Kuriger BarbaraBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you Mr Speaker. Well this is just another example of Government knows best and actually no one's ever going to convince me that any Government knows better than an industry. So this Forests (Regulation of Log Traders and Forestry Advisers) Amendment Bill in its current form risks being excessively burdensome. I actually worry about what I'm hearing from my colleagues that sat on the Environment Committee. We have select committees for a reason. We have select committees so that the public and the industry can come in and tell us what is good and bad about a piece of legislation that's going to be introduced.The forestry sector has said they simply don't want this bill and they view it as a means to pinning down the industry. In fact the Forest Owners Association has labelled this new bill as an avalanche of clipboards. And what do clipboards do? They don't enhance an industry. All they do is bog it down in red tape. We've heard tonight from the Green Party that the Nats don't like regulation. Well we don't like over-regulation. There are some regulations—baseline regulations—that we need in any industry but actually the only thing that is ever going to fix any industry is the industry itself. So this bill was introduced in urgency. It was dropped on us just after we got back to Parliament out of COVID. I think we were only at half capacity at that point. We weren't all back. This is only the second sitting block where we've been all back. There were out of 640 submissions only 11 that supported the bill meaning almost 98 percent of submitters opposed it. If I can say to the Minister well 640 minus 11 is 629 people opposing this bill. Now what I don't like about that is that shortened legislation can end up having unintended consequences. Shortened legislation is bad legislation.I'll give you an example. So oil and gas shortened legislation—Jonathan Young my good colleague and I tried to get a select committee day in Taranaki the heart of oil and gas. But no you know the Government doesn't want to hear what Taranaki people have to say about oil and gas. Well Jonathan Young's just informed me recently that there's a new terminology out there and it's called non-gas thermal capacity. That is code for coal right? So now we are heading down the coal path. So this bill is another recipe for failure by a Government who comes in wants to over-regulate an industry wants to know best and wants to make sure that they have all the regulations and rules in place. I'm really disappointed actually that our members said the Government MPs blocked Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) officials from briefing the select committee on what the consequences of this bill could potentially have on New Zealand trade and that could negatively affect us through the World Trade Organization. Now in my mind any select committee that would ignore advice from an organisation or not want to actually have a briefing from an organisation like MFAT on a bill that supposedly is affecting trade in any industry is just blocking its ears to what needs to be heard. The last thing I'd say on this is that they're talking about the shift to compulsory registration. There's potential for practitioners with extensive industry experience but few formal qualifications to be disadvantaged. Then you've got the young up-and-comers coming through who could be caught by this. It's almost Oh well if they don't want to go down the registration path we'll go and find them another place here." You know there are some long-term people in this industry with skills and just because they don't have—there's nothing wrong with qualifications. Qualifications are good but actually some of these people learn from the university of life and it just makes me mad when I see things like that. These people are going to be relatively discarded because they don't have a qualification. So it's time to wake up. It's time to show that the industry knows best not the Government. We do not support this bill."