Goudie Sandra: Standards and Conformance Bill — In Committee 
Goudie Sandra: Standards and Conformance Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:634;Page:5399] 
SANDRA GOUDIE (National—Coromandel) 
: 
 I appreciate the opportunity to have some input into this debate. I am particularly concerned when I look at this bill; I am really delighted that my colleagues and National are opposing it. I think that it is quite scary when we see Labour making such amendments in legislation. When we look at Part 1 “clause 7: “Functions of council” we see that subclause (4) states: “Section 10(2)(h) of the principal act is amended by inserting after the word “standards” the words “and other specifications”. To me that is broad in the extreme. What does “and other specifications” really say about what we can expect in the future? 
I am mindful of a recent press release about cars. If one also takes into account environmental and social responsibility where will the emphasis be? If we look at the latest press release about small cars being death traps we see that it says that smaller vehicles are built as economically as possible and the biggest economy is attached to safety features. So yes small vehicles have a saving in terms of fuel consumption but safety features are sacrificed as a consequence. So will we support small vehicles because they seem to be more environmentally friendly or will we oppose small vehicles because they have a much greater personal risk to people’s health and safety? The article goes on to say that there are a lot of problems in providing adequate performance protection. If specifications or standards are being set which one will take precedence—the environment or people’s safety? Who will weigh up those sorts of issues when it comes to setting standards or indeed specifications? Here “specifications” are a pretty broad brush and can be applied to just about anything. 
When I was listening to my colleague Mr Chris Tremain earlier I was very impressed with his presentation and with his reacquainting us with the intention of standards—that is to facilitate domestic and international trade. I would say that the Government has failed miserably in that regard when one thinks about honey imports and the standards it applies there. The Government is putting our whole agricultural and horticultural sector at risk because those standards are not robust. The Government acknowledges that they are not yet it has taken that on board and still made the decision to allow honey to be imported into New Zealand that is not heated to its optimum in order to ensure we do not have diseases coming into this country and putting the rest of our horticultural and agricultural sectors at risk. 
This bill was supposed to enhance public confidence in the setting of standards but in no way does it do that. What else does this bill say? Clause 7(5) states: “Section 10(2)(i) of the principal Act is amended by adding the words ‘or that the Minister may direct it to perform in accordance with section 112 of the Crown Entities Act 2004’.” What does section 112 state? It states: “If an Act or a Crown entity company’s constitution gives the responsible Minister power to add to the functions of a Crown entity the Minister may direct the entity to perform any additional function that is so added and that is consistent with the entity’s objectives.” This bill now gives the Minister the power to direct it to perform any other functions that the Minister deems acceptable and again that could be broad in the extreme. I have absolutely no faith in this Government particularly with its record around fiscal responsibility and indeed around compliance costs. 
I think two of the most telling submissions were from Telarc and from Health and Disability Auditing New Zealand Ltd. Both made very clear submissions and in fact did the work for this Government of identifying what the compliance costs would be. What did this Government do? It completely ignored the content of those submissions around compliance costs. It completely dismissed those concerns that were raised. Health and Disability Auditing New Zealand Ltd made it quite clear by setting out graphs and identifying all the figures. It was going to cost that company $155000 compared to $18000. I think that is absolutely abominable. I can believe that this Government would be so ignorant of the effect of the introduction of this bill on other entities. Telarc itself also goes on to outline some of the costs in its submission.