Kedgley Sue: Legislation (Incorporation by Reference) Bill — First Reading 
Kedgley Sue: Legislation (Incorporation by Reference) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:624;Page:19343] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party will be opposing this bill for many reasons. I have to say that I am astonished that a member of Parliament whom I greatly admire Tim Barnett would stand up and utter such—in my opinion—twaddle. He said that this bill is just tweaking the legislation that it will just make minor changes to the legislation and that builders will have ready access to the Building Act. 
I want to raise an issue here. Yes the Green Party acknowledges that there are some copyright issues and that these do need to be addressed. But this bill in the guise of addressing copyright issues actually removes freedom of access to heaps of important information. Instead of basic standards—building standards and so forth—being available on the Internet where people can have access to them suddenly this access is being taken away. And guess what? It will now be possible to charge people to get access to basic information such as building standards. It will be extraordinarily difficult. 
Far from what Tim Barnett said—that builders will have ready access to Building Act material—a great deal of it will in fact be available for inspection at the office in Wellington. How will that benefit a builder in Dunedin or in Whangarei? That builder will have to fly to Wellington and sit in the office there to look at the material. Maybe if they are lucky some of the material will be available in the regional offices. 
Murray Smith 
: All. 
SUE KEDGLEY 
: No the bill does not actually say that it will all be available. Would that it did! It says that some of the material will be available in the regional offices. 
I have recently had some experience of this sort of legislation with the Food Act. Recently as members know we lost our sovereignty over making decisions about our food. All these decisions are now made over in Canberra by Food Standards Australia New Zealand a body on which New Zealand has one vote out of 10. Nick Smith constantly goes on about what a great success this arrangement is. His Government the former National Government negotiated for New Zealand to hand over our sovereignty to a body on which we have one vote out of 10—and Nick Smith constantly holds this up as a good piece of legislation. We have one vote out of 10. Have we no self-respect that we gave up our sovereignty and gave ourselves one vote out of 10? 
Anyway as a result of that I have tried to get access to various documents held by Food Standards Australia New Zealand—for example applications for genetically engineered foods. These documents are available at the office in Wellington—700 pages. So I have to go there sit in the office and look through 700 pages. As if that were not bad enough now when we want to get basic information about food labelling and other such issues—standards that were freely available on the Internet—we suddenly find that we have to pay for it. This is what this legislation is all about. Where things relating to the Health Act and other areas were freely available suddenly we will have to pay for them. And they are using the guise of copyright. 
Certainly in respect of the Building Act there are some standards that are international and could breach copyright and we accept that we do not want to breach international copyright. However most of the standards are owned by the New Zealand Government so why could all those standards not be available free of charge? Why should we have to fly to Wellington or pay in order to look them up on a website? One of the reasons behind the leaky building scandal which Nick Smith has told us about was that people had not looked at the standards. They were not properly aware of the standards and what we are doing here is making it more difficult to access and to know what the standards are. We will be setting ourselves up for another leaky building issue. 
Why should we not make every single New Zealand standard available for nothing on the Internet? Why are we not making it absolutely easy and simple for builders all through New Zealand to access these standards? Instead they have to fly down to Wellington or pay to see them on the Internet. This is a basic issue of freedom of information. It is also setting a precedent so that instead of having information available for example Health Act information from the Ministry of Health—[ 
Interruption 
] I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I seek your protection. I am being distracted by a conversation. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Order! 
SUE KEDGLEY 
: Thank you Madam Speaker. I thought members were not supposed to speak right next to the person who has the call. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: Particularly the Leader of the House. 
SUE KEDGLEY 
: Particularly the Leader of the House—absolutely. He is setting a very bad precedent. 
The point is that this bill has been rushed through the House in 12 days. There should be legislation that prohibits rushing legislation through in 12 days. It is a disgrace. The ink on the Building Act is barely dry and we are rushing through an amendment to try to change the law in 12 days. It is absolutely disgraceful. We are sneaking in a Trojan Horse. We are setting up a precedent so that we will suddenly have to pay for information that is owned by the New Zealand Government—statutes building codes and so forth—and should be freely available on the Internet. We will have to pay for it or fly to Wellington to see it. What nonsense! 
Why should aspects of the Health Act no longer be freely available on the Internet? Everything in respect of the Ministry of Health is owned by the Government. This bill is setting up a situation whereby we will have to pay to get information that ought to be freely available. Surely in respect of the Building Code one would think that we would have learnt from the leaky building disaster and would be doing everything in our power to make the information available to builders around New Zealand. We should enable them to look it up on the Internet. If builders are required to go to a couple of regional offices or to fly to Wellington they will not do it. Guess what happens then? They will not comply with the standards and we will be setting ourselves up for a leaky building sequel. 
In summary we are totally opposed to this hastily cobbled together legislation. We believe that it undermines freedom of information. We believe that one of the intentions of the bill is to sneak in the precedent that we will pay for information that should be freely available on the Web. We have had experience of this through Food Standards Australia New Zealand and it is a disaster. If there are international statutes that have copyright then sure that is OK but this bill applies to all New Zealand legislation and all New Zealand standards that are owned by the Government. Frankly it is a disgrace.