Faafoi Kris: Standards and Accreditation Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: Standards and Accreditation Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 01 July 2015. Volume:706;Page:5030. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): Thank you very much for the chance to take a second call on Part 1 of the Standards and Accreditation Bill. I would like to take just a few moments to respond to some of the comments made by the Minister. With this bill you get the distinct feeling that the Government is taking a “burn the village to save the village” approach because the Minister said in some of his remarks that one of the concerns about why the changes in this bill needed to be made is that the Standards Council lacked visibility and that is one of the reasons why we need to make the changes and the structural changes within the council.The Government’s recipe for curing that lack of visibility within the New Zealand Standards Council is to morph it into the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment—probably the biggest Government department in New Zealand. The Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment engulfed about five or six different ministries and currently it has a reputation for not necessarily managing its money very well. Morphing the process the body and the structure of the current New Zealand standards process into the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment is the Government’s solution to that problem. Well I do not think that makes sense. I do not think that makes sense to people on this side of the Chamber and it does not make sense to a number of the very very experienced industry organisations that came and gave submissions on this piece of legislation.One of the interjections from across the Chamber was in response to our argument about the independence—or lack of it—in this bill and it was to read the legislation. And to give Mr Hudson his due there is provision—fleeting provision—in this bill to give a degree of independence to the New Zealand Standards Executive. But what happened during the select committee process was that we had a number of submitters come through—a lot of them industry people—and their voice their concerns about independence has been completely and utterly ignored. I think that is really important given that we thought that the Government members on that select committee might listen to those submitters—that they might take those messages back to the Minister and say: “Hey we may have got it wrong here Minister. A lot of the industry submitters are saying that this is not the right thing to do. We may have to rethink the structure.”So we may have expected some Supplementary Order Papers to amend the billwholeheartedly but that is not in front of us. The two Supplementary Order Papers that we have in front of us are purely technical ones changing very small technical details within the bill. So I think that it is appropriate in this Committee stage for members on this side of the Chamber to give those organisations within the industry their voice to make sure that we can flag that they have said this is the wrong thing to do. I would like to take one example and that is the New Zealand Building Industry Federation—an organisation that I hope the Government would have listened to in its concerns about this bill. In the opening comments of its submission the Building Industry Federation said: “The intent of the Government to move Standards setting from an independent body with a high level of private sector governance input to one administered by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) was not greeted with enthusiasm by many in the building industry.” If I were in the National Government and the New Zealand Building Industry Federation had said that in the opening line of its submission on this bill I would be a little bit concerned. It is not a small organisation and it covers a very important function in our country so I would be a little bit concerned by its opening remarks.Then we get to its comments around independence. Mr Hudson has said that yes the bill does cater for independence but let us look at the reality of what may be the case within the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment. I think that this was a very brave submission for the Building Industry Federation because it went on to say in its submission that with the New Zealand Standards Executive the: “International best practice has historically been to allocate the Standard-setting function to industry. The required technical expertise is principally found within the ranks of day to day practitioners within the sectors to be covered. Further Standard-setting should not be subject”—