SpeechHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you Madam Speaker. Like the Minister and a vast number of New Zealanders I am a sports nut. I absolutely love my sport and Sunday afternoon was spent channel surfing between Melbourne's Formula One racing event and that spectacular come-from-behind victory by the Warriors over the Sharks and we really—Hon David Bennett: You missed the Chiefs mate.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Well you see we won't get into the Chiefs. I was trying not to be too parochial by picking a sport that the House knew I wasn't particularly enamoured with but now that you've mentioned it the Highlanders did have a cracking good win despite their injury list. But we also know sport is actually really big business. You know if you think about those sports—rugby union rugby league and certainly Formula One—there's a significant amount of money involved by the athletes by the sponsors by the organisers and at the elite level at least and certainly at pre-elite and elite level. There is a tremendous amount of pressure on all of the stakeholders in sport. In their introduction to the report of the Play Active Recreation and Sport Integrity Working Group which was released nearly a year ago there was a disturbing list of anecdotes about how that kind of pressure manifests in terms of bullying athletes quitting the mental health struggles of certain athletes abuse being normalised players being offended humiliated or intimidated sexual abuse allegations of homophobia and sexism. Now I think they are quite minor in their incidence but they're incredibly serious when they occur and they risk reputational risk for those sports and our country. But also there is a tremendous burden and pressure on those who are victims of that sort of behaviour. Now of course things came to a head with the tragedy that was the death of Olivia Podmore and the subsequent second—sadly—inquiry by Mike Heron KC into Cycling New Zealand and I'm pleased to note that things are improving significantly and the results bear that out. But it shouldn't come to a tragedy for us to collectively respond to the risks to the integrity of those sports events. So we strongly support the principle of an independent body being established to firstly set standards so that these things are reduced and prevented but also if they do occur that there is a safe appropriate and timely mechanism for people to have complaints investigated and to be resolved. I personally think it's a good idea to keep that entity separate from Sport NZ and High Performance Sport NZ. We're a relatively small ecosystem in this country and the perceptions of independence could be undermined if this new entity isn't going to be wholly independent from the ecosystem that we have. I also want to associate myself with the comments of the Minister in the confidence that Drug Free Sport New Zealand has had a very very good track record in keeping New Zealand athletes overwhelmingly clean and preventing and detecting—sadly we had one quite recently where there was an eight-year ban handed down to an athlete but that's a very rare thing in a world where competitive pressures may tempt athletes to take performance enhancing substances. They've done a terrific job and it does make sense to fold Drug Free Sport New Zealand into the new entity. There are some questions though that I look forward to—I hope—participating in but certainly I have confidence that members of the Social Services and Community Committee will explore these in detail. The cost of the body is not identified in the regulatory impact statement. It talks about the overall cost—well I'm not even sure if it's the overall cost—of about $9.6 million of which $5.1 million is the existing cost of running Drug Free Sport New Zealand but it does go on to talk about additional costs which are then redacted from the regulatory impact statement. I think we do need to know what the costs of the new entity are. I'm sure that—well I'm confident that—value for money can be established but we are in straitened times and it's important to make sure that those costs are fair and reasonable. One of the unusual aspects of the bill which was actually set out in paragraph 4.9 of the departmental disclosure statement was on the voluntary nature of the integrity codes. They're not going to be mandatory and organisations then get to opt-in to these integrity codes for them to apply. I do worry about that. I think that if this is important then there needs to be some expectation that codes particularly at the pre-elite and elite level do comply with them. So I think that's something that the committee can interrogate; officials and submitters will have a view on that as well. The third thing is that there has been some anecdotes provided to me about the draft codes and integrity body perhaps not being sufficiently robust to cover very young athletes. There are a couple of sports organisations that have highlighted to me that the integrity body may not have the nimbleness that it needs to deal with not only pre-elite but pre-adolescent athletes and we have certainly seen some quite disturbing anecdotes from around the world of both parental pressure and sexual abuse in a couple of those sports. So I want to hear from those sports organisations as well. But broadly speaking I agree with the Minister. I think the process has been a thorough one the outcome looks promising and National is pleased to support it at first reading.There was one other thing that I think the select committee could have a look at and that is at clause 51: the commission's power to require information to be provided. That gives it some kind of quasi-investigative powers and I want to make sure that the commission is firstly armed but that there are the usual controls I think around reasonable cause if a commission has the power to require information or documents to be released because if they are too onerous then the likelihood that a sports body may opt out of the integrity codes is increased. I think this will work only when well frankly all of the national sports organisations subject themselves and abide by integrity codes for their sports.But we're starting from a pretty good place. I think it's gone through a thorough process and the bill looks in pretty good shape at first reading. I look forward to hearing from as many of the sports organisations as we can even if they agree with it and they don't have too many suggestions for improvement. That's an endorsement too of the fact that we're on the right track. We have a shortened report-back date. I don't like them generally but I think we are seeing a Government that wants to get a lot of business done before it gets thrown out in October. I don't think this is one of those ones that would be put aside or put down the list of priorities should a National-led Government be in place and I look forward actually to moving the second and subsequent readings as the Minister for Sport and Recreation. Thank you Madam Speaker.