SpeechHon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's my pleasure to stand and take a call on this the second reading of the Protected Disclosures (Protection of Whistleblowers) Bill. Can I just support the Minister's comments and acknowledge the Education and Workforce Committee that worked on this. I wasn't a member of the select committee so I can't speak in great detail in terms of the work that has been done but I have looked at the recommendations and the work that they did around those recommendations and acknowledge those as being very good. And of course reiterating the Minister's comments there is further work to be done in refining this bill to ultimately make sure that whistleblowers are afforded the correct protection and a speedy and efficient process which they can have confidence in to be able to bring information forward.Can I just very quickly talk a little bit about my personal experience in this and why I support this bill and the work that's being done on this bill and fundamentally why it is so important. Because New Zealand we can be rightfully proud of the fact that we lead in most measures around the world as being the least corrupt country in the world. The reason for that is that we've got to be able to have good safe mechanisms in terms of people being able to report poor behaviour or illegal behaviour inside the workplace. I was lucky enough to be on the C-suite in the management board of a big global logistics company—in 120 countries with over 33000 employees—and part of my role was to run the security and risk management for those employees for the property and the assets of the company. Very lucky to have had a very progressive chief executive officer in Tarek Sultan who recognised that making sure that employees were looked after and their welfare was cared for—right across 120 countries—had to be a sharp focus. That meant making sure that when you are working in different countries where a business practice that may be accepted in one country would be seen as unacceptable in another country meant a very robust system global system in which employees could come forward and report anything that they felt was not appropriate or legal.So I became very aware of the fact that there's lots of risks and challenges around that. One of them is that undeniable risk that an employee or a person can weaponise that system and they can take a personal grievance or disagreement with someone inside the organisation and they can use the systems available to them to try and weaponise it and try and create problems for that person. I think this bill has been very good in clearly outlining and stating what the threshold is in terms of the type of complaint that can be received and actioned and to some extent it does mitigate the risk of that. But the overriding concern and the overriding issue that must be addressed in a bill like this—and it has done a good job of it—is ensuring that someone can with confidence step forward and make a complaint if they're seeing poor behaviour or even illegal behaviour happening inside the organisation that they're working for. Let's not pretend that that is an easy thing to do. It's not. It is often a very difficult thing to do especially when there is often a power imbalance and the bad behaviour may be coming from a manager or a senior manager. So I think this bill has been very clear in terms of outlining the steps that can be taken for an employee to have the confidence to actually step forward make a disclosure know that they're going to be protected and that there's the robust protections around them in terms of anonymity and that the complaint is going to be taken seriously and it's going to be responded to in a timely manner. And I think that the 20 days although that sounds a long time actually I think that it is fair in terms of being able to initiate an initial investigation in terms of starting to substantiate and get a feel for exactly what the complaint is and the content contained within that complaint.I think that the big thing for me and what has been addressed is the meaning of serious wrongdoing". Because you could argue that something that one person considers is a serious wrongdoing someone else might feel is a bit more trivial and less serious. So I think that in legislation like this it's very important to be able to lay that out clearly. And it's obvious that the select committee along with some very good submissions that were made had this highlighted and they really turned their mind to it. They have gone through and they have made some very good changes to section 10. If I'm just able to very quickly run through that the meaning of serious wrongdoing. So in this Act serious wrongdoing includes one or more of the following by or in any organisation. And of course subsection (a) was changed; a very good change that made it much much clearer and more simple. It went from "an unlawful a corrupt or an irregular use of public funds or public resources" to just "an offence". So that means an offence has to be established. And I think that when you're talking about the protections that this legislation is going to wrap around a whistleblower or someone that's bringing something forward that of course is the first issue that must be established.Section 10(b) "a serious risk to public health or public safety or the environment." They've gone through it in a very good way—and can I acknowledge the advisers that have worked on this and obviously worked alongside the committee in terms of I think that they've made very clear and very succinct changes consistent with the comments that the Minister made around trying to make the Act a little more simpler to understand and to interpret. So actually even someone that may not have a legal background or legal training can pick up the Act and have a look at it. If you're an employee and you're wrestling with trying to bring something forward you can actually look at that. I think that would give them a large level of confidence that they understand what the intent of the Act is the protections that they would get and what's incumbent upon them and the process and the road map that they need to use to actually progress and come forward and make a complaint. So I just want to acknowledge the committee and the advisers on their work there in terms of making those changes around the meaning of serious wrongdoing. To me that's the heart of the legislation really because if that definition isn't clear then actually you could end up with a whole lot of complaints that actually could bog the system down and it could almost be counterintuitive in terms of what you're trying to achieve through a piece of legislation like this."Discloser's entitlement to protection". This is extremely important in terms of being able to instil the confidence in people to be able to come forward and make that complaint. And like I said in my own experience in dealing with an internal system whereby we had a confidential hotline that was available to all employees globally that they could come forward and disclose poor behaviour or even illegal behaviour—and we did have plenty of disclosures like that and a lot of them were upheld and it meant that we had to take internal action. But you also had to work with external partners as well to take action on that. I dealt with things as simple as passive-aggressive behaviour and targeting within the workplace on someone that was trying to do the right thing and put their hand up and highlight something that was not going right right through to serious threats of violence against employees and their family members for coming forward and wanting to disclose poor behaviour or illegal behaviour in the workplace. So the "discloser's entitlement to protection" is extremely important in this bill: "A discloser is entitled to protection under this Act for a protected disclosure made (in accordance with the section) to their organisation or to an appropriate authority."I think the other thing that the Minister highlighted and I agree entirely with is that there's very clear avenues outside the organisation that an employee can follow as well if they've lost complete confidence in terms of how their complaint is going to be dealt with. And I think that that's a very good part of the legislation. I know that it appears that there's still going to be some refining around that and how that's going to work but I think that that's critically important for an employee: to have a different pathway to be able to use to bring forward a serious issue or disclosure and have confidence in that process.So I'd just like to say again that although I didn't sit on the committee I want to acknowledge all the committee members that are in the House today for the work that they have done on this bill. I think that it is a very good and an important piece of legislation not only to provide employees with the confidence to be able to come forward and report bad behaviour or illegal behaviour and harmful behaviour but also in making sure that we can continue to be a country that can be proud of having very low levels of corruption inside our public service. We should continue to work and protect that and provide the tools necessary to ensure that that proud legacy that we have as a country can remain for a long time moving forward. Thank you Mr Speaker."