Sepuloni Carmel: Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSepuloni Carmel: Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 04 November 2014. Volume:701;Page:516. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston):I just stand in support of this Organised Crime and Anti-corruption Legislation Bill because Labour does support this bill and it is good to see this bill finally come before the House. It was introduced by the former Minister of Justice Judith Collins but it was never put forward for debate despite her saying she would do so by the end of 2013. Reflecting on the purpose of the bill I note that the aim of this bill is to strengthen the law to combat organised crime and corruption. We on this side of the House certainly are in support of that. The bill allows New Zealand to ratify the United Nations Convention Against Corruption and enables implementation of the agreement between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of New Zealand on enhancing cooperation and preventing and combating crime.Earlier we heard some of our speakers talk about the importance of the ranking that we get internationally from Transparency International. In the past New Zealand has always ranked very high in terms of having a transparent and accountable Government. We are concerned that given recent events that ranking may be negatively affected particularly given some of the recent scandals that the National Government has been involved in and some of the allegations that have been made against the National Government including some of its Ministers and that also implicated the Prime Minister with regard to some behaviour that may not be deemed appropriate for any Government internationally. When the upcoming rankings from Transparency International come out we will be watching very carefully to see whether or not the National Government’s antics the National Government’s unhealthy engagement with—what shall we call them? What types of characters are they?Iain Lees-Galloway: Unseemly.CARMEL SEPULONI: Unseemly characters. We will be watching to see whether or not those relationships and those connections have an impact on our own ranking internationally in terms of transparency. This is very important in terms of how other countries look at us in terms of how we are perceived on the world stage and we have always taken great pride in the fact that we are seen as a country that is not affected by any level of corruption at the Government level. So we will be watching very carefully.We have a proud tradition of being an honest nation that takes a strong stance against organised crime and corruption. For this we have been rewarded with a consistent ranking of being amongst the least corrupt countries in the world. However as I said in recent years this has changed substantially with a lessening of transparency from this Government and multiple flagrant examples of corruption including to name one of many Judith Collins’ own trip to China to promote her husband’s company Oravida which I am sure we in this House are all aware of the media is aware of and the general public are only too aware of. The irony is that Collins was actually on a trip to China to speak about reducing corruption yet she was visiting Oravida to further her husband’s business ties. National continues to look after itself and the privileged few at the expense of Kiwis. I think we have seen that. There is concern generally across the public about that. That type of behaviour can have an impact on the perception around how transparent we are whether our Government is living up to expectations and just whether or not it is living up to the expectations in terms of accountability that you would expect from any First World country.Nowhere was the concern that the country has around corruption shown more clearly than in recent revelations in the Dirty Politics book. It was a real eye-opener for the whole country I think in respect of for instance the fact that some friends of the National Party could access Official Information Act requests much faster than the media or other politicians seeking to hold the Government to account. There was concern about the corrupt nature of that. The circumstances surrounding the resignation of Judith Collins are actually a national disgrace and I think we need to really take that into consideration and touch on that when we are looking at this particular bill which ironically was supposed to be introduced in the House by the former Minister of Justice Judith Collins but she never got to that point. Thank you.