Clendon David: Third Readings —Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClendon David: Third Readings —[Sitting date: 04 November 2015. Volume:709;Page:7720. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID CLENDON (Green): I am pleased to take a final call on the legislation arising out of the Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill. I will endeavour following on from what we have heard to perhaps offer at least equal amounts of heat and light to the debate.The Minister madereference in her opening remarks to the desirability of zero tolerance when it comes to corruption and I am sure that is something we would all support. I think she was particularly referencing the business community at that point but that certainly rolls over into the public sector as well—the Public Service.It is critically important that we do get as close as we can to zero corruption and a zero-tolerance approach to that is not only an ethically and morally correct thing to do but it is also an economically very smart thing to do. We know that high levels of corruption are highly destructive of economic well-being. Look anywhere in the world where there are high levels of inequality of poverty and even of violence. Almost without exception you will find high levels of corruption sitting beneath or around that. So zero tolerance for corruption is a very desirable thing to achieve.When it came to the crunch in the Committee stage of this legislation I am pleased to say that 60 members of this House expressed their preference for a zero-tolerance approach when they supported my Supplementary Order Paper that would have removed a clause from the Crimes Act that basically facilitates and legitimates small bribes being paid offshore. Unfortunately 61 members of this House chose not to go for zero tolerance—maybe 0.002 or thereabouts is OK; just a little bit of corruption just a few drops in the bucket. I think that is unfortunate. This legislation has some desirable elements but it was a missed opportunity. This was an excellent opportunity to remove that clause from the Crimes Act and really move ourselves closer to being truly anti-corruption and to demonstrate that in our statutes. I will return to that point.But I would comment that the legislation does some useful things such as the business of reporting of money being transmitted overseas from New Zealand usually electronically in this day and age of course. Some of the most spirited and interesting debates at the select committee were about that issue. The banks came and gave some quite substantive submissions and appropriately so. I continue to be a little bit surprised that the electronic transmission of amounts in excess of a thousand dollars must be reported. I still feel that that limit is somewhat low. There are many reasons why people would and do legitimately send a thousand dollars overseas be it to family be it for purchases whatever it might be. Nevertheless that is where we have landed up. But just to put some scale around that I recall that the Westpac submission indicated that Westpac bank could make approximately 2000 reportable transactions per day—up to 2000 a day. It is not hard for that bank then to be thinking in terms of perhaps half a million transactions a year. Multiply that by four for the four major banks plus the very high number of private companies and individuals making transactions and that is an enormous volume that needs to be reported and recorded. That of course is one reason why part of the commencement date of this legislation has been put back simply to allow the banks and the companies the time to build the necessary software and to create the infrastructure that will allow for that.The Privacy Commissioner was somewhat unhappy with this legislation to the extent that there is less privacy protection for information about New Zealanders dealing offshore than there is in the domestic environment. She thought there needed to be some stronger constraints around that. The select committee did agree and there is a requirement on the Police Commissioner for example to consult with the Privacy Commissioner when setting or altering agency to agency information-sharing agreements and that is a good thing; that is a good step forward. But I think it is something we will have to continue to monitor. When the Privacy Commissioner is making a fairly strong submission to say “Hang on. This is a little bit over the boundaries.” then I think we need to take that seriously and I would hope that in time it will be proved that in fact we will get that balance right.The point has been made that this legislation has taken rather a long time to come to the House. One of the declared purposes in fact one of the primary purposes of this legislation is to enable us to make those legislative changes that are necessary for us to ratify the United Nations Convention Against Corruption that we signed in December 2003. It took about 6 years before that matter got as far as the select committee. There is a certain symmetry. The first reading of the Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill was exactly 1 year ago today on 4 November 2014. So we are just rounding that off quite nicely—perhaps we should put a little candle in the middle of it when we do vote. It is true that the Minister at the time indicated in August 2013 that the original bill would come to the House by the end of that year. In fact it was June or July of 2014 before we had the bill tabled in the House and then as I say a year ago today we finally got the first reading. That is peculiar because all parties I think all sides acknowledge there is a significant economic benefit in ratifying the convention and of course this legislation is necessary for that to happen.That well-known left-wing commentator Phil O’Reilly head of Business New Zealand is on record as saying that New Zealand’s high trust public sector is its single greatest competitive advantage. That is quite a strong statement from a fellow who does on occasion find reason to criticise the public sector. I do think that it just highlights the fact that in order to maintain and develop good economic relationships with other countries particularly those countries that have already ratified the United Nations Convention Against Corruption it is important that we progress to that position ourselves. It is odd that that has taken such a very long time and I do wonder whether we need to take a lesson from that.Again just to return to the matter of the facilitation payments which unfortunately continue to be allowed—the so-called facilitation payments. These are actually little bribes. New Zealand businesses do have a very good reputation for operating honestly within the law and with integrity. Long may that be the case. The fact that we missed the opportunity to take out that unfortunate clause in our legislation that legitimates payment of small bribes does degrade the quality of that reputation.The point was made in earlier debates in respect of some of our key and very important trading partners—critically China but also India as it becomes an increasingly significant trading partner in terms of products services education and tourism—that it would be a great thing if New Zealand companies abroad were seen to have a zero-tolerance approach. But unfortunately we can have that 0.002 approach we can continue to allow countries to behave in ways that they would not be allowed to behave in in New Zealand and I do think that is unhelpful. The leaders of both China and India have made very very strong statements that they are determined to drive corruption out of their economies. That will take a very long time. That is a very significant undertaking and may they have success in it. It would be nice to think that New Zealanders abroad would be setting the example rather than this rather tarnished example that maintaining the legitimacy of what are small bribes unfortunately does propagate.So in final comments I say we do support this legislation. As I say it does some useful things about sending money overseas about making money-laundering more difficult about increasing the protections against human trafficking and the like. It is a good and useful piece of legislation. It could have been a great piece of legislation but that is work for another day for a more progressive Government. Kia ora. Thank you.