Wood MichaelMICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): Thank you Mr Chair. I'm very happy to be able to play a part in this remarkable debate. I might say that earlier on in the debate I was in fact on the verge of calling a point of order—right at the start of the debate—because the Government's legislative programme had proceeded so swiftly that there weren't actually at the point this debate came along copies of the bill on the Table. But Government members are so seized of the issues in this bill and so well researched that I think as everyone can see they've been deeply deeply engaged in this debate and its details. In my comments—Kieran McAnulty: Not like them.MICHAEL WOOD: That's right.Kieran McAnulty: They don't care.MICHAEL WOOD: I'm not here to judge Mr McAnulty. I think this is a bill the Government is proud of that we're proud to speak to and I think that the community's going to judge us and our Opposition on our contributions.There are two areas that I want to cover off in my comments and those two comments relate to the degree of legislative consistency that this bill—Hon Member: We're enjoying seeing your Ministers. They haven't got anything to do.Kieran McAnulty: Outrageous. Sit there and bloody call things out but you won't say anything.MICHAEL WOOD: Mr McAnulty might want to learn something about legislative consistency if he'll just lend an ear out. The degree of legislative consistency that comes through this bill across a wide range of Acts—I want to talk about that and the value of that and then there are a number of questions that I do have for Minister Martin relating to some of the particular words that have been used at various points of the bill in Part 3. Finally if we get time I want to talk about some of the issues that arise around the onus of proof that have come through in the course of this debate.So let's start by talking about the legislative consistency that we see echoed from one end of Part 3 to the other. I'm very pleased that my colleague the Hon Kris Faafoi's here because of course Part 3 particularly relates to the commerce and consumer affairs area and as a past Opposition spokesperson in that area—I mentioned it to Mr Faafoi—he was keen to run down and participate in this debate. There is a huge number of bills—there is a huge number of bills—that Part 3 affects: the Commerce Act the Copyright Act the Corporations (Investigation and Management) Act the Designs Act 1953 the Fair Trading Act the Financial Advisers Act the Friendly Societies and Credit Unions Act the Insolvency Act the Patents Act and the Trade Marks Act. Across Part 3 we're dealing with all of these Acts.You know some members of the Opposition in some of their comments have sort of suggested perhaps this isn't a particularly important piece of legislation but when you think about that body of legislation those things touch on many areas of our economic life and what we're dealing with here is the way in which citizens relate to the Government entities that oversee those areas of their economic life. That speaks to the importance—and the beauty of Part 3 of this bill is that we're putting consistent legislative provisions over the top of every single one of those Acts. So citizens or businesses or NGOs—any kind of entity that is now having an interaction with Government in this area no matter what the piece of legislation has consistent provisions and consistent languages to describe their obligations to communicate by means of electronic interactions with those Government agencies. I don't think we should understate or undersell the value of that from the point of view of having quality legislation that is accessible and that reduces compliance costs for those people who engage with the State. I think that's something we should put up a bit of a cheer for.Just moving on to a few of the questions that I have for the Minister—if I could beg the Minister's indulgence some of these questions might seem to be taking a bit of a deep dive into very very specific wording and interpretations but for those people who are familiar with English literature there's quite a well-known bit of wisdom about short stories. It says that in the first paragraph of a short story if there is a reference to a coat hook on the wall then by the end of the story you want to know why it was there. That's the thing about the words that we put into legislation. We have to know why they are there because you can bet your bottom dollar that over the next 10 or 15 years some citizen or some lawyer will want to know and will possibly test that and it will have real-world consequences. So building on from that there are a few of these things that I do really want to delve into.The first one relates to—where are we here—clause 45 new section 102(1)(d) which is emailing it to—there are some changes from the Government Administration Committee here. The select committee has added in words. It originally read emailing it to an email address used by the person." and the select committee has added in the words "the person" and "that is" so that the full text of (d) now reads "emailing it to the person at an email address that is used by the person." If you'll forgive me for bringing up the spectre of former President Bill Clinton I want to look at the definition of the word—[Bell rung] Mr Chair?The CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Michael Wood.MICHAEL WOOD: Thank you Mr Chair. I want to look at the definition of the word "is".Hon Tim Macindoe: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. For some time now I've been in the Chamber and I've been noticing that you are studiously avoiding calls from this side of the Chamber. Given the fact that this is the Opposition in a committee stage I am wondering if you can explain what your basis is for allocating so many calls to the Government and consistently ignoring calls from the Opposition.The CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): I disagree with the member. [Interruption] No I don't need any help thank you. It is the sole discretion of the Chair to choose who speaks next. Michael Wood was on his feet. He clearly hasn't finished making his point. I decided to give him a second call and I disagree that I have not been fair in taking calls.Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. Not only is it absolutely your discretion which calls you accept but for that member to question your integrity in the way that he did is disorderly and he should be required to withdraw and apologise.The CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): No. I think everyone needs to calm down. I have taken a number of calls that have been closure motions from the Opposition one of which I have put. It will cause disorder if we continue on this line of discussion. I suggest that we go to the member Michael Wood so he can finish his speech.MICHAEL WOOD: Thank you Mr Chair for a wise considered and fair ruling.Hon Tim Macindoe: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. Mr Chairperson I'm sure that member has been here long enough to know that for him to comment on your ruling in that way is totally disorderly.Hon Stuart Nash: And Tim you've been here long enough to know you can't question the Chair's choice of who speaks and who doesn't speak.Hon Tim Macindoe: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. It is absolutely disorderly for a Minister to be influencing the Chair while he is considering his ruling.The CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): OK. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. It's really up to members OK. I want to hear from Michael Wood about the bill. I take on board the comments from Hon Tim Macindoe. I ask the member to continue his speech.MICHAEL WOOD: Thank you Mr Chair. I know that people will be eager to get back to my comments around the definition of the word "is" in clause 45(1)(d) of the bill. I'll just recap clause 45(1)(d) is now reconstructed by the select committee to read "emailing it to the person at an email address that is used by the person." Of course the word "is" is a tense of a kind. It denotes a certain point in time and that really is my question. We've explored to some degree in some of the contributions earlier on the question of multiple email addresses. "Is" denotes that it is an email address that is currently in use. Of course this begs the question of: well how do you define that and how do you determine whether it is a current email address? Does that mean that it is an email address that someone has used within the last week the last month the last year? An email address that has simply been a passive account into which the person receives emails perhaps views them or does "is" denote that it would have to be an active email account by which they're actually responding to emails?The reason that I do ask about this is not so much in terms of the point that the Minister in the chair has made before about the onus being on the business to make sure that up-to-date details are there because we would expect that businesses who are playing it by the book are organised and are wanting to be cooperative would do that. My point really relates to the enforcement side where you might have people who don't want to deal in an honest and upfront way with Government entities who essentially try and play a bit of a game with this provision by arguing that a certain account is not—perhaps because they've deliberately not checked it for a few months because they don't want to be engaging with the entity about a matter that might be in dispute or a matter that might be I don't know heading towards a prosecution or a complaint of some kind. So it would be really helpful to hear from the Minister in the chair if there's been any dialogue with officials or anything like that about how we're going to interpret that word "is" in respect of whether an email account is indeed an active one. I think that would be really good to hear.One of the other questions I had for the Minister—here we go. It's in Subpart 4 and it relates to clause 58(1)(b). I'll just read it out as amended by the select committee "emailing it to the corporation or associated person at an email address that is used by the corporation or associated person." Now originally the text of that clause simply said "emailing it to an email address …" and the select committee has added in the words "the corporation or associated person …". So previously it would've seemed to have been valid as long as the email had gone as long as it had gone to the email address. Now there must be some reason why we've added in the words "[to] the corporation or associated person …" and I'd like to hear from the Minister exactly why that is because that to me would seem to denote that there needs to be some kind of heading or subject line that addresses the particular entity. Again the concern here is that if we have people who are wanting to be cute who are wanting to play with a bit of fancy footwork they might be able to claim that because the email doesn't identify who the corporation or associated person is even though it has gone to their address it may not be valid and the addition of those words would seem to suggest that there is some significance there. So that would be really good—to hear from the Minister as well.The final question that I have relates to clause 51(4). This starts to come to some of the onus of proof. The wording added by the select committee at the end there and this echoes across all subparts is "and in proving that the advice was emailed it is sufficient to prove that the advice was properly addressed and sent to the email address". I think we can all understand the reasons why those words are there. But the fact is that there is always going to be a natural justice cloak that comes across all of the provisions of this Act if ever it is tested in the courts. My hypothetical question to the Minister is: what if we have the situation of a third-party deleter? So if we know that in accordance with the bill the advice was properly addressed it was sent to the correct email address to the person it was meant to go to but somehow possibly unknown to that person a third party a family member or someone else has deleted that email possibly mischievously or possibly not mischievously—there would have to be a natural justice component there and I'd like the answer to that."