Yule Lawrence; Dyson RuthLAWRENCE YULE (National—Tukituki): It's my pleasure to take a further call just on Part 2. I really want to talk about Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 362 from my colleague Andrew Bayly. It may sort of be the norm in this House that because my colleague's put it up the Government and the Government parties do not want to support it but I do think there is a real opportunity in this bill to have a different look at procurement. I acknowledge that the select committee chair Deborah Russell has said that you know it's a bit late in the piece. Well it's never too late if something could be made better and I want to thank Mr Bayly for bringing it to us. He attended a conference some things were laid out to him and there's an opportunity and time in the committee of the whole House to change things.I want to give the committee an example of where I think we don't have it quite correct in the Government when we look at procurement. Effectively when you look at procurement there are procurement guidelines set out by Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) and they're about to be renewed. They really look at procurement from a probity perspective on a value perspective and how the process operates. And then you have effectively the Office of the Auditor-General which looks over that and is doing a big review at the moment on procurement. I've been looking at a procurement issue over the best part of 18 months which is around the building of rapid deployment prison cells in New Zealand and a contract that was let and how that has been followed. It's all in the public realm so I can talk about it. But effectively a contract worth about $60 million was varied to $185 million without public advertising without any public notification of it and I didn't think that was right because ultimately those prison cells have been built in China brought to New Zealand fully made and effectively New Zealanders have lost out on jobs. Now I can accept that if the procurement process is fair and reasonable so I followed that all the way through. Yesterday I received a letter from the Office of the Auditor-General saying that in their view the process was fair and reasonable. I still don't agree that that is the case but that was the view. The point I'm trying to highlight is that when you look at MBIE who are highly respected officials working for the Government on one side they come up with rules with advice from the industry and Ministers and on the other hand you've got the Office of the Auditor-General on this side saying: did MBIE follow the rules and does it make sense? What is lacking in my view is a real hands-on look from the other side of this equation. That's what we're delivering. Rather than the process and the cost what is the difference we could make in how we procure things? And while it's a late call I actually think there is an opportunity with this bill to allow the new Infrastructure Commission to seek out and find on behalf of the infrastructure—not on behalf of the Government not on behalf of the person that looks out as to how we spend things; that's the Office of the Auditor-General—what are the ways we could improve the delivery of infrastructure in New Zealand. Deborah Russell previously said that she was open-minded and generally open-minded. Well my comment to this committee is that I think we should be genuinely open-minded to this SOP that Mr Bayly has put up even though it's late in the piece. Because my experience over the last 12 months looking at the issue I've been looking at has been that I don't think there is a central agency that's delivering what you have said the Hon Shane Jones—about how slow things are and why things happen the way they are. We have a Government agency on one side and we've got a checker and balancer on the other side. I think we need to tip it on its head a bit. And if in fact the Infrastructure Commission in doing all its work and advising various Governments thought that there was an issue with procurement and they wanted to look at best and worst practice I think absolutely this bill should make provision for that to occur. I understand and I could be wrong that the Greens would want to support this type of approach.I spoke in the House the other day about how we're going to procure climate change adaptation measures. All those things are going to be really interesting. The current framework may not be suitable. And if we're serious in this House about having cross-party agreement and doing the right thing for infrastructure in the long term I think a little tweak to this bill to allow this commission to investigate procurement at its wish would be a useful thing for the taxpayers and value of New Zealand. Michael Wood: Madam Chair?Paul Eagle: Madam Chair?CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): I'm spoilt for choice—Michael Wood.