Menéndez March RicardoRICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you Madam Speaker. I'm rising on behalf of the Greens to speak to the first reading of the Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill. We support this bill and we've appreciated the collaborative contributions that have come into this debate so far. The bill will establish a new Integrity Sport and Recreation Commission which will have different duties such as investigating threats to integrity such as competition manipulation corruption or fraud; use of prohibited substances abuse including the abuse of children bullying harassment intimidation and racism; creating integrity codes for the sports and recreation sector as well as carrying out current Government functions including the implementation compliance mediation etc. that relates to anti-doping.I want to particularly in terms of the comments in terms of the threats to integrity in relationship to the racism give a shout-out to Manukau United who actually recently released a report on racism in football. They themselves identified that racism in football was a major issue that our communities were experiencing and they called on Government to take this into account and to put in place different policy interventions—some of them focused around say equitable funding. I reckon this bill has the potential to address some of the concerns that have been raised by Manukau United.Like others I want to acknowledge that the journey of coming into this place with this bill comes after several athletes at a community and a high performance level have highlighted the abuse that they have experienced the toxic culture that they experienced and so I hope that we honour those voices and contributions that have created the space for this bill to come into place.As this bill goes through select committee there are some specific clauses we want to pay some close attention to. So while we welcome that—for example clause 16 establishes that the commission must have effective means of seeking views of the rainbow communities which we really welcome and in clause 20 it also states that rainbow communities can be included in consultation when it comes to the creation of the integrity code—we do find it odd that in clause 11 when it talks about the appointment of board members to the commission there's sort of a range of expertise that is kind of being required or expected. And while human rights is included it then goes and specifies particularly the rights of children and young people—it does feel odd to then for example exclude the rights of our rainbow community there in terms of the competencies that we would like of those board members as well as some competencies around anti-racism. I think particularly when we see the vitriol that members of the rainbow communities experience whether they're the trans community or homophobia in sports it's important that we proactively seek that level of competency on the board. Other stuff that we hope to pay attention to is feedback we received around the minimum number required of Māori members of the board and whether that number is correct. So we'll be paying close attention to that. But overall we do think this is a step in the right direction to improving the wellbeing of our athletes whether it's a high performance or community level. So we commend this bill to the House.