Curran Clare: Standards and Accreditation Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCurran Clare: Standards and Accreditation Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 01 July 2015. Volume:706;Page:5039. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South):Well taking up from where my colleague David Clark left off around the impact of the Standards and Accreditation Bill on vulnerable workers and Part 2 with the clause that he referred to earlier I say that this bill will also affect consumers and vulnerable consumers.I want to specifically refer to a submission from the Barrier Free New Zealand Trust which is committed to ensuring that the built environment is accessible to everyone including people with disabilities.Its submission was quite an important submission because what it brought home was why it is so important to have good standards.It talked about consumer confidence and I want to broaden that out into further consumer confidence but for this group—it believes that independence and balance in standards committees is absolutely critical and that there has to be consumer confidence.One of the things about this bill that really worries us on this side of the Chamber is that what this bill is doing is moving away from a system where consumers can feel confident.I think we have raised enough issues tonight and through other speeches about other parts of this bill to actually really red flag what is actually being achieved through this bill.The entity is being taken away from being an independent Crown entity. It is being weakened watered down and absorbed into a major Government department where there is an appearance of independence but where the extraordinary checks and balances that were in the original entity are not replicated in the new entity.The Barrier Free New Zealand Trust says: “Our concern is that should the Standards development and approval process be manipulated in anyway by virtue of its operational requirements sitting within the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment then this could be lost.” I think its submission is actually quite important. I think that if you have got a consumer group that is vulnerable like this it should be significantly listened to.I want to also refer to another submission which was from the Fire Protection Association. This is a completely different organisation. But what it said was: “We are concerned with the very poor quality in thinking and analysis and the lack of even the most rudimentary data evident … MBIE’s apparent (to our mind) obfuscation of its thinly disguised attempt to (to use its own words) ‘capture’ the Standards system—either for its own ends or in response to a very influential lobby …”. It went on to elaborate on those concerns. When you have got that kind of a body saying those kinds of things then there should be major red flags being raised. In Part 2 with the disestablishment of the Standards Council which is going to be replaced with the New Zealand Standards Approval Board—we do not believe that the test has been met for the independence and the probity of the new organisation that will actually ensure that it will provide consumer confidence that will provide industry confidence and that will alleviate the concerns that have been raised.Another submission—I also refer to Patricia Cunniffe’s submission where she talked about consumer confidence and consumer concerns in standardisation. She used some illustrations to raise the issue of how important it is to continue to develop certain standards. Another one of the concerns that was raised was around whether there will be a continuation of the standards being developed that need to be developed to provide that consumer confidence and that industry confidence and also to maintain our international reputation. She uses the example of the standard currently in use for medical alert systems which is a 20-year-old Australian one and says that there is no willingness by any Government department to update this standard as it does not fall neatly into any particular department’s bailiwick. I ask the Minister in the chair Paul Goldsmith tonight: will standards like this be updated under the new regime?The second example is from technologies being developed in isolation with insufficient regard to their interaction. She uses the example that it is known that implanted defibrillators are adversely affected by scanning equipment. Scanning equipment is used not only in airports; it is commonplace in supermarkets for example. The interaction between the two is dealt with by warnings rather than by standardisation. So will we have work being done on those things where new technologies are having impacts on people’s health and where standards need to be developed?The third case was in the building sector where the building code has been developed with insufficient regard for those most at risk in that there are incompatibilities between the code and NZS 4121 the standard relating to requirements for people with disabilities—going back to that issue again.The Malatest report from June 2014 which was Access to Buildings for People with Disabilities considers that “Lack of leadership and coordination has contributed to missed opportunities duplication of efforts and inefficiencies and gaps in knowledge.” I ask the Minister in the chair what he has to say about that. What confidence can he stand up and give this Committee that consumers and those sorts of standards will be looked at under this new regime?Just to conclude two devastating events form the backdrop to this bill and also to the health and safety reforms before Parliament: the Pike River mine explosion in 2010 which killed 29 miners; and the collapse of the CTV Building in February 2011 which killed 115 people.I would just like to remind everybody that Standards New Zealand was established after a similarly shocking tragedy which was the 1931 Hawke’s Bay earthquake which had a death toll of 251 people.Following that event Standards New Zealand was tasked to ensure that future such events did not result in the same loss of life. Well I put it to you Mr Chair and to the Minister in the chair that this bill is not going to maintain that standard and maintain that level of scrutiny of independence and of surety for New Zealand consumers and for industry bodies that are trying to maintain their own reputations and build economic credibility and economic development.Also our international reputation will be affected will be watered down by the impact of this bill.Therefore wecannot support it.