Walker Holly: Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWalker Holly: Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 16 April 2013. Volume:689;Page:9412. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]HOLLY WALKER (Green): It is interesting. I never imagined when I entered Parliament that I would be so engaged by an amendment bill dealing with the regulation of the plumbing gasfitting and drainlaying industry. But I guess that is one of the strange and wonderful things about this place: you never know quite what direction you will be taken in. This bill the Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Amendment Bill has in fact been one of the more complex more controversial more challenging and more constitutionally interesting bills that I have worked on so far in my time in Parliament. It is certainly the first time I have experienced a hung select committee. So it has been a very interesting experience indeed.When this bill was first mooted by the Minister for Building and Construction and he wrote to parties seeking our support the Green Party indicated that we could tentatively support the legislation. We like the Minister and other parties in the House recognised that there probably was a problem with the 2006 Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Act which as has been demonstrated by a series of complaints to the Regulations Review Committee to the Ombudsman to the Auditor-General and then again to the Regulations Review Committee did not allow the Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board to collect the levies and fees as it had been doing from its members for the purposes of prosecuting unlicensed practitioners. As the Minister has pointed out it is clear—well perhaps it is not clear but there is some indication—that it was the intent of Parliament in 2006 when enacting the legislation that the board should be able to prosecute unlicensed practitioners. The Green Party agrees in principle that this should be the case.The board should be able to prosecute unlicensed practitioners. Indeed it is in the interests of the many law-abiding plumbers and gasfitters that there is the capacity to prosecute unlicensed practitioners because these so-called cowboys—to use the Minister’s terminology—do give their industry a bad name. There is something to be gained for those registered law-abiding plumbers gasfitters and drainlayers by ensuring that those who are not are being prosecuted and dealt with effectively. So the Green Party certainly could support legislation to make it clear that the board has the lawful ability to collect from its members levies and fees for the purposes of discipline and prosecution of licensed and unlicensed practitioners in the future. That we could support and that we have communicated to the Minister.I know that there are many in the industry who have grievances with the board and who would not support going even that far—allowing the board to collect these levies in the future. There is as we have heard from previous speakers a lot of bad blood in this industry and a lot of mistrust of the board which is unfortunate but which is not unfounded historically speaking based on the actions of the board over a number of years at certain times. However I do believe that these grievances are largely historicaland they could be addressed as the Hon Ruth Dyson pointed out last week in her contribution to this second reading debate if the board showed a greater commitment and a greater degree of transparency in how it spends the offences fee to reassure those with concerns that the fee is actually spent on the purpose for which it is collected on the prosecution of unlicensed practitioners.As an advocate of transparency and open governance I certainly did sympathise with submitters from the Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Federation who showed the Government Administration Committee the efforts that they have been to under the Official Information Act to obtain from the board information about how the levies are spent. They have had no end of difficulty and long delays in getting hold of that information. I think proactive disclosure from the board would go a long way towards addressing some of these concerns. With that caveat—that greater transparency on how the levies are spent is needed—the Green Party could as I have said support legislation that gave the board the ability to collect offences fees in the future.Our concern with the amendment bill currently before the House is its retrospective nature. As a number of speakers have remarked retrospective legislation is not something that this House should ever take lightly and we are certainly not persuaded that it is justified in this case. The fact is that the board whether it thought it was doing it legally or not has for a number of years been charging illegal fees and levies. People have taken perfectly legitimate complaints about this to every available adjudicator—as I said before to the Regulations Review Committee the Ombudsman the Auditor-General and again this year the Regulations Review Committee. Every one of those complaints has been upheld and at each stage the complainants have been vindicated that they have a legitimate complaint. What message do we send from this House about natural justice and due process if at the end of all of those complaints and all of that process we say: “Yes you’re right actually—we’ve figured out it is illegal. Thanks for bringing that to our attention. We’ll just change the law now thank you very much.”?You can understand why the complainants are upset that this House is considering the retrospective validation of those illegal levies. In fact it reminds me of the legislation that the Prime Minister has signalled we should expect soon in this House about the Government Communications Security Bureau to validate years of illegal spying on New Zealand citizens and permanent residents. That is a higher-profile example than the Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board but the retrospective nature of this Plumbers Gasfitters and Drainlayers Amendment Bill is no less distasteful than that example. The fact that people thought it was legal at the time is no excuse for illegal conduct and people have taken legitimate complaints about the collection of this levy.The solution in the view of the Green Party is to change the legislation for the future but not for the past. We recognise that if we were to take this course of action it might require the board to refund some or all of the fees and levies that it has collected since 2006. That indeed was the recommendation in the findings of the complaint to the Ombudsman. We think it is probably fair enough that it does refund some of those levies and fees that it has collected illegally. However as the Minister has pointed out this could potentially put the board under some financial strain and possibly bankrupt it. Well if that is the case I would like to ask the Minister what is so bad about going to the Minister of Finance and asking for some Government support to allow the board to refund the illegal levies without going under. After all it was a Government error in the drafting of the original legislation in the first place that allowed all of this to happen. Yes admittedly it was a different Government but the Crown is the Crown. In this case I think that there is a case for the Crown to take some responsibility and contribute some financial assistance if it is needed.The best estimate that I could work out based on the information that was available to us as members of the select committee was this might mean a liability of something like $1 million. I know $1 million is not an insignificant amount of money to be sure but it is certainly an amount that I think the Minister of Finance and the Crown are capable of finding in the Budget and absorbing. That is a solution that the Green Party could have supported—fixing the legislation going forward into the future but allowing due process to take its course for the collection of the illegal levies and for the existing legitimate complaints.We do acknowledge that the industry needs a fix but retrospective validation is not justifiable and the rushed process at the select committee has not helped. Yes I acknowledge that the time was extended from 1 week to 3 weeks but that is still an extremely short time and there were a large number of people who wished to submit in person who did not have the opportunity to do so. This is a divided conflicted industry and unfortunately it seems absolutely certain to remain so with the passage of this legislation. The Green Party will continue to oppose this bill.