Hipkins ChrisJAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you. I rise to take a call in the committee stage and before I get to questions for the Minister I just want to preface my comments by acknowledging how important this piece of legislation is. Whistleblowers play an essential role in exposing corruption fraud mismanagement and other wrongdoing that threaten public health and safety financial integrity human rights the environment and the rule of law. We heard through the select committee process and we've unfortunately seen in some rare but public cases where people who have attempted to blow the whistle or have have suffered really quite dire consequences. I think the very origins of the work on this bill started in 2016 in response to the Joanne Harrison fraud case within the Ministry of Transport where people who had attempted to raise the alarm had been restructured and suffered hurt and humiliation as was reported. We heard again and again through the select committee just terrible stories of people's lives being basically destroyed and going through the system to get recognition that they were right and then trying to get repair and that that delay to justice actually failed them. So this piece of legislation is the first step in trying to get a rigorous system because what we've had to acknowledge is that our existing system is not up to the job. I do acknowledge what the Minister said in his introductory remarks about there being wider issues and more work to be done. I want to register at this stage my frustration that this policy work has been going on for about four years. Consultation on this happened in 2018. So there is some real disappointment for people who are paying attention to our integrity systems that this bill is such a once over lightly". And I also want to register my disappointment that while I will be supporting the Government's Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 131 actually quite a few issues that were raised by the Education and Workforce Committee for work to be done on the SOP have not been addressed in it. I also want to note in this part of the bill specifically where there has been a change to the definition of "serious wrongdoing" and this is something we spent a lot of time on in the committee because on the existing definition of serious wrongdoing we were given plenty of evidence that it was treated as a very high threshold which meant that people actually were not given the protections they needed to be able to follow the process. They weren't able to access the protected disclosures process because of how high a level people were interpreting a "serious wrongdoing".So this SOP makes a very important amendment of adding to explicitly include behaviour that is a serious risk to the health or safety of any individual. We believe that is progress. However the submission from Michael Macaulay who is recognised as an international expert in this area who's in our very own School of Government and the PSA—their recommendation was that there were explicit examples to be included in the legislation because this is an incredibly important part of the process and if we don't get it right if people set that threshold too high then we undermine the entire Act and people aren't given that pathway to disclose. So we would like to have seen those examples put into legislation to give more of a sense how this can be used in practice. But I do want to say that I very clearly interpret "serious risk to health and safety of any individual" to include instances of sexual harassment and bullying which was again and again raised and is one of those kind of warnings for much-greater potential for corruption and wrongdoing and we have to get that stuff right.There was a suggestion that it be a failure for an organisation to respond appropriately to that so that it didn't undermine the personal grievance process. But I'm interested in hearing from the Minister about why we haven't got that process.Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for the Public Service): Can I acknowledge much of what the member Jan Logie has just said and say that I have a lot of sympathy for the arguments that she's put forward. If we rewind back to when this particular process started we could have taken the attitude of saying "Let's do everything. Let's do it all thoroughly." but it would have taken longer and I made the decision to separate that into two parts recognising that the Act as it stood and as it stands as of today was not being used because those thresholds were too high and progress some changes that could be done relatively quickly and then have a second stage where we could look at some of those more complex issues.If I take some of those issues that the member has referred to there is often an interaction between this legislation and other pieces of legislation including workplace legislation including the Crimes Act—you know various other pieces of legislation—and it takes a bit more time to really kind of get into that and not get it wrong and make sure that it's done correctly. And I do think we need to take the time to do that.Now in an ideal world where we haven't had such a disruptive 24 months or so we might be debating the second of the bills rather than the first one. That's not the way things have unfolded. This legislation has been pushed down the priority order the pecking order because of COVID-19 - related disruption. It is important that we now get this legislation passed but it is also important that we do continue on the work. And the issues that the member has raised I think do need further consideration and that is we will have the opportunity to do that as we go through implementing this change and alongside implementing this change considering some of those other issues.Our capacity to do all of that work all at once is not unlimited. We do have to make some trade-offs and choices and I did—you know I'll be completely frank—make the decision and make the choice that we should try and progress some of the things that might make the Act more accessible and more usable and more used more quickly and then of course continue the work on some of those bigger and more complex challenges."