Mallard Trevor: Lobbying Disclosure Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Mallard Trevor: Lobbying Disclosure Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 25 July 2012. Volume:682;Page:3963. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
I want to talk about the underlying values that should drive this which is about increased transparency around professional lobbyists and those who are basically seeking influence for money. I think that we definitely want to see greater transparency around that and I think that is something that is universally supported. 
I do want to talk however about some of the practical realities of being a constituency member of Parliament and what this bill might actually mean for constituency members of Parliament. I want to start with the plumbers because I have a group of plumbers in my electorate who are very passionate about the regulatory environment for plumbers at the moment. They have had quite a few issues under both Labour and National Governments that they are very vocal about. They have come to me as their local member of Parliament to express their dissatisfaction. Technically because they are paid—they are coming to me in their paid capacity—they are covered as lobbyists under this piece of legislation. Church ministers will come to speak to me in their capacity as a minister of the church to talk about issues that are impacting on citizens in my electorate and that is something that I want to actively encourage. I want to make sure that people in my electorate know that my door is open and that they can come and talk to me about any number of issues. 
One of the things many constituency members of Parliament do is we effectively act as troubleshooters for people sometimes in relation to paid employment issues. Under the current wording of this bill some of those would be required to be disclosed if this bill is implemented in its present form. I think that far from improving our democratic system and improving transparency around it it would actually act as a deterrent for people to speak to their members of Parliament about very legitimate things. There are some people who come to speak to a member of Parliament who would not do so if it was going to automatically become public that they did. I actually think that that would hinder the democratic process and in fact be very very damaging. 
I accept that the Green Party probably does not have the active constituency offices that the Labour members of Parliament and the National members of Parliament do and I know they choose to spend their parliamentary resources on other things but the constituency members of Parliament will certainly all agree that in fact we deal with quite a number of quite sensitive issues in constituency offices. That is something that I will very very jealously guard because I think it would be very detrimental to our democratic system if people felt that they could not come to speak to their members of Parliament without that having to be disclosed. 
I have had some round table - like discussions in my office around a whole variety of issues that have involved— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Not Business Roundtable. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: —not Business Roundtable; we have had round-table discussions—getting a whole lot of people who are involved in an issue in the office to actually sort out problems. Some of them are paid to be there because you know they may be connected to the case in some way. They may a lawyer involved in it somehow it may be a business that is involved in it somehow and they are not there to lobby. They are there because we are trying to solve a problem that may involve a family issue for example. Those are the sorts of things that are quite sensitive and I think those people need to be able to know that their member of Parliament can help them with those issues without it having to be disclosed to the general public. So I am concerned that one of the effects of this bill is that it would require that and therefore it would act as a detriment to that happening. 
As I said the intention of the bill overall is a good one. It is about getting greater transparency around the work of professional lobbyists and certainly that is something that I fully support. I think there are other things that are not covered by this bill that we need to look at around the way the Parliament operates and that environment as well. I would also point out however that we have a very open system at the moment and we do have some systems in place—for example the Register of Pecuniary Interests of Members of Parliament—that help to safeguard our democratic process from those who are effectively trying to buy influence. So our system is good. The intention of the bill is good but some of the practical impacts of it are not good. We are going to be monitoring this very closely.