Faafoi Kris: Standards and Accreditation Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: Standards and Accreditation Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 04 November 2014. Volume:701;Page:500. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana):I would like to begin by agreeing with the Green Party member Mojo Mathers that although this piece of legislation has a relatively mundane title it is a very important piece of legislation for the everyday lives of Kiwis. We are talking about standards. A lot of things happen—and we expect them to happen—out there in the community because there are standards out there. So this is a very important piece of legislation and we on this side of the House have said that we will be supporting its referral to the Commerce Committee where I look forward as a member of that committee to being able to ask a few questions of the Government and to hearing submissions from the public. I know there were a lot of submissions to the standards and infrastructure review that was run by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment earlier this year and I will refer to some of those later on in my contribution. As I say as a member of the august Commerce Committee—and I would like to congratulate Melissa Lee who made a contribution—we are looking forward to hearing about this piece of legislation.As I mentioned before in everyday life there are standards everywhere from members of the public expecting their cellphones to work to their expecting to be on the right frequency to ensure their phone calls come through through to—as Chris Hipkins mentioned—standards surrounding health and safety. It has already been noted in this debate that a very similar piece of legislation introduced by the previous Labour Government in 2008 unfortunately sat dormant until this piece of legislation was introduced.I think there have been plenty of missed opportunities since then especially in the area of health and safety. A number of examples have been brought up already. I think the Hon Clayton Cosgrove talked about the health and safety standards surrounding Pike River one of the worst industrial disasters or tragedies of our lifetime. Also there are issues around the forestry industry where we have had—and I am looking at our spokesperson on that industry Chris Hipkins—around 10 deaths in the last year. So there are some serious questions that need to be asked around health and safety and standards and we have a duty as a Parliament to make sure that we get some of those small technical things around frequencies right but also some of the really important things around health and safety right as well.I would like to point out that in the 115 submissions to the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment review there was one significant submission from the Council of Trade Unions. I would like to thank the council for its submission and to reiterate the point that Chris Hipkins made which is that although we are going to hear from the likes of industry and experts we do not want to forget the voice of the workers out there especially when we have brought up two of those instances of mining disasters and tragedies and serious fatal accidents in the forestry industry. It is really important that this Parliament encourage the voice of workers to be heard at the select committee deliberation on this bill.There are a number of other things that have been mentioned already on this side of the House that concern us which I think will be raised at the select committee and those are around the motivation for the changes and why they are happening now. There is a suspicion that this bill is motivated by cost cutting and that the motivation is not necessarily there to make sure that we have a robust standards infrastructure here because all of a sudden this piece of legislation has arrived on the Table. It could be the fact that the new Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs has taken very little time to take the razor to his department and is looking for cost savings and we are very concerned about that being the driving motivation behind this legislation. You have only to look at the regulatory impact statement from the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment to understand that there could be significant cost savings if the Government’s intention to change the way that the standards come about is seen through.There were three options before Cabinet. The first was to keep the status quo. The second option in the regulatory impact statement was to have the standards development function that we are looking at in this bill undertaken by International Accreditation New Zealand. The third option was that the function of standards development be undertaken by the statutory officer located in the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment and that is the preferred option that is within this legislation. On page 10 of the regulatory impact statement there is quite a helpful table that shows significant cost savings by moving as the Government intends towards having this standards function within the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment. That is somewhere along the lines I believe of nearly $2.5 million or $3 million which might not sound a lot in the bigger scheme of things but when you think that this Government may have a bit of an agenda to try to cut costs this is one way that it is looking at doing that.We do not oppose efficiency if it is effective but if this is a case of efficiency and cost cutting being done for the sake of cost cutting then we do have some reservations as to why the Government may have structured this particular piece of legislation in the way it has. So I think that will certainly be one of the questions asked in the Commerce Committee—as to what is the driver of this piece of legislation. Is it the fact that we want to strengthen our standards bodies or is it the fact that we want to take a bit of a razor to this department and restructure it to make some significant cost savings? I guess we will also get the chance to ask the Minister in the chair this question when we get to the Committee stage here in the House.As I said at the beginning this does sound by title a mundane piece of legislation but there are a number of areas in everyday life where standards are important. As the broadcasting spokesperson one of those areas is something simple like TV volume. You would be surprised at the number of people usually elderly people who come to me as the broadcasting spokesperson to ask me why there is not a standard for TV volume especially for advertising. They may choose to use their own power when they are watching Parliament TV to push the mute button—and that is their right—but they certainly have come to me to ask why there is not a standard TV volume for advertising. There is always one particular company they are upset with and that is Harvey Norman. When they watch an episode of perhaps Coronation Street on Television One a staple show for many elderly people—Hon Members: Oh!KRIS FAAFOI: —oh OK! I take that back; I realise it has a broad audience—all of a sudden a Harvey Norman ad will come on booming out of their televisions and this obviously upsets the young and old. These are the kinds of standards that we are talking about here which have a huge impact on us in our everyday lives.I do not think we should just pooh-pooh this piece of legislation because it has a mundane title—the Standards and Accreditation Bill. This piece of legislation is important. We will refer it to the select committee but not without reservations. I do want to reiterate that we are very concerned about the Government’s motivation around the cutting of costs and the placement of this new position within the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment. It has already been noted in an earlier contribution by Clare Curran that it is very interesting that the regulatory impact statement was done by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment when this new position is going to be located within the ministry. You would think that because there would be a perceived—and actually a real—conflict of interest there maybe the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment could have removed itself from the process and there should have been an independent regulatory impact statement done on this piece of legislation.In regard to our support we will give the bill support to a select committee. We do have some reservations about the structure within the bill. Because it has probably come about from a piece of legislation that was introduced by the last Labour Government we will at this stage support it but we will be asking serious questions during the select committee deliberation. Thank you very much.