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:5026. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Well I think everything that the Minister has just said right now has actually confirmed why Labour is opposing this bill and has some fundamental problems with it. What I did not hear the Minister do tonight was address what lies behind his Supplementary Order Papers 90 and 96 on Part 1—what the rationale is for them and what he is trying to achieve. I am hoping that during the debate tonight we are actually going to hear a bit about that because when you put a Supplementary Order Paper on the Table and you expect it to be taken seriously then you should be able to get up and talk to what its purpose is and how it is going to enhance the bill—this bill that we see as being fundamentally flawed—and try to give us an explanation as to whether it improves the bill in some way.We have a fundamental problem with this bill—and can I say and I think I said it in the second reading that when we went into this process it seemed like a reasonably straightforward bill. It had gone through a process of review. We were not expecting there to be controversy around it. But every single professional body that came before us in the Commerce Committee—and I did not hear the Minister refer to any of them in his speech just now—had some serious issues with this. The serious issues were around the lack of checks and balances within the bill by removing the Standards Council and absorbing it into the great whale of the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment—absorbing it into a big Government department and its checks and balances—and by the potential for the watering-down of standards rather than the strengthening of standards.We could talk until the cows come home about the lowering of standards generally by this Government but what it is attempting to do here is fundamentally driven by the attempt to save money.That is one of our major problems with the bill.The Minister admitted it himself when he just got up.He read directly from the departmental report about what it said. In the regulatory impact statement at paragraph 22 under “Problem Definition”—which is what my colleague David Clark was referring to—what was the problem that this was trying to fix? One of the main issues was that “the Standards Council is not financially sustainable over the medium to longer term …”. We do not have an issue with that as being a problem but the way to fix it is to look at how to strengthen the body and ensure that there are checks and balances rather than to absorb it into a great big Government agency that has its own problems and where there are lots of questions around decisions that are being made.The standards body is a fundamentally important role that goes to our international reputation. It goes to our ability to maintain our credibility across industries like electrical engineering and building and construction. For buildings that could be affected by major events we have to be able to stand up to international scrutiny on such things and things like water safety and a whole lot of other issues.There was a troop of submitters who came before the select committee and gave very very strong credible evidence as to why they had serious issues with the direction that the Government was taking with this piece of legislation.We sat there and thought: “Well you know they’ve got a point.” Unfortunately despite our concerns and despite the concerns that were raised over and over again about this—they fell on deaf ears. That goes back to what the intention was—what was the real intention behind this legislation? Was it to try to ensure that there was a strong credible body that was independent?And you talk about independence—you know the member over there got up and talked about the fabulous independence.Well checks and balances within a Government agency when you absorb an entity like that—there are significant issues that have not been addressed.Our big concern is that we are going to see a watering-down of standards a lowering of standards.There is a question around whether or not the standards that are being developed are standards that are being developed according to an agenda rather than being driven by the entity itself. I would like to hear the Minister get up and say whether his Supplementary Order Papers on Part 1 clauses 10 and 13 are relevant to that argument whether they are going to strengthen those checks and balances and if so how.In the regulatory impact statement the concern was raised that some stakeholders had indicated that there was a risk that experts may no longer be willing to participate on standards development committees given their perception that the independence of standards would be eroded under the proposed changes.We consider that experts will continue to have incentives to participate. However the actual impact is uncertain.The regulatory impact statement was produced before we had the stream of submitters before the committee. When they did come before the committee we were still unsure as to whether those independent experts would still continue to have incentives to participate how they would feel about continuing to participate and what those impacts were going to be.If you are proposing to create a new entity within a Government agency then there has got to be a really careful process gone through in doing that and you need to take the stakeholders with you. Unfortunately in this process that has not happened and we have ended up with a situation where the Government is pushing this legislation forward. It seems to be largely driven by a desire to cut costs.We have got concerns around independence. We have got concerns around the probity and also around what kind of review mechanism there is going to be as to whether or not this new system is actually going to be working. I would not mind the Minister answering that question as well. What is built into the legislation around providing a review to show that the legislation is working as it says it is intended to rather than as is expressed by the concerns of those who submitted?So therefore Labour cannot continue to support this bill. We are at a loss as to what added value the amendments in the Supplementary Order Papers are going to add. We would like to hear from the Minister on that. We look forward to hearing his explanation.