Robertson Grant: International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 15 September 2015. Volume:708;Page:6613. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): I do thank the Minister of Finance for that explanation of the thinking behind this motion; however I want to say at the outset that the practice of the Government of coming to this House with truncated select committee processes is one that Labour regards with—I guess the best word is “suspicion”. Frankly it happens too often and it goes against what is good practice in this Parliament. Of course there will be reasons from time to time why a piece of legislation needs a short select committee turn-round. It may be a matter of particular urgency that has arisen; it may simply be because the issues involved are ones that are completely non-controversial and there are no issues that need to be considered. But actually that situation will be extremely rare and once again I think that we have got a piece of legislation here that is getting a truncated select committee process because the Government cannot manage its own business.If we look at some of the dates involved in this situation the original finalisation of the text was adopted at the fifth chief negotiators meeting on 22 May. New Zealand then finalised its signatory to the agreement on 29 June. What was happening after that? Why did it then take until August for the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee to be able to give its report to Parliament? The committee met on 28 July and then on 20 August. There is just this constant slippage in the process. So you have an agreement that is actually signed off in May that New Zealand signs up to in June that eventually finds its way to the committee towards the end of July that emerges out of the committee in August and that gets to Parliament here in September. At some point did someone on the Government benches go: “You know what we actually need to get a wriggle on here if we are going to get this passed by the end of the year.”?Dr Megan Woods: Gerry should’ve.GRANT ROBERTSON: The Leader of the House—the last time that we did this was only on the last sitting day of Parliament—the Leader of the House’s management of the legislative programme is hopeless. What happens is that members of Parliament and members of the public are the ones who suffer as a result of that. I take the point that the Minister has made that the matters covered in this bill have had a reasonable amount of examination by the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee but that does not reduce the importance of the public seeing this legislation and having the chance to comment on it or MPs having a chance to consider the full range of issues that will arise. I actually believe that if the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee were simply given the information that this bill needs to be enacted before the end of the year it is quite within its power and wit to say: “Yup we understand that.” It is a pretty good committee; it operates fairly collegially. It would get the bill reported back with plenty of time but without this arbitrary restriction around it being reported back by 22 October.So it is with regret that we are not going to be able to support this. It places pressure on all parties in Parliament. The Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee has representatives of smaller parties in this House. Those members find it very hard to be able to attend select committee meetings when the House is sitting because they do not have the resources. It is even a stretch for other larger parties to have that. It interferes with the business of MPs who perhaps are not available on Fridays or on other days on which this motion would allow the select committee to meet. So it is extremely disappointing from this side of the House.These are serious issues within this bill. We support the New Zealand signatory to the establishment of the bank through this piece of legislation but nobody including the Minister of Finance has stood up here today and said that this is without risk or that this is without issues around governance which need to be clearly sorted through. We need to give the public the opportunity to be a part of that debate. New Zealand is contributing over $100 million. This is a new venture in terms of how to fund infrastructure in the Asian region. It goes against what some of our traditional allies would want so that is a serious matter as well. All of these are matters that deserve full and proper public attention and I simply do not think that it is good enough for the Government’s disorganisation to be the cause of limited involvement by the public. If there is another good reason by all means but that is not how it appears to us on this side of the House. We know that this legislation could have been in front of the House any time from the end of June onwards and the failure of the Government to get a piece of legislation together in time so that we do not need a truncated select committee process is ridiculous.I do also just want to finish my comments by saying that I think we need to treat individual committees with some respect. The Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee would have been capable of making a decision about getting this bill back so that we can sign it up so that it is all sealed and delivered before the end of the year so that we will be there when the bank first kicks off its operations. I am very disappointed that this motion has found its way to the House. It is unfortunately becoming a pattern from this Government to have truncated select committee processes. We do not think that that is good enough and we will oppose measures unless there is a very good reason to support them.