Robertson Grant: Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Robertson Grant: Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 03 April 2012. Volume:679;Page:1596. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour) 
: 
 When we think about why— 
Louise Upston 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. My recollection was that you would terminate the debate. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch) 
: No I would terminate his speech and I have done that. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: There has been a history in this House prior to the last 10 years where there was an unlimited time for consideration by select committees of bills. Clearly that could see bills languish for a significant period of time in a select committee without any particular time line or process for them to come back to Parliament. Then about 10 years ago I am informed by colleagues the practice around a 6-month time line was instituted. This is a pragmatic balance between getting bills through and also giving the public and parliamentarians time to look at them. We all know that the standard period of consultation for public submissions is around 6 weeks. That is a reasonable length of time. There are occasions when holiday periods appear and that causes some difficulty within that period of time. But a 6-week period for public submissions to be gathered is regarded as normal practice. So that sets the bare minimum time that is in fact from my perspective acceptable for most pieces of legislation. To have this instruction for there to be only less than 4 months’ scrutiny for a bill means that having got what I suspect on this particular bill the Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill will be a large number of submissions in a 6-week period the committee will then be heavily restricted in the way that it can address those submissions. We have seen on other bills where there is restricted periods of time for the committee to consider those bills we have seen people reduced to 5 or 10 minutes when they are making a submission on what can be complex legislation. So a 6-month period of time the normal period of time for a piece of legislation gives the committee the ability to both hear from the public and take the advice that they need from the officials who are around them on complex matters. That means often a to-ing and fro-ing about that advice and restricting as the motion does to 4 months or less actually will limit the ability of the committee to properly consider the public submissions properly consider the advice that they are getting from their officials and in the end it does Parliament no service to have a situation where on a complex and important matter a restricted time frame like this is provided. There may be good reason for from time to time truncated select committee processes. But we should move very warily into that— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: None has been provided. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: —as my colleague Mr Mallard says none has been provided to us in this debate—where we find a good and constructive reason that across the House we can agree would support such as a motion as this to restrict it to 4 months or less. So from my point of view the standard process the idea that we have a 6-month period is one that should be protected where possible. It is in part to protect the rights of the public to be heard properly and there will be significant submissions on this bill as there are on most bills of this nature. By truncating it to less than 4 months I fear we will be doing a disservice not only to ourselves and Parliament but to the industries that are covered by this bill and to the people who will want to make submissions on this bill.  
If the Government wants to put motions like this as it did last week and as it is doing this week it has to provide good reason because on this side of the House we will stand up for a process that has history that is robust enough and long enough for the public to have their say and is robust enough and long enough for parliamentarians to do their job properly in a select committee of analysing submissions analysing evidence analysing advice and then reporting back to this House a bill that is the kind of legislation New Zealanders would expect us to pass.  
We know from experience that that takes for most bills of this type 6 months. It is not less than 4 months. I find the phrasing “less than 4 months” interesting. It is a minimalistic view of the fact that hopefully it might be 2 months or it might be 1 month. The reality is that if we keep it where possible to 6 months committees will work in short order when they know that there is an important issue in place. But by setting an arbitrary time like less than 4 months I believe the Government is doing a disservice to this piece of legislation and a disservice to Parliament. I think it is very important that we have debates like this to let the Government know that if it is going to step outside of normal practice it must provide good reasons for doing so. I think in this case the Government has failed that test. By simply arbitrarily saying “less than 4 months” it is clearly setting up a process here that will limit public submission and that will limit the ability of parliamentarians to give scrutiny to the legislation which is the heart of the select committee process.  
I have been a member in this Parliament as an Opposition member only and I can say that in those select committee processes where they go the full 6-month period of time or at least have that capacity to go that period of time we make better law. That is what I have observed—that we make better law when we allow the select committee process to take its course. We do not set arbitrary limits particularly around legislation where there is a significant amount of public interest where there is a significant amount of submissions and where there are complex matters that will require advice from officials and indeed perhaps from beyond officialdom in the case of this piece of legislation.  
I will not take much more time but I do think it is important to note that this is not a frivolous debate. This is a serious debate about whether or not Parliament should step outside of its normal processes—processes that have been developed over a number of years to ensure the public have their say and to ensure that parliamentarians perform the role that the public expect of us. If we are being expected in this House to deviate from that we need good reasons. We have not been provided with those good reasons. We will debate these motions out because the Government cannot just ride roughshod over the practices of this Parliament.