Adams AmyHon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn): I raise a point of order Madam Chairperson. I want to seek your assistance. Look it's a matter that I genuinely haven't heard addressed in this committee and so I'm genuinely asking for your guidance. It is around the status of the explanatory notes of the legislation. Now my concern is that this explanatory note starts off by telling the House that the bill makes technical amendments" to the Act and "does not represent new policy." Now within the course of the debate obviously we can debate those matters between us and we have a very different view to the Minister. But my concern is that when you have a document that has come out of the Parliamentary Counsel Office that asserts in the introductory section of the legislation those matters of absolute fact I think the representation of the contents in the bill is seriously questionable.Now I know we won't want to get into the debating of the merits but can I just give the Chair this context which is that the Minister himself has acknowledged in his last contribution that this now ensures that National Animal Identification and Tracing officers who are already lawfully able to enter a property and inspect—which we agree with—can now seize goods. Now we will all debate the merits and the value and the appropriateness of that but to suggest that giving powers to seize is a technical matter and not new policy would be like saying that a bill could come into this House and say that the police could enter any property in New Zealand at any time for no reason at all and take property and that that was technical. It simply cannot be factually accurate. Now I'm not saying that the Minister can't bring in a bill that we should have those powers—and that's exactly what we debate in this House—but it cannot be technical to say that a new power of seizure that everybody accepts does not exist now is not new policy.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Yeah. OK I understand the point. Can I refer the member to Speaker's ruling 96/2 which I think won't satisfy but does address the issue. For the benefit of the committee it says "whether an explanatory note is accurate is always a matter of opinion. It is not a matter on which the Speaker can judge." So the Minister's opinion can be criticised in the debate and members do not have to accept it. The point of order that the member is making may well be correct but according to Speakers' rulings it's a debatable point and it's nothing that the Chair can rule on.Hon Amy Adams: Thank you for that Madam Chair. Speaking to the point of order can I ask—CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): No I've actually—you've made your point of order and I've ruled on it.Hon Amy Adams: Yes OK. Well new point of order then. CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Is this a new point of order? Hon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn): I raise a point of order Madam Chairperson. Thank you—a new point of order. Thank you for your ruling. I understand that. I note that I did look at Speaker's ruling 96/2 which of course makes it very clear that a Minister may not mislead the House in the explanatory note and that the explanatory note must be factual. My question to you now as Chair is what then is the remedy for the House if the Minister does indeed mislead the House in an explanatory note and the explanatory note is not factual and as a further aspect of that is the Chair confirming then that the explanatory note is no more than a statement by the Minister of—in this case—his personal opinion and that it should be regarded as having no greater standing than that? So the question is: is it simply a statement of the Minister's opinion and nothing more and secondly what is the remedy for this House if the Minister does breach Speaker's ruling 96/2 and misleads the House in that explanatory note?CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): So that point of order then is what is the remedy if the House decides that the Minister is deliberately misleading and there are procedures for that. As Chair of the committee of the whole House I have no remedy for that. You will have to take up the formal response about anyone misleading the House—OK?"