Menéndez March RicardoRICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you so much Mr Speaker. We cannot support this motion and the instruction to select committee. I wanted to unpack line by line why we cannot based on what's in front of us.First of all the motion by the Hon Simeon Brown talks about reporting this bill to the House by 18 July. I do share the concerns from other people regarding the constraints that that creates. To add a new point to it I'm particularly concerned around the capacity of the Public Service to provide robust advice particularly on a bill that actually requires analysis that goes quite structural and broad potentially and members have a right to actually seek quite broad advice around the impacts of this bill. At a time when the Public Service is under the pump I think we really risk receiving less than adequate advice with the time frames that the Hon Simeon Brown is trying to give the select committee.This is not saying that public servants will not do a good job; it's just that we're putting them in an impossible situation with an incredibly limited time frame to provide robust advice on an issue that actually has been quite controversial and has been the subject of intense debate. Then I'm also concerned—others have spoken on the timing of 18 July and sort of what happens between then and now particularly when we've got scrutiny week and no doubt we'll have other heavy workloads within the Finance and Expenditure Committee.I'm concerned as well around the wellbeing of the staffers of that select committee and the pressure that the report-back date will create at select committee. If I remember all my conversations with my colleague and co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick who is in that select committee I know how busy the staffers at that committee are. I'm personally really concerned that we're not putting the wellbeing of workers as a priority on an issue that is incredibly controversial that requires adequate consultation. I do think the wellbeing of public servants and those select committee staffers will be compromised as a result of this.Secondly the other parts in this motion also talk about being able to meet at any time while the House is sitting except during oral questions during any evening on a day which there has been a sitting of the House and on a Friday and then it talks about outside of Wellington as well. Again we're going to be in a period in scrutiny weeks where we're all supposed to be here. In fact we've all been encouraged to be here unless exceptional circumstances happen and yet we've been told that the select committee will now be able to basically sit outside of the Wellington area effectively compromising potentially during the period we've been given the ability for members to participate effectively. For parties like ours where we have limited numbers of members and actually many of us have to sub in and out of other select committees we don't have the privilege of having one MP per portfolio or two portfolios per MP which is something that reduces the workload of the members opposite to me. But with our members I want to express the concerns I have around the ability for the Green Party to then properly participate and scrutinise this piece of legislation with the provisions that are in this motion.I mean generally we already have concerns with any provision that allows select committees to meet while the House is sitting because of the impact and the resource drain that it creates on parties such as ours. So I think this motion also undermines the adequate participation of parties like ours and actually I would say ACT and New Zealand First and Te Pāti Māori in the scrutiny of this piece of legislation.Then moving on to the out-of-scope amendment set out on Amendment Paper 41 I think if I was to look at the section in that amendment regarding the regulatory impact statement I mean I also have concern that because there hasn't been a regulatory impact statement prepared for that amendment we're going to need to ask officials during that really constrained time frame to then present analysis that otherwise could have been perhaps available to us by this point during that incredibly constrained period of time.So the issue with the ask of that specific Amendment Paper that has been brought with very little analysis is that we'll have to do the grunt work in in a very very limited capacity. I think that will also undermine members of the public who will be trying to submit on this additional out-of-scope amendment without the information available for them to make informed decisions regarding their submissions in relation to the Amendment Paper that has now been brought that is now completely out of scope. I think what that will leave is members of the public without the tools available to them to make informed decisions in relation to this Amendment Paper that has been added as part of the motion—Hon Shane Jones: Relevance—relevance.RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: OK well if I'm being encouraged to speak to relevance I encourage the Minister to read the motion because that is exactly what the motion states. I've got it in front of me. I did say about how I was going to be referring line by line so perhaps the member wants to put his glasses on and actually read what's in front of him.So anyway going back to the motion in and of itself I wanted to also talk about the fact that the consequence of this motion is that it's going to actually exacerbate the tensions that exist within this political debate. We've already seen with limited time frames an ability—and other members talked about the predictions of the number of days we would have to make for submissions. Some estimated that it will be about five days. We've seen that in other pieces of legislation like in relation to Māori wards. We've seen how that actually undermines the trust in our institutions and I'm really concerned that the motion put in front of us will actually only serve to undermine people's trust in institutions such as ours. I'm deeply concerned about that because the last thing I want is people getting a sense that they're not being given the tools and information and the ability to constructively participate in legislation that actually has to do with issues that that have resulted in rallies and protests and mobilisation. Actually this is why this motion undermines a constructive participation by all of us. So the Green Party won't be supporting this motion as it goes against our own principles of appropriate decision-making and therefore I invite the Hon Simeon Brown to withdraw the motion. I invite those members to carefully think about the real-life consequences— SPEAKER: Come back to the motion.RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: —of this motion in front of us.