O'Connor SimonSIMON O'CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Thank you Mr Speaker. I'm pleased to take a call on this Protected Disclosures (Protection of Whistleblowers) Bill and I acknowledge the Minister who's just taken his seat the Hon Peeni Henare. The National Party is pleased to support this bill at first reading. We are particularly keen that the select committee tease out a number of issues and I may touch on a few of those but I'm heartened to hear in the Minister's contribution that he sees the select committee process as rather vital and important and that he is wishing to work not only with the public and private sector—encouraging them to submit as I do as well; an encouragement to anyone who has an interest in this topic to do so—but the Minister's also indicated a strong willingness to work with parties across the House.I suppose it goes without saying—but we're in Parliament; we might as well put it in Hansard—that National believes that actually having whistleblower protections is important and we certainly acknowledge that the current law is not so much out of date I would argue as not as comprehensible as it could be—or put in a different form: it's not as accessible as it could be. So we're very supportive of this modernising. I personally think it's a particularly good idea to set it out as a new Act—sorry that's presumptive of me—as a new bill it may become an Act in time—but as a new bill rather than trying to make an amendment. I think again that's a very good call by the Government in this regard. It's often—and I'm not a lawyer; I'm sure my learned colleague Paulo Garcia will speak to this more—that amendment bills just mess things up and the very simple intention here is to make the process as accessible and easy as possible.The fact that there are particular provisions now which will include the use of public funds in the private sector or in the NGO sector is particularly good. I'll confine most of my comments if you will to the public fund side of things. Parliament ultimately is that power of authorising the spend of money and one of the key things we try to do as parliamentarians is make sure that the moneys are spent appropriately. We obviously do that through excellent conversations with Ministers at Estimates and annual reviews with chief executives. But actually it becomes quite important over time if there's information from individuals who are working with public funds who have a protection—obviously the nature of this bill: a protection—to be able to speak that there's going to be an obligation on the State services to provide that protection is vitally important but I think too it is a very positive step that the protections are being extended to those who are speaking in a private corporation or within a charity or an NGO they'll be protected if they are using public funds. So as I understand it at the moment the current law doesn't quite extend that far. So that's a rather positive step there.The concern primarily from this side—and it's not enough for us to stop the support of the bill—is to make sure that we're not going to have if you will vexatious whistleblowing. It's really really good the way that clause 8 I think it is defines who can make a disclosure and clause 10 indicates on what. I think it's really important that that's wide and open. But on this side of the House we're just really keen to make sure that that's not going to allow vexatious or silly people for want of a better word to come in and make some outlandish claims that could do damage to a private company to a State entity to an individual. In other words it's making sure that there's a balance that we facilitate—encourage even—disclosures. We want people who have information to blow that whistle to do so loudly and they must be allowed to do that—they must be protected. But we do want to make sure that where something's falsely declared deliberately that that's not going to be protected and secondly to minimise where we can the damage where someone—even in if you will good conscience—declares something whistle-blows it but it turns out to be patently false and importantly patently damaging to that entity that the entity's not going to suffer as a consequence. So I suspect it's going to be quite technical to get that balance right.But again I welcome—and I think the National Party welcomes—the opportunity to work with Government to move through a select committee process and to make sure that all voices are heard. I suppose it's going to be the very nature of this bill; if we're going to be protecting whistleblowers we need everyone to come in and have their say to ensure that not only do we have as the Minister's indicated a bill that is fit for purpose in this modern environment but a bill that just makes sure that we're not going to end up defaming for want of a better word or harming the public sector or private entities that take public cash. So with that very short contribution we'd like to commend this bill at first reading to the House.