Williams ArenaARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Madam Chair thank you for the opportunity to give what is my first call on this debate. As a former professional with experience in a large commercial group that owned a forest the Woodhill Forest I'm really interested in how the professional-practice expectations of those practising in the forestry sector work. So my first line of questions for the Minister are around whether he has considered some transitional provisions which would allow some of the good work that most people in this House would agree was useful at the time it was introduced to continue.So I want to come to Part 1 of the bill. It's clause 4 under (1)(e). The Minister is proposing to repeal the requirement for a forestry register and the questions I have for him are about whether he has considered some transitionary or savings provisions in relation to that repeal or whether he is open to considering whether that particular piece needs to be repealed at all. CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Sorry to interrupt that member's speech but I understand there's a member in the Chamber who may be on the phone and I'd ask them to put that down and I will allow the member a little extra time.ARENA WILLIAMS: Thank you Madam Chair. So my question about the forestry register here is that this bill was introduced at a time when there was widespread concern from forestry owners about bad practice rogue trading in the industry. We believe and the Minister obviously believes that those conditions have changed but there was some good work there around registering practitioners in this area. My questions are about whether some of that good work can be saved. So the registration element is a system that assures anyone dealing with registered log traders and forestry advisors that they're getting expert and impartial advice from people with the right knowledge and experience. That's why it was set up at the time because of this widespread concern that there were just a small number of operators that weren't doing that and were offering terms of trade that if they had been formally contracted they would have been unconscionable and unreasonable at the time.So the registered log traders and forestry advisors would have then passed a background check including a criminal conviction check. That will be done away with under these new provisions and we accept that the Minister has had some advice on this and that he doesn't believe that that is now necessary. The good work that has been obtained by that is having a register of people who have gone through those checks and who may be held to a high standard and that is useful for the market to have access to that information. It is useful for small forestry owners in particular and Māori forestry owners and Māori forestry blocks who have a governance structure which is unusual where they have a number of lay people sitting on their governance structure to have access to that information.So the first question to the Minister is: has he considered making that information available in an ongoing way given that work has been done and given that it wouldn't require any change to the legislation necessarily to provide for that information to still be available and maintained going forward?The second question is: if forestry advisors and log traders chose to be registered in this way—which you know there are many professional bodies which provide this function—but given the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) is already set up to be able to provide a function like that and there is no professional body doing it at the moment would it be appropriate for MPI to continue to provide that function and to continue to be able to provide some assurance around those people who are practising to a high standard?My other question for the Minister is: once registered those log traders and forestry advisors had ongoing obligations that they met. Now I know that my colleague the Hon Peeni Henare has asked some questions around say that code of ethics but there are other obligations there that they would be held to and I want to understand whether the Minister is interested in a further amendment for some transitional provisions which would save those ongoing obligations then applying to people who chose to be on such a register which would need a legislative change. I also want to ask the Minister about the complaints process that this register allowed for. It created essentially a regime where a complaints process was set up to deal with complaints about registered log traders and forestry advisers and anyone could make a complaint about unsatisfactory conduct or misconduct of one of those registered forestry advisors. The useful thing that that did is it created one place where small forestry owners could take complaints about the advice that they had received or about conditions and a commercial arrangement that later turned out to be unfair and I want to hear from the Minister how complaints will be resolved under his proposed changes.