Brownlee Gerry; Mitchell ClaytonHon GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): Can I begin this afternoon by congratulating you Mr Speaker at the first opportunity upon your taking the Chair and assure you that I do respect the long history that you have in this House and that's not meant to be in any way derisory. It is a compliment and I am sure that you will as you have sort of started today put your own mark on the way the House operates and I wish you well in that.It really surprises me having listened to the Speech from the Throne and the very condemning tone of anything the past Government did that we've got any legislation from the past Parliament being carried over at all. It seems to me that it would've been far more exciting if the whole Order Paper had been dispensed with and the 100-day programme laid out in front of the House so that the excitement that is non-existent on the faces across the other side might actually get a little bit of a lift.I want to particularly ask a question at the start as to why the Leader of the House suggested that the Insolvency Practitioners Bill was being dispensed with when it is actually still on the list here? We're not unhappy about that. We think it's a good piece of legislation that should pass. I want to congratulate Mr Seymour for the commentary that he has just given the House and I have to say to him that had his argument been so compelling a few months ago it may well have passed. But there you are! It's amazing what a new seat in this place will do for someone.Then there is of course the commentary in the Speech from the Throne about the need to do something about pay equity in this country. Well that's something that I think can be easily supported provided the provisions of it are going to be reasonable on those who have to actually work—to produce—to be able to make those extra payments. But it seems odd then that you would take a pay equity bill off the Order Paper without having anything to work on. Given that the whole Order Paper wasn't dispensed with because there is not a lot of legislation to come in that 100-day plan I would've thought the Government may have considered leaving this bill here as a base to work on.And that really brings me to the most surprising thing here at all and that is that the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary Bill is still on the Order Paper. This is a bill that creates the ocean sanctuary in the Kermadecs a very large area internationally supported. New Zealand was lauded for making the initial indications that we wanted to turn it into a sanctuary. It was not supported in the last Parliament sufficiently. It could have gone through had the then Labour Opposition decided that they were going to support it but no they didn't. So what we now have is a situation where there are enough votes in this House to pass this bill but we have a Government holding it on the Order Paper so it never comes up. It's going to end up being a bill pretty much like that Rodney Hide bill that we heard about before which will sit there for years and years or for as many years as New Zealand First is part of the Labour coalition. I've got to ask the Green Party why they want to support that. If the Green Party seriously think a Kermadec sanctuary is a good idea then why support a motion that ensures that it will never ever come before the House in this term?I see a Green member down there shaking her head. I need to tell her how it works. As long as this bill is here in this shape no member's bill can trump it. So there is no other opportunity for the Green Party to get a sanctuary in the Kermadecs if this bill stays here because the New Zealand First Party don't like it because the Māori caucus in the Labour Party don't like it but the National Party and the Green Party could've achieved it quick smart in a lot sooner than a hundred days.If you think about how all these things operate in this Parliament—I think people need to know what the mechanism is. It could have been an easy thing for the Government to do rather than picking out four bills that they don't want to progress to have actually taken the whole lot through and then there would be nothing for us to debate about. There would be no question that needed to be asked in the House or a question that required debate in the House. As a prominent member of this House has said in the past these are matters that should be debated. All that would have been required was for a Minister to write to the Clerk saying that they wish to discharge the bill and they're gone—no debate. They're gone. And it's the Government's programme.So we are really quite perplexed as to why the Government has decided to take this course of action today. But we're happy to be able to talk about a number of the things that are on here. I've just mentioned the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary Bill which we found strange that it's still there. One of the things that's been taken off is the Natural Health and Supplementary Products Bill. We are just wondering: does that mean that unregulated health supplements which can cause a lot of problems as you know Mr Mitchell will continue to be illegally sold? We want to make some conditions—or the bill wanted to make some conditions—that would enable the legal sales of genuine supplement products and also regulate those products. And I've only got to look at the gym bunnies on the other side of the House—Mr Jones I know that when you take that supplement in the morning—Mr SPEAKER: Order! I think that's going a little bit far.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: You're quite right Mr Speaker; I've certainly never seen him there. The point is though: why would you take away a piece of legislation that will give people a degree of certainty about what's in the product they're consuming which they believe to be healthy? There is a little inconsistency there and particularly when you consider from the Speech from the Throne that there is now going to be quite an emphasis on encouraging the public of New Zealand to vote positively in the marijuana referendum that comes in the next three years.My final comment would be on the extraordinary decision to remove the income tax sharing bill. If you think about how that works—and you have got a Speech from the Throne that talked about people paying the right amount of tax a reasonable amount of tax—what that bill set out to do was enable people to split their income in a household where there was only one income. So the situation would be that they got a better picture taxation-wise. I hope that the Leader of the House is able to indicate that this will be a matter for this outside pressure group who are going to advise the Government on how taxation should be firstly legislated for and then administered in this country. It's not something that should be laughed at. I've got to say that there would be a lot of—Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: You're the one we're laughing at—you didn't even laugh at it; you did nothing with it.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Well no I'm quite sure that there are a lot of families who would have benefited from this and I can't understand why it is that a Labour Government that is so keen on social equity wants to dispense with a bill that would enable that in a very quick smart order. It would in fact make quite a difference to numerous family incomes.We spoke before about the process that's getting used here and I want to once again make the point that this is a debate that is clearly important to the Government and therefore should be given the time that the Government sees is necessary because it's a debate they need not have had. Had they simply used the process that would enable Ministers through Cabinet to make a decision to remove bills from the Order Paper we wouldn't be here right now.Mr Speaker while you may have a different view sir I can tell you that the substance of it would not have required the debate time that the Government clearly thinks is necessary because of the way in which they have gone about this particular process. If there is some reason that we are not aware of that means that the pay equity bill has to go off the Order Paper that means that the regulatory standards bill is not important to this Government and goes off the Order Paper that the concept of knowing what's in health products is not important to this Government and goes off the Order Paper and that the taxation income sharing bill is of no interest to this Government despite the fact that they are going to get an outside body to come up with all the recommendations about future taxation then I think there is an obligation to tell the people of New Zealand why those bills are not there.But I do congratulate them for keeping the vast majority of the excellent legislative programme set down by the former Government. I know it will form the core of their work for some months to come.CLAYTON MITCHELL (Whip—NZ First): I move That the question be now put.Hon Amy Adams: Mr Speaker.Mr SPEAKER: Ah—[Gown slips from shoulders]—whoops! We'll get that sorted out. Members will be able to tell that I was one of the generation that didn't bother going to their graduations. I will work out how to put the gown on eventually.