Genter Julie Anne: Standards and Accreditation Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGenter Julie Anne: Standards and Accreditation Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 19 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3417. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): The Green Party supported the Standards and Accreditation Bill initially at first reading to select committee and we certainly support the direction or intent that it is meant to implement. But unfortunately during the select committee process which my colleague James Shaw was involved in there were a number of concerns raised by submitters and we do not believe that the legislation addresses those concerns to such an extent that we can support it at this stage. I have to start probably by saying just how fundamentally important standards are. It is incredibly important that we have a process for setting them that is robust informed and absolutely independent. The previous speaker the Hon Judith Collins mentioned the leaky buildings fiasco and of course the leaky buildings fiasco came about because of changes to the standards that were made by a National Government which—Melissa Lee: Actually it was Labour.JULIE ANNE GENTER: Well there were changes made by Labour and by National and it was indeed Treasury that did not take the advice of the experts who were sitting in on the meetings and who said that it was not the Government’s role to regulate this sort of thing and that the standards of buildings would be sorted out in case law. I think the reason why we are quite concerned about this National Government introducing such a fundamental change to the process for setting standards is because there has been a pattern with this National Government of influence by businesses and industry and making decisions that make their lives easier in the short term but ultimately that can end up costing us all in the long term because what is cheaper and better for some players in the short term is not necessarily what is best for everyone—for consumers and for residents here in New Zealand. So it is incredibly important that we have a robust independent informed process for setting the standards.This bill is proposing quite a shake-up to the current system. I am not arguing that it does not need a shake-up but the main reason for the changes that was listed is that it is not financially sustainable within its current business model and its operating environment. What has not come through in the select committee process at all is how this changed process is going to solve that problem of financial sustainability so it is unclear that there are going to be any cost savings. It is possible that they will be recovering the cost through user chargers so that is just shifting the cost elsewhere and it is certainly has not been demonstrated that that is going to have a better result for the standard-setting process.The other two issues that my colleague James Shaw raised which we are still concerned about are first the fact that the legislation is not going to deal with the issue of parallel processing which is the ability for the multiple standards to be progressed at the same time. So there is a capacity issue which is not likely to be solved by the new model. And finally there is the perception of independence which was raised by a number of submitters. It is clearly very important to us as a trading nation that we are perceived to have a robust independent system for setting standards that can give consumers and other countries confidence in our standard-setting process.I would just like to raise the issue—because obviously we hear a lot from this National Government that because we are a trading nation we have to make it easier to trade and make it easier for businesses to do business—and point out that some of the most successful trading nations on the planet at the moment have very very high standards. They have robust processes and they are quite strict and yet they manage to be successful manufacturing economies that make their way on exports. Examples I am thinking of are like Germany which has a much different approach to its building standards and as a result it has healthier buildings longer-lasting buildings and more energy-efficient buildings. If we are going to tackle the crises of climate change and of inequality then standards are going to be essential to that. Some of the standards that have been set in the past have actually led us to an outcome where we have less-healthy buildings more energy-intensive buildings and it is through this process of standards that we can start to actually reduce the energy consumption of the economy to have healthier homes and longer-lasting homes. We need to ensure that we have a good process for setting those standards and we are not convinced that this bill is making the right changes.