseas officials. It says that it is unbelievable that even in a clean country like New Zealand we have never had occasion to find out and root out the low levels of corruption that we have. For those reasons I want the Minister of Justice to answer why we have such a narrow definition of “foreign public official” in respect of who can be paid bribes because we are effectively saying other people can be paid bribes and just not foreign public officials as narrowly defined in this legislation. I want to hear also why the Minister believes that Transparency International the UK and indeed the United Nations Convention Against Corruption are wrong in respect of facilitation payments.