Mitchell MarkHon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to stand and take a call on this the first reading of the Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill. I was looking around the House and trying to see if we had any elite athletes in the House here today that I could refer to. There is one: there's Meka Whaitiri who is sitting on the front bench not because she plays in the parliamentary netball team with Barbara Edmonds but because she actually played at national level in softball and of course was selected for the Silver Ferns as well.I also want to just mention—and the reason why I'm mentioning this is because my own daughter was selected to represent New Zealand which I was extremely proud of as a father in surf boat rowing in the New Zealand surf boat team. I went with the team to Australia where she was competing. But it highlighted for me—and we often hear the stories about it in this country—the fact that there is a big disparity in terms of what we can afford to invest into our elite athletes here in New Zealand and what these bigger countries do in terms of the money that they have available the facilities that they've got and the resources that they can put into their elite and top athletes.So I want to acknowledge us as a country and the outstanding results that we deliver. We punch above our weight without that same funding whether the class of our coaches and sports administration is world-class. But—there is a but"—I actually held the portfolio the sport and recreation portfolio in Opposition for a year. I have to say that on taking up the portfolio very quickly—literally within weeks—I was being approached by some of our elite athletes and they were highlighting a lot of the concerns and issues that are being raised in this bill. I was working very closely with the Minister for Sport and Recreation—Grant Robertson at the time—in his role and I have to say that he was very very good in terms of trying to get bipartisan agreement and some sort of focus on what we needed to do to make sure that we protected the integrity of our sports and our sportspeople coaches and administrators in this country.So it's very easy to support this bill. If I hadn't been in that role then my natural default setting would have been to say "This is just more cost. It's more taxpayers' money to form another agency and have another commissioner." But I think that actually the investment in this is the right investment. I think that one of the things that we really need to do and I can see this bill creating that is try and unlock the tension that comes when there's a dispute between an athlete and either Sport New Zealand or High Performance Sport New Zealand. It's only natural; we're all human. When you're dealing with elite sportspeople they are giving it everything that they have got; they are training as hard as they can often on a semi-professional basis. Of course then you've got coaching and administration that are trying to support and extract the best from that athlete as well and not always is there agreement on how to get that done and how to make that happen. Like the previous speaker Angie Warren-Clark highlighted sadly we have seen very public examples within sports of bullying and poor behaviour which leads of course to serious mental health issues.So I think that the spirit of the bill is absolutely correct in terms of what it's trying to achieve. Like the Hon Michael Woodhouse who is now the portfolio holder said I would like to see our sporting bodies and our codes actually making submissions and coming in front of the Social Services and Community Committee and highlighting if there needs to be any fine tuning if there are any issues if there's anything that they're concerned or worried about. I have the feeling that the committee will work in a bipartisan way on this bill to try and identify those in a genuine manner. Any changes that need to be made to the bill can be made through that process and brought back into the House. I can't see why we wouldn't continue to support this bill. I do think that it's a good one and I wish the committee—I don't sit on the committee myself—all the best in working through this bill in a positive way. Thank you Madam Speaker."