McKelvie IanIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you Mr Chair. It gives me a bit of pleasure to take a call on this bill which on the face of it looks quite simple but I just wanted to follow on from Dr Nick Smith the previous speaker because having been around business and boards for a fair bit of my life I'm naturally suspicious of the motive of all sorts of things that go on in this sector.I think one of the great challenges we have with all of our boards in this country is the stifling of innovation and the stifling of the ability to pick up on things and make change for the better. I'm not at all sure it's bad because I don't really know where this will end up and I think that's the challenge we have with some of this stuff: we don't know how far it's going to go.I guess that I'm not opposed to having codes of conduct imposed on boards of directors but I am very suspicious of having codes of conduct that cover boards of directors chief executives and employees of whatever with the same conditions imposed on all of them because I don't think it can possibly work. So I'd be very interested to understand how the codes of conduct might work because I do think that board members do need to have a very different set of standards around them. I know the Minister said a little earlier that the statutory requirements of board members will not be impacted by the code of conduct and I was pleased to hear that because I think that makes a deal of common sense.I'd also be a bit interested to understand—and I suppose time alone will tell us that—how much influence the Minister of the day might have in the implementation that the State Services Commissioner might put on these codes of conduct and in fact what you might be able to influence in the course of the code of conduct being I guess implemented because I think also that that could impact the type of person that puts their name forward for these boards. It could also impact on the quality of board member that we're able to attract into these sorts of organisations.I'd have to say that I've never obviously been part of one of these types of boards but I've certainly been around boards for a fair bit of my life and seen what I think is inhibitory behaviour I suppose for want of a better word. In other words I think it's very easy to inhibit the quality of the result we get by legislation and I'd be nervous that there is a potential in this for that to happen. I'm not sure there is and maybe the Minister can assure me of that but I just think that we need to be careful when we start to put these sorts of things in place that we don't stifle innovation and stifle the ability to get a better result.As I said earlier I don't have an issue personally with a code of conduct and I certainly don't have an issue with the State Services Commissioner being able to implement those but I'd just remind the committee that this is not an academic exercise we're undertaking here. This is about performance and about getting better results for the taxpayer I suppose for want of a better word. I think it's important when we consider how we might impose these types of things on boards that it's done constructively and in a manner that certainly—as I said a minute ago—doesn't put people off being part of that board and that encourages the very best people to put their names forward to be part of those boards.I guess if we don't do that we could end up with a—and I think the previous speaker referred to it—situation where we're dumbing down the State sector. Of course as soon as that happens you then impact on the type of person you can employ in the State sector. So I think that's quite a concern to us and I'm probably just slightly outside the scope of this but I'm certainly not in favour of the massive pay increases that we get in all parts of business in New Zealand. I do think we need to be able to attract the best people at the same time and I'm not sure how you get that balance right.So as I said this is not an academic exercise; it's really about getting a better performance for the sector. I think it's important that we retain the independence of those board members and enable them to perform to their best. As I said I would be quite interested to understand from the Minister in the chair Chris Hipkins one or two of those points I've raised because I think it is interesting. I do think this kind of legislation—as we saw right through from the time of the global financial crisis (GFC)—if we're not careful has the ability to I guess stifle or impact negatively on what we're actually trying to achieve. We saw that with some of the finance companies as a result of the impact of the GFC because I think we ended up doing away with a sector in the New Zealand economy that was pretty important to it. So that's my point. Thank you Mr Chair.