Hughes GarethGARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Mr Deputy Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to speak on this the adoption of the Standing Orders Committee's report. One of the problems identified in the committee was how much of parliamentary jargon is totally misunderstood by the public of New Zealand. When we talk about the Standing Orders all we are talking about basically is the rules of Parliament and I agree with part of the jargon-busting recommendations of the report—let us call them the rules of Parliament instead of the Standing Orders. Look the report notes we have got terms such as Supplementary Order Paper which no one has a clue what it means. We should call it what it is—an amendment paper. We have got other things—cognate bills. No one knows what they are. Let us just call them what they are associated bills. A personal bugbear is when the Speaker rises and says: Does this stand part?". It makes no common sense that actually what the Speaker is saying is "Should this be included?". Why can a modern Speaker in the future with future non-jargon rules not say exactly that?Also I have never in my time in Parliament seen such a blistering speech from the Hon Trevor Mallard in response to the Leader of the House Simon Bridges.Hon Simon Bridges: Well you haven't been here long enough then.GARETH HUGHES: I have been here for three terms Mr Bridges and I have been through this committee myself a few times. The fact is that it was outstanding and incredible—the allegations—and I guess we saw the proof in the pudding with the Minister's speech which was basically read verbatim and I question whether in fact he wrote that at all. Maybe he could go to the House and update us.But the fact is that this is a chance—one that happens only every 3 years every triennium—to update Parliament's rules. It is a fantastic opportunity to modernise this and I think I agree with the Hon Trevor Mallard that we have not taken that opportunity. Sure there is a little bit of tinkering a few changes around the margins but not the substantive transformational change that could modernise this House. We see a million New Zealanders who do not vote. So many hundreds of thousands never tune into this House or see the relevance in their daily lives. I have got a vision that this House could be more open more relevant to New Zealanders. We could modernise it so people can not only participate in politics in the Parliament but partake in their democracy and that is exactly what we should be debating. Some of the changes we support—the intent of consulting and making it a more family-friendly Parliament. It is something that is sorely needed. It is something that I have experienced as a father who has raised two kids in this House over my parliamentary career—the challenges you have as a father. We have seen the challenges particularly for mothers in terms of young babies and feeding. We have made some improvements but—as you can see with the former Green MP Holly Walker's book outlining the challenges she faced as a young mum and a member of Parliament—this House does need to up its game to support families and make sure that this the House of Representatives is in fact representative of all New Zealanders including young mums and young dads. In terms of the select committee changes these are pretty rational in terms of reorganisation and minimising the numbers. It makes sense to put the Law and Order Committee and the Justice and Electoral Committee together. A key change and this flows on from the Standing Orders review of the last Parliament was the new expectation that select committees will comment and report on the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act section 7 reports. We get this information and it is important that it is actually included in the report and I think debated by members because it is crucially important that parliamentarians discuss issues of human rights as we consider legislation.Now the area that I am particularly passionate about is the broadcasting rules. I entered Parliament at about the same time as this new rule was brought in that video footage from Parliament could not be used to satirise ridicule or denigrate MPs. The irony is that this rule—this law change—came in at about the same time that the internet and YouTube were taking off. The whole point of the internet is that people can create content. They can mash together content. They can use existing footage and content and repurpose it not just to have a laugh—though there is a lot of good quality content out there. But this is a democratic principle that goes back thousands of years to ancient Greece of the importance of the public to be able to satirise those in positons of power. So I believe this has had a chilling effect on the public democratic discourse in the country. The fact that people could have been brought in front of the Speaker and had a complaint laid against them because they had grabbed a bit of footage from the Parliament's YouTube channel and repurposed it or had a bit of a laugh and added commentary is frankly out of date and anti-democratic. So this is an incredibly positive step forward. Look I urge the public to get involved and to satirise their parliamentarians—their decision makers. It is an important part of our democracy and that is also why we need to update our copyright legislation. This was one barrier against it; our current Copyright Act is another. So there is huge room for improvement as the Hon Trevor Mallard talked about—a huge number of issues that we could have addressed but we have not in this report because it is tinkering in a few marginal changes. Urgency is a particularly important one. All members in this House would have seen legislation passed under urgency when it did not have to happen that way. It should happen only in extraordinary circumstances and I personally would support that recommendation for a 75 percent majority. But the biggest thing is that technology is fundamentally changing the way that the public is interacting with politicians and their democracy—all of this is ignored in the report. We should be having the conversation that was recently opened by Max Rashbrooke in his recent report into how democracy is changing and how we can open up access to political debate. We should be having the debate about how we can use new technology; how we could get the public to crowdsource legislation as is happening in other countries; how we could update and modernise our referendum and petition laws to allow people to harness the power of the internet—basically how we can as a representative body actually more actively transparently and openly represent the people of New Zealand so that their views can be heard in this House. We could be a pioneering country in terms of the opening up of our democracy by utilising new technologies as part of our political decision-making and legislative process. There is a huge amount of work that we could be doing. Look let us have that conversation next term. We could be one of the most modern open and transparent Parliaments in the world. It is not going to happen as a result of this report—despite some of the positive changes—but I am really excited about having that conversation next term about how we can have an open transparent and modern parliamentary democracy in New Zealand. Kia ora Mr Deputy Speaker."