McKelvie Ian: Electronic Transactions (Contract Formation) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMcKelvie Ian: Electronic Transactions (Contract Formation) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 19 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:16135. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): I was absolutely intrigued to listen to the last person speaking Kris Faafoi—I suppose that was what he was doing. He did start to talk about something extremely constructive for a moment or two—the cricket which I thought was going to be really interesting. He wavered off of course into something that the Labour Opposition since I have been in this House has spent hours and hours and hours doing: wasting the time of this House. I listened to Mr Cosgrove tonight making the same speech that I have heard him make seven times since Christmas. It is beyond me to understand how Mr Faafoi could get up there and accuse this Government of wasting the time of the House given the record of his associates.Anyway it is a privilege for me to get up and speak on the Electronic Transactions (Contract Formation) Amendment Bill. I of course do not sit on the Commerce Committee and have had no part in the discussion on this bill. I sit on the Primary Production Committee with the guru from the Greens Steffan Browning who is very busy over there. The guru from the Greens is constantly on the case of the agricultural sector. I sit on that committee with him and of course we do some very structured stuffin our select committee. We pass the most important bills—bills that keep this country running—like the animal welfare legislation and the Food Bill. Of course to use one of Mr Cosgrove’s favourite terms they are pillars of this country’s economy. He talks about the pillars or whatever does he not?Anyway I listened to Mr Goldsmith tonight speaking extremely eloquently about this bill. I then listened to Jian speaking about this bill and in no uncertain terms he outlined the whole process of this bill—the process that it goes through and all of the parameters of it. I thought he did a wonderful job of it and I was impressed with his speech.I am old enough I guess to remember a time when a shake of the hands formed a contract. We have come a long way since those days of course. Now you zap your little card across the top of a machine and it steals your money very quickly. That is what this bill is all about. It is about creating the environment for us to do business quickly efficiently and effectively. I cannot help but go back to the Greens and think of the objection they have to bills like this. The amount of time the Greens spend in this House tabling papers—for a party that spends its life trying to preserve our environment it is beyond me to understand why it would consistently every day table more and more trees in this House. I think that is a great shame. For a party that ostensibly supports the environment for it to be tabling paper after paper in this House seems extraordinary to me.Kris Faafoi: What about CO2emission?IANMcKELVIE: That is a problem as well Mr Faafoi. That does create quite significant problems. Actually I do have the privilege of driving through your electorate of Mana on a regular basis and I do see there is quite a problem there. I just cannot wait for that road to get built because that will definitely lower not only the carbon dioxide emissions but a number of other emissions as well particularly the carbon emissions. From a Wellington perspective I think once we get that motorway open and operating—and there is now a fly in the Chamber and I have been here so long it is settling on me. To get that motorway open I think will be quite—in fact the fly is attacking me—a major bonus for the capital city and it will certainly help us get down to this most important place. I have got the fly. I have got it—that has solved that problem. So I am very keen to support this bill.I just want to get on to the comments of Mr O’Rourke. Mr O’Rourke believes in policies that uphold public benefits ahead of private interests. That is the statement he makes on his own website. I was very pleased to hear him tonight supporting this bill. For New Zealand First to be supporting this bill through the House with Mr Goldsmith and of course the Government I think is a pretty good effort.Tonight across the passage from here we saw people from theRiddet Institute from Massey University Palmerston North—the electorate of Iain Lees-Galloway. They live on my side of the river. They were in there tonight with some outstanding young scientists. They had six of the very best scientists who specialise as they do in food innovation and health. They were talking about things that would make this country a much stronger country. I was most impressed with the activities of theRiddet Institute and the presentations that were made tonight. Without those sorts of people working in this country practising and putting into place scientific stuff that is hugely important to us we would not make the progress we need to make in this country.Of course the same thing applies to technology. The Electronic Transactions (Contract Formation) Amendment Bill deals very much with modern technology—Kris Faafoi: This is not cricket.IANMcKELVIE: —and the way our society has evolved. Of course if you really want to get back to that cricket for those of us who like cricket the last few days havealmost been made in heaven for us. For people who are very keen cricketers like Mr King here—who in fact props up the parliamentary cricket team—the last 3 months have been bliss for us. You just cannot believe that you could have so much success. So thank you Mr Faafoi for bringing up the cricket. It has been an extraordinarily successful time for us in New Zealand. Of course the other thing about sport is that it emotionally prepares you for the dour bits of life. Those of you who participate in this House should play sport on a regular basis because it will encourage good health and make you feel an awful lot better about what goes on.I just want to get back to Mr Browning who is still in the House. I do not think he has listened to one thing that has gone on in this debate tonight. In fact I am sure he has not. I just want to get back to him for a moment because he does make an interesting contribution to this Parliament and his theories on agriculture are well worth listening to.Anyway to get back to the bill I heard Dr Jian Yang speak on this bill at length tonight. He talked about the way the bill is structured and the way it works. He talked about some of the history of it and gave me a great background on it I guess. As I said earlier I was not on the Commerce Committee which dealt with this bill and it certainly educated me as to what these sorts of things do for us.It is a very interesting place to be this Parliament and I think that members’ day particularly is an interesting time.Kris Faafoi: Not cricket.IANMcKELVIE: No. Well I will get back on to rugby now. Members’ day does give us the opportunity to bring things from our electorates into this House—things that concern us and things that concern us as members of Parliament—and to make a difference as to where we are going in the future to make a difference as to where the country goes and to have some little bit of influence on what goes on in our lives on a daily basis.This Government is committed to producing or creating an environment where we can thrive and do well as a country. It is determined to create an environment that creates less dependence and gives people the ability to make their own way in life and to sort things out for themselves. I think that we have some extremely good policies in place to achieve that. We have taken a great lead in the last 3 years or so and certainly in the last 2 years since I have been in this House we have taken a great lead in a lot of these things. I think we are really creating an environment that will make a huge difference to the future of this country.We have listened to a number of speakers tonight on this bill. Most of them spoke for a very short time which I find absolutely ironic given the amount of stuff we have had to listen to from the other side of the House over the 2 years since I have been here. It gives me a great deal of pleasure to support this bill. I want to congratulate Paul Goldsmith once again on navigating this bill through the select committee stage and getting it into the House and through its second reading in one piece. Thank you.