Stanford Erica; Mallard TrevorERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you Mr Speaker. I'm pleased to take a call on this bill this evening. If ever there was a bill that was a solution looking for a problem it's this bill. I have to firstly tonight mention the chair of our select committee Duncan Webb. He had a tremendously difficult job with this bill and I have to say he asked more questions probably than even we did. His frustrations with this bill were absolutely clear in the fact that we had to keep pushing things out allowing for more time in the very restricted time we had because the bill was such an absolute incoherent mess. We had a really restricted time frame to do this in and the frustration on the face of Duncan Webb was like I have never seen before. It took a long time and a lot of Zoom calls between us and officials and I have to pay great respect to them because they worked really hard in a very short time frame to get this bill in some kind of a state that we can present it tonight. We will be voting against this bill as I think has become abundantly clear. It was so—I have to say—arrogant of Minister Stuart Nash the Hon Stuart Nash to come out tonight and say that we had no idea what we were talking about that he knew everything that it was all about correcting the market. Well actually I might not have any log traders or any of that industry in my electorate but I sat on the Environment Committee and I listened to every single one of the submitters and 95 percent of them were against the bill. No matter what the Hon Eugenie Sage talks about—failures of the market—not a single one of them came to us and said there is some great failure of the market that there has to be this intervention to correct it.The only place where possibly there was some kind of evidence of that was in Northland—a couple of sawmills that hadn't been invested in that weren't talking to the forestry owners properly and that is where the problem lay. Not a single person around the rest of the country told us that there was a problem. The really interesting—and I know we always talk about submitters in the second reading but I have to always come back to the one New Zealand Forestry who said Look it's OK if you have a registration programme for the industry. That's not a problem. We're happy with that." But the point he was making was that isn't the solution for the purpose—one of the purposes in the purpose statement is to "support the continuous predictable and long-term supply of timber and equity of access of timber for domestic processing and export." Those two things—you know one of those didn't equal the other. What he was trying to say was you can have a registration process for the industry but you're not going to achieve that purpose.So that is why every single one of the submitters that we saw saw this as a Trojan Horse and realised that to achieve that purpose supporting the continuous predictable and long-term supply of timber—that purpose was going to be achieved by something that was hidden in regulations that they hadn't seen. Then for the Minister to come up today in the committee of the whole House stage and say "Don't worry. We're going to consult widely over these regulations. We're going to talk to the industry. They'll have the chance to talk to us. And when we develop these regulations it will all be OK and it'll all be fine."—I made the point back to him that well actually you could forgive them for thinking that's probably not going to happen given that it didn't happen with this bill. They were completely blindsided. It was rushed through under urgency. They only had four working days to submit on the bill which is atrocious. The state of the bill was appalling anyway. For them to understand it respond to it and come and then talk to our select committee in such a short time—every single one of them complained about the process complained about the fact that they had no idea that this was coming down the pipeline. They hadn't been consulted with. Then for them to sit there now and believe that the Minister is going to consult with them widely when it comes to regulations—if they're watching they're probably sitting there thinking well that's probably not going to happen. I mentioned also in the committee stage about the fact that the regulatory impact statement also mentioned the fact that there wasn't proper evidence or there wasn't a longitudinal study that could be relied on for the basis of this bill. In fact they talked about the only research that had been done in fact was "MPI commissioned Forme Consulting Group and Scion in early 2019 to examine the log supply constraints that were emerging in"—which part of the country? Northland—nowhere else but Northland. So the only bit of evidence that they have is from Northland where there are some sawmills that haven't been properly invested in that aren't doing so well. But what we heard from the rest of the country is that there isn't a problem. We heard from sawmills we heard from processors we heard from log traders we heard from growers and no one said that there was a problem and they were all confused by the bill. So you have to agree with them when they said there has to be something hidden in this bill that we're not seeing. For the Minister to dismiss that when he was in the chair tonight is just not good enough. Every single one of them said "This is a Trojan Horse." after they complained about the fact they hadn't had very long to go through the bill and submit. The next thing they said was that in order to achieve the purpose of the bill there's got to be something hidden. That's why they called it a Trojan Horse.As my colleague Scott Simpson mentioned earlier when he talked about the Minister the Hon Stuart Nash's comment about the correction that was needed it just rang these alarm bells because as I pointed out what could possibly go wrong? There is a reason that we don't intervene in these markets especially when the people themselves the stakeholders themselves and the growers and the processors and the sawmills are telling us that there's not a problem and there doesn't need to be intervention. But this Government for some reason believes there is a problem and that the solution lies in this complete incoherent mess of a bill with a hidden agenda. For that reason we will not be supporting the bill this evening.Hon Stuart Nash: Stick to the North Shore issues.ERICA STANFORD: That was uncalled for.Hon Stuart Nash: But it's true.Hon Nathan Guy: Mr Speaker?SPEAKER: I missed it. I'm just going to check that it wasn't an unparliamentary remark. Hon Stuart Nash: No it wasn't.SPEAKER: OK. The Hon Nathan Guy."