Hughes Darren: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Hughes Darren: Injury Prevention Rehabilitation and Compensation Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:660;Page:9226] 
Hon DARREN HUGHES (Senior Whip—Labour) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I have several points to raise with you. I will first take the point you have just raised. 
With regard to Speaker’s ruling 119/4 the ruling contains the phrase “official advice” and the inclusion of the word “official” must mean something. As Mr Mallard has said to you we have now had the Leader of the House say verbally that the cost of the amendment would be between $600000 and $1 million. What happens if down the track the official information is found not to have existed and the Leader of the House has said in the Committee that it does exist and has said what the advice is? When Mr Mallard asked about it Mr Brownlee waved a piece of paper that is acting as his bookmark in his copy of the  
Standing Orders of the House of Representatives 
. It is a handwritten note on paper that has been ripped out of a notebook—it is perforated along the side. That note cannot possibly constitute official advice to the Government of New Zealand about this matter. So I raise that point with you. 
I also raise a second point Mr Chairperson about the fact that when we read Speaker’s ruling 119/4—and Mr Mallard has quoted the first part—we see that it continues: “It is quite proper for the Minister to raise the issue on official advice” and finishes off: “although it is finally for the chairperson to rule.” That is a very important point for you Mr Chairperson because I noticed that when the point of order was taken at 2 o’clock you had a lot of information at your fingertips. You were able to give four points to us when you were ruling on it. But the ability of the Opposition to propose amendments to legislation whether they are in support of or in disagreement with the law is quite an important point. 
The reason I raise that is that previously it was totally out of order for an Opposition to put forward any amendments that had any fiscal impact whatsoever. The changes to the Standing Orders at the end of 1995 which came into effect in 1996 altered that so that an amendment could come from the Opposition that might have some costing associated with it. But rather than use the term “financial impact”—that is $1 or more—the term “fiscal aggregates” was used so that it was clear that amendments that involved costs that were small as a percentage of the Government’s total spend would not simply be ruled out or dismissed. It is very hard to accept that in a Government Budget of about $60000 million a review costing half a million dollars is somehow some extraordinary change to the Government’s fiscal aggregates. A stay at a hotel in Tonga or a trip on the Interislander 
does not have a big impact on the Government’s fiscal aggregates either. Those are the sorts of figures we are talking about. 
This is a device being used by the Government to try to stop the Opposition from being able to propose amendments to the legislation—amendments that the Government can vote down. It will have that option shortly; we have spent about an hour discussing Part 3 and Government members will have the option of voting against it to show that they are not in support of it. 
Mr Chairperson the Speakers’ rulings make the point that it is finally for you to rule on this matter. If you as Chair accept that a Minister who feels frustrated at the length of time of a debate and says “Oh look that amendment is just too expensive.” is not required to supply you with any written advice that is then available for the Committee to look at and if the Minister does not give any detail about what the advice is then the Opposition could have all of its amendments ruled out for all time. There is a cost even in the simple fact that when an amendment is accepted by the Committee it forces a printer to go into action somewhere within the Government. That is a financial cost. If the Government goes down the path of not only stopping us from having question time but also stopping the Opposition from proposing amendments because by their very nature there will be a cost of some amount—a fiscal impact—that is different from an effect on the fiscal aggregates which is the way in which our Speakers’ rulings and Standing Orders have been written. 
I think that this is a really critical point Mr Chairperson and the Opposition respectfully seeks your assistance with it. Otherwise there is no point in doing any of these debates because as soon as the Leader of the House loses his temper about these matters the ball will be thrown and we will all have to go home. That seems preposterous to me.