Mallard Trevor: Crimes (Match-fixing) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMallard Trevor: Crimes (Match-fixing) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 27 November 2014. Volume:702;Page:939. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South):I would like to congratulate the new Minister for Sport and Recreation Jonathan Coleman on his change of portfolio but I give him a brickbat at the same time and say that when he says he is going to a netball match and he is welcome there especially when the Prime Minister is there looking for him he should actually be there. It is a habit of National Ministers—again at the rugby league the Minister Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga was meant to be the Government representative at the rugby league when we beat Australia in the final and he did not turn up either. It is embarrassing for sports codes when people who are meant to be representing the Government and who are meant to be senior representatives do not bother turning up.I first discussed this legislation with the then Minister for Sport and Recreation the Hon Murray McCully about 3 years ago. We did it in the context of: “This sort of thing wouldn’t ever happen here.” I think it is ironic that we are dealing with this legislation in a week where we are dealing with reports where 3 years ago in that area as well as in rorting sports matches we would have said it would not happen here. I am referring obviously in passing to the various reports that came out on Tuesday. We would never have thought that within New Zealand cricketers would cheat in order to obtain money but equally we would never have thought that an official in the office of the Prime Minister would approach and encourage the SIS to use its material for part of that purpose. It is just the sort of thing that does not happen in New Zealand! Well unfortunately it is happening with New Zealanders in both those areas and it is something that is very very embarrassing.As I indicated when we first knew that we had the Cricket World Cup the then Minister Murray McCully and I had a discussion about the need to get up to speed on this legislation. We probably had half a dozen discussions over the ensuing period. When it became quite urgent about 12 months ago I indicated to the Minister that I would help if possible facilitate and foreshorten a select committee process in order to get the legislation through. I know he worked really hard with his colleagues within Cabinet with the Leader of the House and with the Attorney-General for the purposes of getting it drafted and with the Minister of Justice who ended up taking responsibility for it but it is just shocking that 3 years after we knew that we needed this legislation we are rushing it through with a shortened select committee process and without its proper hearing.I now want to severely criticise the chair of the Law and Order Committee. One of the things that are really important in making the Parliament work is that when a member makes an undertaking to another member that if they want to change their mind or withdraw from their undertaking they contact the member to do it. Mike Sabin agreed with me to have foreshortened hearings with a few sports organisations coming in because we knew we did not have much time. What he was told was that the officials did not want to come in and that is what he reported back to me and he decided it would not happen.What I wanted to do as part of this—and I want to say that the way this Parliament should work is that if two members agree to do something I do not need to tell my colleagues what we agreed because it would automatically happen. I admit a mistake. I trusted Mike Sabin to do what he said he would do. I did not talk to my other colleagues on the committee because I thought it would happen automatically. We had an agreement to get a very small group of national sporting organisations and the Law Society in front of the committee and that did not happen. It did not happen Mike Sabin told me because the officials told him they thought he did not need to bring them in. I just want to know who runs this Parliament. Who runs this Parliament? Who chairs the select committee? Who pulls the strings? Are the members meant to be running it or do we have someone who chairs a committee and says when the officials say: “Oh we don’t need to talk about it.” that it is OK and we do not need to talk about it?Well it is just not good enough. We support this legislation. It is not brilliant legislation. It does not go as far as it should. It is badly inconsistent with the various sporting codes and that is why I wanted to get the codes in to see what they wanted to do to try to get their codes better aligned with each other and better aligned with where we want to go. I think that is a reasonable thing. It is part of making legislation work. It is part of making the system work. The way some of the codes—and I will give the International Rugby Board as an example; I have had an on-off relationship with that board over the years. But in this particular case its codes of conduct to do with sports betting are just nonsense. If I go down to the local kōhanga reo and have a cup of tea with Piri Weepu’s mum as I do every now and again I am not allowed to bet on rugby.Mike Sabin: That’s not true.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Yes it is ridiculous. I agree with Mike Sabin. It is ridiculous but that is the way code works. People who have discussions with the relatives of contracted players are not allowed to go and have a bet on it at the TAB whether or not they have a discussion about that particular sport.Mike Sabin: Is that a sporting code of conduct or is that the legislation?Hon TREVOR MALLARD: The member has got it. That has to do with the sports code of conduct. I am pleased Mike Sabin understands that. What I want to do is to make sure that the sports codes of conduct are consistent with each other and are coherent in the sense of the way they work with the legislation that we are dealing with now and they are not. But Mike Sabin decided after he was instructed by his officials that that was not important. What he has done is change a piece of legislation that could have gone through the Parliament in a couple of hours to something that is going to be contested and debated over the next period. I just say to the relatively junior chair of the select committee that a phone call to double-check could have sorted things out. I just want to say—and I might be old-fashioned and I might be slightly older than the member—that when a member gives me his word that he will do something I expect him to do it. Thank you.