Mark RonRON MARK (Deputy Leader—NZ First): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to take a short call. I understand that my colleague Mahesh Bindra who sat on the Law and Order Committee through this bill's hearings has already spoken but I guess I need to put on the record as the police spokesperson for New Zealand First that we opposed this bill when it was introduced. We have sat through the hearings and heard the evidence and heard the explanations but we remain opposed to this legislation and we will not be voting in support of it. I guess that for New Zealand First we see this as the thin edge of the wedge. We are well used to the introduction of user-pays philosophies and principles. They are the hallmarks of Rogernomics and Ruthanasia" both economic policies that brought along with them user charges. We see this bill as an extension a continuance of that. I guess the thing that worries us when we look at this definition of what makes a fee chargeable is that it introduces an element of grey. It introduces the issues of ambiguity and of interpretation and on that basis it is better simply not to have the definition at all actually. If we just said specifically "This is the one thing that would be charged for—end of story no discussion nothing else." then it might well be worthy of further consideration or reconsideration. But the fact that you have a definition that is itself right now open to debate and open to discussion means that it is ambiguous and means that it can be stretched. Who knows what a police administration might decide to stretch that into beyond here—because of course it does not come back to Parliament to be re-debated; it just requires an Order in Council. So we can say $8.50 today but that does not mean it will not be $10 in a year's time $15 $20 and hello bob's your uncle—before you know it it is $50 a shot. If boards of trustees are required to have police vetting done on all applicants then the next question is: if this cost is so huge and we are going to compensate the police by charging the applicants then what provision has been made in the Budget to up the Ministry of Education's budget by the commensurate amount for every individual applicant for a job in education who might require vetting? Are the boards of trustees going to be compensated for that? We see nothing of that. Therefore it lends more weight to the suspicion that this is really about user charges. Here is the bottom line: if it is only half a million—well bearing in mind that we blew $30 million on a flag-change referendum that nobody wanted half a million dollars—Hon Judith Collins: No it's not.RON MARK: Well the quote that was just given was half a million dollars per annum.Hon Judith Collins: It's a half a million vetting requests.RON MARK: Vetting—OK. So what is the total cost Minister? Because we would say—New Zealand First's philosophy would be this: give the money to the Police in its budget. Allow them to go on doing the work they do in crime prevention law and order and enforcement and give them the appropriate resources to do that. Do not levy the costs back out on to the taxpayer who has already paid the taxes to provide for that one thing that is the Government's first duty which is policing and keeping our people safe. The Government's first duty is the safety of its citizens. The Government's first duty is the protection of its citizens. That means allocating adequate funding adequate resources to the police so that they may do that work that the taxpayers are paying for. To flip it back out again and say "Oh you're going to have to pay for this again."—well that just does not seem right to us. So we will oppose this legislation. The ambiguity the greyness the fact that it smacks very much of an extension into user-pays which we do not agree with tells us that the legislation is actually fraught with problems and should not be proceeding beyond this stage."