Faafoi Kris: Standards and Accreditation Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: Standards and Accreditation Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 01 July 2015. Volume:706;Page:5018. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): Mr Chair I promise not to mention the rugby—other than the mention I just made then. The Standards and Accreditation Bill while sounding like a mundane piece of legislation is actually a very important piece of legislation to ensure I guess standards so that the everyday things in life that we do are uniform and things work. As Labour’s minority report within the commentary on the bill has noted Labour is not going to support this piece of legislation. We hold some major concerns notably around the lack of independence of the new Standards Approval Board which this piece of legislation provides for and also because of the potential damage to our international reputation because of that lack of independence.To point towards that international reputation can I point to clause 7 of the bill which talks about the functions of the New Zealand Standards Executive. If you would allow me to just read clause 7 which states: “(1) The functions of the NZ Standards Executive are—(a) to assume responsibility for New Zealand membership of international standards organisations including the International Organization for Standardization and the International Electrotechnical Commission: (b) to ensure New Zealand attendance and representation at meetings of international standards organisations:”.Throughout the select committee process the Commerce Committee heard from a number of submitters who have a lot more experience in this field than I have—and certainly I think more than anyone around the select committee table has—about the new structure and the loss of our international reputation. A structure that was outside a Government department independent of the New Zealand Standards Council is to be placed within the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment.One of those submitters was a woman by the name of Diane Baguley who has been a member of the joint New Zealand - Australia committee on standards for 20 years now. She is someone with immense experience in this area. If I could read a portion of her submission to the select committee really to highlight the dangers of the path that this country will be going down if we change the structure of our standards formation as we are going to do with this piece of legislation. Diane Baguley said in her submission that “I oppose the disestablishment of the Standards Council and Standards New Zealand. I do not consider that the provisions set out for the establishment of the standards function within MBIE can adequately control the risks associated with the new structure whether to the management of standards development or the reputation of New Zealand in the international standards community.” I will just read that last bit out again and that is around “the reputation of New Zealand in the international standards community.” She went on to say that “The model proposed in the Bill if realised might even be used as an example by countries without robust government systems with undesirable results. New Zealand is well respected in the international standards community and an argument that ‘New Zealand does it this way’ could be influential.”We would have hoped that maybe the Government members on the select committee may have fed some of this feedback from the submitters to the Minister and maybe that is one question that I will pose to the Minister—whether they seriously did ponder whether the structure as it stands now was the correct one. The Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment is becoming a rather large Government department and whether or not it is making the right decisions needs to be questioned given some of the recent headlines around that ministry. But certainly when we are looking at the functions of our Standards Council being morphed into the ministry we certainly have some serious reservations about that.I would like to draw on another submission presented to the select committee and that was from another woman called Patricia Cunniffe who is a consumer representative on standards committees both here in New Zealand and overseas. Her submission was in a similar vein to that of Diane Baguley. If I can take the opportunity to read her submission she said: “I remain unconvinced that placing New Zealand’s national Standards body within MBIE will indeed ensure that the Standards system is viable and well-functioning …”. The current bill is predicated on consumers being the recipients of standardisation not participants. She went on to say that “Clause 3(a)(iii) gives one of the purposes of the Bill as being to: ‘protect the health safety and well-being of the public but gives no place for the public to define their own acceptable levels of health safety and well-being.” So I think Patricia Cunniffe agrees with Diane Baguley but takes things to another level in terms of the safety of the public. I guess this is just another example of the submissions to the select committee that I think throw up some serious reservations and concerns as to what the Government is doing with this piece of legislation.It has obviously been a well-formed argument that New Zealand has a very strong reputation with some of these international organisations through some of our work with standards and there is serious concern from some of our most experienced and expert people in the field as to whether or not we are doing the right thing here as well. I think that some of the motivation or most of the motivation for this piece of legislation is to ensure the financial viability of the standards process. I think having listened to some of the concerns in the select committee that that was a real concern for those in that sector already. We do not believe that the changing of the structure will go any way to ensuring that the financial viability of the standards process will be any better than it was previously. We would like to know whether the Minister in the chair the Hon Paul Goldsmith could clarify some of those issues. We would certainly be thankful to know whether or not more work has been done around that financial viability. I hope that the Minister in the chair will take a call.There were also concerns from the industry around representation and also some concern around conflicts of interest and funding. I do note there has been some amendment during the select committee process around the potential for conflict of interest and I think that is a good thing. As to whether or not it has gone far enough there is still a question mark and maybe that is something the Minister can address as well. But I believe that there are people especially those in our trades who are very concerned about what the bill proposed at the beginning of the select committee process and they might still share those concerns at the moment.Another joint submission that came through the select committee process was from the Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand the Association of Consulting Engineers New Zealand the Institute of Public Works Engineering Australasia New Zealand Division and the New Zealand Institute of Architects—bodies that I do not think I would certainly have too many arguments with around the technical aspects of their work. Their joint submission said that “we believe industry consultation is vital to ensure the prioritised programme of work is appropriate. This will also ensure the continued buy-in and contribution by the key industry players” that wanted to ensure that “industry consultation be a mandatory requirement under the Bill.” I believe some of that may have been addressed but I am not sure whether it has been addressed in its entirety. Hopefully that is something that the Minister might be able to answer if he does decide to take a call during the Committee stage.