Ross Jami-LeeJAMI-LEE ROSS (Botany): I have to say listening from up the back here listening to the Minister and listening to Jacqui Dean provide their reasons not to support a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) it struck me that if we are to accept those two reasons given what is the whole point of having a committee stage? Jacqui Dean effectively just said that unless an SOP has had public input unless it's something which has been debated and consulted on then it would be—and here is her word—inappropriate for it to be considered by the committee.Just think about what she just said. She just effectively said that any SOP that any Opposition comes up with that hasn't been consulted on with the public is inappropriate. I think that just says that everything that gets put forward from now on by the National Party by way of SOP is to use her definition inappropriate. That is effectively what she just said. I realise that they hate me so much that it will be difficult for them to support an SOP that I've put forward. Even when that SOP mirrors what one of their own members has in the members' bills ballot they're still going to vote against it even though they support it it's been through their caucus and they know that it wants to happen.The fact is that they now have a standard for Supplementary Order Papers. The National Party's standard for Supplementary Order Papers now is that anything that hasn't been consulted on is inappropriate. So the next time Government MPs front up with hundreds of SOPs to delay Government business—that's inappropriate by the National Party's standard. The National Party doesn't believe the committee stage should effectively exist any more because they think any SOPs that haven't been consulted on are inappropriate. That has got to be one of the most pathetic excuses for voting against an SOP I've ever heard but it is the reason they're using to vote against something that is already in the ballot under one of their MPs' names. It was a member's bill that I drafted originally; it was handed to another MP later on and it sits in the ballot right now. That's why they're voting against their own policy by way of this SOP—SOP 199. Minister respectfully—because hey one does not have guns on both sides—to effectively say that we can't support an SOP because the bill is only doing small technical things is a pretty poor excuse too. I mean the scope of the bill is determined by the Chair. If this is so foreign to the scope of the bill then the Chair could rule it out. The Chair hasn't ruled it out unless he's about to change his mind. This does put in place some suggestions that I think would be helpful and in fact it would seem logical that members of a local authority should have greater access to information. One of the changes for example that I'm proposing in this SOP is that a chief executive can't charge a member of a local authority for access to information. Let's just run through that for a second. A councillor on any council can ask for information from the chief executive. The chief executive can charge money to provide that information to the councillor. Do we think that's right? Do we think people in governance positions in local authorities dealing with multimillion-dollar—or in some cases like Auckland potentially multibillion-dollar—decisions should be charged for getting access to information that the chief executive holds? It would be like saying members of Parliament should be charged money for access to information that we might be seeking by way of the Official Information Act or by way of written questions. It's such a logical situation for us to have where members of a local authority are not charged for access to information. I say respectfully to the Minister if we're talking about tidy-ups in the local government set of legislation then a tidy-up should be that we don't charge members of a local authority for access to information and a tidy-up should be that there should be greater ability for a member of a local authority to access information. To say no to this SOP simply because we wanted the bill to be quite narrow—that's a ridiculous reason respectfully to say no to an SOP.So now that I've just had a crack at everyone in the House I'll sit back and go back into my hole but you know it is not inappropriate to put forward ideas it is not inappropriate to put forward SOPs and if that is the new standard that we're setting in this Chamber what is the very point of having a committee stage? I say to the National Party that they should reflect on whether they believe now that SOPs are inappropriate because that's now the position that they've just established.