SpeechMARJA LUBECK (Labour): Thank you Madam Speaker for the chance to take a call here in this third reading debate of the Protected Disclosures (Protection of Whistleblowers) Bill. Now I just noticed that Mr Brown went to great lengths to get all his colleagues put in the Hansard tonight. I'm not really sure why he did so Mr Bennett but Mrs Roberts—if you have any idea? We know exactly who was here at his speech.So this existing legislation that we are amending was written in 2000 and that of course is a little bit overdue now for an overhaul and that is exactly what this bill is doing at the moment. It's widely accepted as we've heard in all the speeches in the previous debates that the current legislation isn't as accessible or easily understood as was likely meant a couple of decades ago and the Minister for the Public Service already touched on this in his contribution. New Zealand prides itself on being one of the least corrupt countries in the world and when it comes to transparency we have a lot to be proud of. But of course with this Act being more 20 years old now it meant that we needed to be catching up to international best practice so that people know how to use the legislation and at the same time they feel safe in doing so; the Minister actually mentioned exactly that. At the moment the way the legislation is written is that people are afraid to use it and that is of course not what we'd like them to do. I'd like to start by thanking our officials and advisers for their work on this bill and my colleagues on the Education and Workforce Committee and people from across the House for working very collaboratively. As we've heard from the speeches we came together in the right spirit to address this issue. We received 36 written submissions and we heard from 16 submitters in person and that included some personal stories which made it really clear that this is an important issue that we are clarifying with this bill.As a result of the amendments in this piece of legislation we can be confident that those who are disclosing wrongdoing—and serious wrongdoing as Mr Brown pointed out—can feel protected in doing so. People can safely go through the process they will know what the process is and they also can keep their identity and privacy which is of course really important. We heard some really good examples. I remember my colleague Ingrid Leary speaking on this bill in the second reading and she mentioned some examples from both the private sector and public sector in fact from her experience previously as a journalist. The Minister spoke about this bill removing the gate and hurdles that have prevented or discouraged disclosers from getting their concern in front of an appropriate external authority. So what this bill will do is it will require public sector organisations to specify in their internal procedures how they will support the disclosers and improve protections for those who are disclosing and of course for those people who take the step of disclosing it will be a massive change from the current situation. This bill will clarify the key aspects of the Protected Disclosures Act so that it is clear who can make a disclosure how it works and exactly how they will be protected. This legislation once updated through this bill will give protection to employees who uncover serious misconduct fraud or corruption that they see in or by their organisation. Therefore I commend it to the House. Thank you.