Andersen GinnyGINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a great honour to be speaking on the Protected Disclosures (Protection of Whistleblowers) Bill 2020 and it's important to note that New Zealand does have a strong reputation in this space for being a world leader in integrity transparency and openness and also has consistently been top of Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index and I think that's important to state up front.So what this legislation does is it builds upon that culture and modernises it and it's really important that here in New Zealand we in our workplaces build a culture where wrongdoing is not accepted and where we encourage whether employees or employers or whoever is in that workplace environment to be able to come forward when they see issues or actions that are considered to be wrong. An effective regime for disclosing serious wrongdoing in the workplace is critical to maintaining that high reputation that New Zealand has for integrity and this Government is dedicated and committed to protecting New Zealanders who speak up about serious wrongdoing in the workplace.New Zealand was also one of the first countries in the world to introduce a dedicated law to protect whistleblowers and that was the Protected Disclosures Act in 2000 and this law exists to support people in the public and in the private sectors to expose criminal fraudulent and other serious misconduct in their workplaces by protecting them from unfair dismissal or treatment. So what's happened recently is that there's been some reviewing some research and a good amount of work done to identify where the shortfalls are with the existing legislation and there are some clear problems that have been outlined. I'm going to go through these very quickly.The problems are that both organisations and disclosers are somewhat confused about when to use the Act as it has been—so it's been underutilised. Secondly disclosers are unclear about how to make a disclosure internally and some organisations are also unclear about how to respond once accusations have been made. It's been found that it is difficult for disclosers to navigate the system for reporting concerns and also that disclosers fear speaking up because they may lack the confidence or the protections available to them. So this bill seeks to address those problems and it primarily does that by supporting and enabling people to come forward more readily and giving that information to people to disclose in a way that they feel protected and that their own livelihoods won't be threatened by coming forward with that information.So allowing people to report serious wrongdoing directly to an external authority if they wish is important and also strengthening the protection for disclosures by outlining what those receiving disclosures should do exactly. Important to also note is the requiring of public sector organisations to provide support to those disclosing—that they're not left to suffer in silence; that when they are disclosing they're provided support. Extending the coverage of serious wrongdoing to include misuse of public funds or resources—and that's very important whether they be in a public or a private organisation—and to include NGOs performing a statutory function exercising statutory power or acting on behalf of a public sector organisation.It's really important to make clear what the process is and making clear what behaviour is not acceptable and listing the ways that can prevent retaliation in a situation where someone's making an accusation—so making it very clear about what that process is. The bill creates a new schedule in the Act that names the most likely or appropriate authority for particular subject matter. This is because the number of appropriate authorities to whom a disclosure can be made is confusing to navigate. People don't know where to go or how to go about it and this could mean that disclosers are unsure where to report and how to go about it.So by strengthening these provisions in the Act this enables New Zealand to continue to have a strong reputation for being transparent for being open and for enabling a culture to be built where employees are able to report wrongdoing and have a feeling that they know where to go how to report it and that they are protected in that process should they be making allegations that are found to be justified. I look forward to the select committee process. As with any piece of legislative change as large as this I'm sure there are going to be some significant contributions from members of the public and organisations who wish to have their say and I look forward to those. I commend this bill to the House.