Hipkins Chris: Advanced Technology Institute Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hipkins Chris: Advanced Technology Institute Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 13 September 2012. Volume:683;Page:5252. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 The previous speaker Tracey Martin finished slightly before I was anticipating. I am very happy to take a call to discuss this procedural motion in what is a relatively new process for the House. I was on the Standing Orders Committee when the committee made the determination that a motion such as this to truncate a select committee process should be a debatable motion. It was something that the Standing Orders Committee spent quite some time considering. We saw that with many of the new powers that the Government was given by that Standing Orders review including extended sittings and so on there had to be some trade-offs to that and this was one of them. 
Truncating a select committee process does infringe quite seriously on the rights of members to participate fully in all aspects of the parliamentary process. What this motion does for example is it basically says that if the select committee chair decides to call a meeting of this committee while the House is sitting and there are items on the Order Paper being debated in the Chamber that a member of that committee wishes to participate in the debate around they will not be able to. They will be prevented from being able to participate in that debate. 
The committee can already do by consensus all of the things that this motion gives it the power to do. If the members had decided that actually there was no good reason why they could not meet while the House was sitting because there was nothing on the Order Paper that they particularly wanted to participate in then the committee could decide that for themselves. But what this does is it takes that decision away from the committee and it gives the chair the exclusive power to make that determination even if other members on the committee want to participate in other proceedings in the House. I do not think that that is right and it is a significant constraint on the rights of members to participate in the activities of the House to represent their constituents and to do the job that we are paid to do. That is the first point. I think that we need to be really careful when the Parliament as we are being asked to do now votes to take away the rights of members. That is effectively what the Government is now asking us to do. 
This bill the Advanced Technology Institute Bill is being referred to the Education and Science Committee which I understand from the New Zealand First member Tracey Martin who just spoke works on a relatively collaborative basis and has a few items of business on the agenda that it is dealing with at the moment. But I am told by my colleague that it does not actually have any other legislation on the agenda at the moment. So it should actually be able to accommodate this if it was given a reasonable time frame—if it was given a time frame that was not truncated that was not less than the 4 months. The Government can shorten the time frame from 6 months to 4 months without needing to go through the process that it is going through now. In 4 months—given the workload I understand of the Education and Science Committee—it should be able to accommodate the robust process within that time frame if it was not being forced to rush it through. 
As I said if there is a desire to meet outside of Wellington for example as this motion gives the committee the power to do the committee can already do that through a number of ways. The Business Committee regularly considers requests from select committees to meet outside of Wellington and I think that we have adopted quite a collaborative approach to dealing with those requests through the Business Committee. The Opposition has actually gone out of our way to support many of those committees in meeting outside of Wellington. I think that that is— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: The National Party wants to destroy that positive relationship. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: That is right. The Government is basically saying that it does not want to collaborate with other parties in Parliament. It is going to just ride roughshod over that and do what it wants to do. I actually think that since the Standing Orders were changed—and this debate as I mentioned earlier that I am taking part in now was one of the changes made by the Standing Orders Committee—the Business Committee has actually adopted a very collaborative approach to assisting the Government to achieve the things that it wants to achieve. We have cooperated with it on extended sitting hours which is unprecedented. It has gained a huge number of extra sitting hours that it would otherwise have had to use urgency for. In fact even if it had used urgency it could not have done some of the things that we have done using those new powers for extended sitting—even under urgency. In some cases—the Treaty settlement bills are really good examples—we have grouped things up. It is relevant Mr Speaker because it is all part of the trade-off that exists around processes in the House. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: Order! This debate is confined to why this should be truncated. We are not talking about trade-offs or decisions around that. I have been listening very very carefully and I just ask the member to speak about the reasons why. He has been on track and then drifted off. I am asking him to return. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I also was listening very carefully to the member and what I would like to put to you is that he was talking about the new processes of the House and whether or not we should support those processes being applied to this bill. What he was pointing out was that those processes are part of a package and that package includes general cooperation. I think what he was saying is that if the Government goes down this line— 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: Order! I have heard the member and I have deemed that to be outside the scope. Cooperation is not but to relitigate the business of the Standing Orders Committee in relation to this is. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: One of the reasons that I am opposed to truncating the time frame for this—well there are two reasons that I want to go into. The first is around what that does to the democratic rights of the people who are affected by the bill and the second is what that does to the functioning of Parliament particularly around cost. I will deal with the second one first—the issue around cost. A truncated process is actually quite an expensive process. Consider for example travel. If this committee is being given the power to travel to hear proceedings outside of Wellington at relatively short notice that is going to be more expensive. It cannot book—for example my colleague Megan Woods pointed out to me that you cannot get Grabaseat tickets for many of these things if we do not have sufficient time to plan ahead for those. We cannot get the cheapest airfares for example. So it is not necessarily going to be cheaper. There is cost associated with haste. My colleague Kris Faafoi pointed out to me earlier on that there is no dignity in haste. I think that is something that this Parliament should really take into account. 
Coming back to the first point that I raised about the risk of a rushed process members of the public who are going to be affected by this bill will not have sufficient opportunity to actually have a say in it and to make submissions. So for example—and I know I am not allowed to deal with the substance of the bill in this debate but I think it should be noted—the establishment board has a real lack of scientists on it. Scientists might have a view on that and they might want to come to the committee and prepare a considered submission. Bearing in mind that the committee probably will not meet until next week to open submissions can scientists prepare a considered submission if that committee gets the bill next week? It will advertise for submissions open submissions and give people only maybe a week or two to make their submissions. The committee has only a week or two to hear them then a week or two to consider them and then the bill has to be reported back to the House. How on earth is that going to actually allow for due proper consideration and for a depth of thought to go into that process? It is not. 
Basically if we pass this resolution what this House is saying to the committee is actually to not worry too much about the process as the outcome has been predetermined. The Government already knows what it wants to do. It is simply going through the motions of sending this to a select committee but it does not actually expect it to change. It is not going to give the select committee sufficient time to run a proper process so that errors in the bill or improvements might be identified and so that the people who actually have expertise have an opportunity to have a say. The Government does not want the committee to have that ability. I think that that is a very very bad message for it to send. 
This is quite an important issue and it is one where we have offered cooperation to the Government by supporting the substance of the bill but we are very concerned about the process. Our support for the bill of course may be potentially contingent on the outcome of the next part of the process. If that next part of the process is rushed that may well compromise the level of support the bill gets for the remaining stages as it progresses through the House. If we do not think that people have had an adequate chance to look at the bill in detail to consider where improvements might need to be made then we might not necessarily support the bill through the remaining stages. So it is quite a serious issue. It is not something that we have seen—I think this is only the second time since the Standing Orders were changed that the House has been asked to consider a motion like this. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: It might be the third. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: Possibly the third Trevor Mallard is suggesting. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: One slipped through earlier. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: One slipped through that we did not debate because it was the first time. But this is uncommon. It is not common practice in this House and it is not to be encouraged. I think it is important that the House takes some time as we have been doing this evening to actually examine whether or not there is good cause in every case where this kind of motion is put forward for a truncated process and for overriding the rights of members of Parliament to fully participate in the processes of the House. I do not think on my reading of the bill that there is. I am very disappointed that in moving this resolution the Government did not put forward a case for doing so. I think that is really important. If the Government is going to move a shortened process it is incumbent on the Minister doing so to at least—even if it is only a few sentences—give some explanation of why it thinks the process should be shortened. And yet we got absolutely nothing at all from the Minister who moved the procedural motion. So there is no justification for truncating this process. The Government has not even bothered trying to assert one so the Labour Party will certainly be opposing this procedural motion.