Tisch Lindsay: Standards and Accreditation Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTisch Lindsay: Standards and Accreditation Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 01 July 2015. Volume:706;Page:5020. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Members the House in Committee on the Standards and Accreditation Bill is resumed. Before the dinner break we were debating Part 1. Fletcher Tabuteau had the call and he has 4 minutes and 35 seconds remaining if he wishes.FLETCHER TABUTEAU: It would be my special delight to carry on speaking after dinner. What I had started saying was that the intent of this bill when you look at it on paper is wonderful. It says something to the effect that the New Zealand standards and accreditation system functions well it meets the need of business regulators and consumers and we are going to consolidate and conform and make it all work well. That sounds fantastic but actually we are at a stage now where we have come to the Committee of the whole House and despite good respectful and intelligent contributions from the public from industry and from experts I would assert—and I will go through each part point by point—that the Government has not listened. It does not seem to have taken any of that good advice on board.So we stand here today and the meaning and the essential nature of this debate is so important tonight because the Government and its members need to hear that there are still issues. For example—and it was spoken of earlier—one of the key concerns centres around the lack of independence of the New Zealand Standards Approval Board and the renamed Accreditation Council. It was raised in the Commerce Committee. Many submitters spoke to the apparent lack of independence and they spoke about how it has been absorbed into the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment structure. Just as a commentary on the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment structure it was a laudable goal to bring all these disparate parts together and try to create some synergies with this kind of superministry but it is a disparate conglomeration of dysfunctional parts. If we add this to that Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment structure I do not think that you will—and I assert strongly that you will not—achieve what the Government sets out and puts down on paper.There have been no substantial changes to the appointment process. This was raised many a time. I spoke on it myself. Members of the Opposition spoke on this repeatedly and said that the Minister has too much power. The Minister is in charge of the appointment of every single person on this board of this committee. It is not good enough. Ministerial appointments and the orders of council bypass the democratic process. New Zealand First asserts that we are bypassing the democratic process and we are not giving each and every New Zealander their say. There was a part in the legislation where it speaks about how the Minister can appoint on advice from the industry but that is an option—it is not absolutely required. It is still too much power for the Minister. It is reflective of much of the National Government’s legislation of late where more and more of the selection of panels advisory committees or boards are in the hands of the Minister and seem to bypass a good reasonable and fair democratic process in terms of selection and therefore in terms of representation.We continue to be concerned about statements made by the regulatory impact statement that if the new body sat within the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment there would be cost savings. Although the legislation speaks about recovering costs actually when you do the analysis of those parts it is pretty hard for the Government to prove that. Yes actually it is in the legislation that we will recoup our costs but it has not been proven. The analysis on the advice given still suggests that this Government actually is not creating efficiencies and it is—David Bennett: Why didn’t you vote for Ron?FLETCHER TABUTEAU: Haha! You have thrown me Bennett.New Zealand First strongly believes that our much-valued international reputation regarding safe accredited standards for goods and services processes or practices will not be upheld. One of the submissions was from one of our Australian counterparts and the Australian standards authority—excuse me if I have got the name wrong—spoke very clearly about clause 20 of the bill and how there was a lack of clarity in terms of understanding just what the legislation sets out to achieve. So we are being advised by comparable bodies comparable groups from our brother across the Tasman there our cousin across the Tasman and they are telling us that there is ambiguity in the legislation. They are suggesting that it needs to be tightened up.That was clause 20 but all parts of the bill—for example in clause 3 we arereplacing the word “public” with “individuals” and it has been discussed. It was about a definition and it was about accountability and it was bringing it down literally to the individual so that we knew what we were trying to achieve. What is the “public”—what does that mean—whereas if we are dealing on an individual basis we have some clarity; we have some understanding. There was a lot of debate around the definitions used in the legislationin clause 4(1). So for example “accreditation” is a term that was essential to the purpose of the bill but “testing” and “testing laboratory” are adequately defined in other pieces of legislation. So there is redundancy in the legislation and it just adds to the confusion because actually the bill itself is confusing as a whole.The next clauses clause 4(2) and clause 17 talk about conflicts of interest. The proposed amendments would target those with a personal conflict that was so large as to have a real bearing on the carrying out of the undertaking as a board member as a committee member or in the expert role but I think what we should do here and what we acknowledge is that the approach taken in clause 17 as introduced could have cast its net more broadly than intended and may have excluded some experts with knowledge crucial to the standards development committee. So although we applaud on the one hand the recognition that there is definitely the possibility of a conflict of interest and it needs to be addressed the definition in the legislation is actually perhaps too broad it was suggested and actually experts themselves might be considered as being defined as having a conflict of interest so they would not be able to contribute to the discussions as per relevant standards.It was recommended in clause 16A which requires nominees to declare any personal interests at the time of nomination that this could be part of the solution—provide more detailed functions of the committee chairperson so that you understand exactly where the conflict of interest might lie. Those were just some suggestions presented to the select committee. Again there does not seem to have been any movement and there does not seem to have been any attempt to listen to the advice provided. It was recommended that clause 7 would require the Standards Executive work programme to be published to make clear that access to archive standards so that there was access to the standards so that we would see what the decision-making process was. It is technical but in terms of your standards and accreditation how else are you going to go back and understand what it is that has come before and what it is that you are trying to achieve? Clause 20—