Smith NickHon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): Well I wish to challenge the Minister around the issue that every one of the amendments in the SOP comes from that select committee because that is actually not correct.The second thing is the Minister says that Well the Public Service legislation was before the select committee for six months." Actually something occurred in the last six months. I don't know whether any colleagues noticed but actually we had the biggest national emergency in the history of our country. We had our Parliament shut down for a significant period. We had the very Minister in the chair say to this Parliament that during the COVID emergency there would only be time to consider urgent legislation associated with the COVID emergency. Now nobody would reasonably say that this Public Service legislation the biggest change in legislation in respect of our public services since 1988 is somehow related to the COVID emergency.So for the Minister to say "Well everything in this SOP is just what the departmental report said."—Minister that's at the core of the problem because what you're saying Minister is these are the amendments the department wanted and Parliament shouldn't take too much interest. Is that the culture that he wants to establish for the New Zealand Public Service—that the departmental officials decide what law they want to govern themselves and Parliament should only take a peripheral interest receive it two days ago bang it into law?I ask the question again: has any member of the Green Party read the 200-page SOP and the 500 amendments?Michael Wood: Repetition.Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Well the member says it's repetition. It's actually pretty crucial. The member Michael Wood thinks that Parliament should just take the report from the department slap it into law and that that's OK. That's the sort of Labour Party view of the job that this Parliament has around legislation that governs the expenditure of $80 billion of public taxpayers' money every year. Members opposite think this process is fine that it's just Parliament's job to rubber-stamp the law and if the department decides that this is the law that they would want to govern the operations of the public sector they can deliver this Parliament 500 clauses of law give us two days' notice and pass it through all its committee stages and somehow that is appropriate Parliament scrutiny of legislation and members on this side of the House say it's not.We have witnessed I would say to the Leader of the House situations where rushed law of this sort—where a Minister has told the Parliament it's one thing and two days later we discover that actually it was a completely different law that we passed. We've witnessed other laws in the last few weeks where Parliament passed the law one week and the next week we had to go into urgency to pass new law to patch up the mistake we made in the previous week and we are repeating all those errors. I can give this Parliament absolutely no assurance that I have given the level of scrutiny on any of these 500 clauses that we only saw two days ago and that they are good law.Again I stress how important it is: this is a sham process; this is Parliament being treated with complete disrespect. I have heard a hundred speeches from members of the Labour Party in Opposition criticising bills under the previous Key-English Government that had a far more robust process with it. It is an incredible double standard for Mr Chris Hipkins to sit in the chair and to pretend this is satisfactory process on one of the most important pieces of legislation. It is a sham it is a disgrace it is actually saying to the Public Service "Do what you like produce what laws you wish Parliament will not scrutinise them." The importance of our parliamentary democracy around its control of the public sector and the way in which they behave is something that he has no regard for. He has become little more than a "Yes Minister" in this regard and it's something that he will live with with regret as will other members that are passing this law. I'll bet you there isn't a single New Zealand First MP that's read this huge Supplementary Order Paper. I'll bet you there is not a single backbench member of the Labour Party—[Time expired]"