SpeechJAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you Madam Speaker. I rise to offer the Green Party's disappointed support for the Protected Disclosures (Protection of Whistleblowers) Bill this evening. I want to provide a bit of an introduction for people listening because when I hear the words protected disclosure" it doesn't really mean much to me and I think I wanted to give some examples about what this is things that this might cover.There have been some good movies over recent years covering some of the situations that this can relate to. So there's the movie Serpico around New York police corruption accepting pay-offs—that's a form of corruption where you want a whistleblower to intervene as they did in that case. The Laundromat a movie where they're looking at the Panama Papers and the disclosure around that of money laundering and tax evasion and bribes happening globally that reached right into this country even and required somebody to blow the whistle to be able to bring that to light. And then there's the movie The Insider looking at the tobacco industry intentionally making their products more addictive and hiding the science from the public—another example where we required a whistleblower to be able to bring an incredibly important public health issue to the public for us to be able to make conscious decisions based on real evidence rather than corporate greed. The very well-known one Erin Brockovich who uncovered a utility company contaminating ground and into drinking water that was putting huge numbers of lives—600 families I think—at risk through that corruption—again required whistle-blowing and really concerted effort to be able to fight the efforts to shut that down. And then of course the very well-known example of Edward Snowden exposing illegal spying initiatives and where he is now having to live in Russia of all places to feel safe and free from Government interests and retaliation for his whistle-blowing acting in defence of the rights and liberty of American people. These are some of the international examples we know where whistleblowers have been incredibly important.What we see in many of those examples is how few people have been brave enough to break out and tell the story that needed to be told and how often the organisations whether they be Government organisations or corporate organisations have actually tried to shut them down and punish them for acting in the public's interest. That is what this piece of legislation is about: giving us as a country a framework to enable people who see wrongdoing to be able to come forward and be confident that they will be heard and that the processes will be followed to explore and ultimately shut down wrongdoing.We think of current examples that we know of or recent examples in this country where Rebecca Macfie has just recently published a book around Pike River where 29 men died. One of the key findings from her research was that every person who comes to you with information about safety is a whistleblower and deserves to be listened to respectfully that there was a failure at Pike River to listen to those raising concerns about safety and that it was against the corporate interests at the time and 29 men died. We've heard recently in the news even tonight around the actions of the Australian Defence Force in East Timor where our soldiers saw behaviour that could have led to a trial for murder ended up in charges around brutalising a corpse that were not able to be progressed because our soldiers were not given the assurances of protection in providing their evidence. Links have been made to the failure to act in what was found in East Timor leading to further abuses of power and very problematic behaviour happening in Afghanistan.So these are real life examples that have connections to us as a country and let alone the example of Joanne Harrison that led to this legislation being reviewed in the first place where there was fraud happening in the Ministry of Transport and people tried to bring it to light and for too long were not successful in doing that. So this legislation is really important; however it's disappointing that after years of work what we've come up with is really the first baby step towards setting up an effective regime.And I do need to point out because of the mention around New Zealand being really proud of our record around transparency and integrity well there was an article published on the Transparency International New Zealand website last week I think about this piece of legislation that noted that the Government's decision in terms of limiting this legislation and not supporting the Green Party Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) goes against everything that is known about the effectiveness of whistleblowing including the evidence of the Public Service Commission and the Ombudsman's own research that a decision was made by the Government not to support amendments that would have put a system of protection around people whistleblowing which is the centrally most important thing of having an effective system. We know it from the movies we know it from our reality when people come forward and we have to make sure that they are protected.This legislation has a penalty for any retaliation taken against somebody but the evidence we heard in the select committee was that people who have been blowing the whistle in agencies in our country have as a result of that experienced years of having their names slandered losing their jobs having their reputations destroyed being out of work and suffering mentally understandably and financially as well as just their standing in the community for years before they manage to go through the systems to get themselves vindicated and the decisions reversed. You can't reverse that kind of damage. And if you want to give people the confidence to be able to come forward you have to give them enough assurances that you have a system in place to protect them proactively from that level of harm. And that SOP was based around a research project that has been happening in this country and was based on best evidence.And the argument from the Minister that it couldn't be accepted was really "What about the smaller NGOs?" Even though actually it was quite a simple and I would have thought helpful framework actually that would have supported them in this situation because just not having these protections in place doesn't mean that they're not going to have potentially people coming forward and that actually having a framework of how you support somebody would be helpful but the Minister thought that that would be too onerous. And I would point to Michael Macaulay's comments in the Transparency International article noting that this was a self-fulfilling excuse because from the earliest incarnations of the bill the Government flat-out rejected external oversight methods that could have been used to overcome the issues of internal capability and capacity. And what we've been told through this process is "We'll get to it. Yes yes Greens we recognise the importance of what you're saying. We'll acknowledge it's valid we'll get to it sometime."But this process has already been going on for four or five years. There's been every opportunity. And if we care about the integrity of our businesses and our Public Service and our community organisations then this was a central piece of legislation where we could have really made a difference and it's just a bit gutting that the Government took the easy road and didn't do what we needed."