SpeechHon MEKA WHAITIRI (Minister of Customs): I'm pleased to take call on the Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill and I want to commend all those that have spoken on this bill for their love and passion for sport and also those who may not have the love and passion for sport. It does not matter because we are all New Zealanders and we descend from a long line of navigators and of explorers—it's in our DNA.I want to commend the Hon Grant Robertson for bringing this Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill. Obviously we've traversed that it will enable the establishment of an independent integrity commission. It will then identify a lot of the concepts and codes that the commission should do.But I want to commend those who referenced their own upbringing with sports. I want to add that as a young child many many years ago I remember actually being chased back into the home by our parents when it was dark because we were out playing. You know those were the days where it was safe to stay out in your communities and play. This was after six hours at school. When you weren't in the classroom you were out on the playground playing whether it was bullrush or tag or whatever.Nicola Grigg: Bullrush—bring back bullrush.Hon MEKA WHAITIRI: Bullrush—yes bullrush. There you go—there you go. But the point being is that as New Zealanders the importance of physical activity is really in how we've been shaped as we are today.This bill is not just about the faults in the sport sector but how we can get back to the days where we're attracting young people into the sector and when they are coming into the sector how we nurture and manaaki them in their journey in that sector.Of course in my observation elite and professional sport has only come to New Zealand in very recent times. I'm only talking about decades ago when many of our top athletes would actually travel overseas fully paid with a stipend. But now as we've morphed and we've evolved into elite and very highly professional sports there is a lot at stake here for many of those athletes or teams that choose to participate in elite professional sport—the enormous sacrifice they make and the hours and hours of training that these top athletes do. Then they're subjected to the selection and they either get in or they don't get in and the heartbreak and we've seen many of those stories in our recent time.This commission and this bill is trying to address that as you make those decisions as young people or not so young people because you've got to remember we've got bowls. We've got very very good bowlers in New Zealand that represent us well at the Olympics. So it's not an ageism thing; it's a recognition that when we enter into a sporting sector we look after them so that people feel that their energies and their commitment to their sport is well considered when decisions are made and when things don't go right we will then have an agreed set of codes that holds everybody to account. Goodness helps the commission and those that are appointed to this board because its focus is on integrity and so those members are going to have to demonstrate a higher level of integrity themselves if they are then going to proceed over all the sporting bodies.I want to make a distinction between elite and professional sports and then our amateur grassroots sports because I really back our amateur and grassroots sports. They are the bread and butter of many of our communities. They do a fantastic job and they are based on volunteers and all the aunties and uncles that turn up at the clubrooms and do the meal after the rugby game or the netball game and do the speeches or put down the hāngī because they are doing an amazing job to keep that particular sport but more importantly the mana of their community is at the heart of what they do.So this piece of legislation that we're reading for the first time is to ensure that our sporting sector the one that we know as proud New Zealanders—we respect the opportunity for those that go into elite and professional sport. But we will also be a beacon of hope for our grassroots amateur sports and we recognise that enormous voluntary support that they give in ensuring that we've got strong communities throughout the country so that when you enter the sport you're looked after you're manaaki-ed and your time in that sport enables you to then turn around and go back and give back to the very community that looked after you. Therefore I support this bill to the House.