Nash Stuart: Standards and Accreditation Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNash Stuart: Standards and Accreditation Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 19 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3419. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): If there is any doubt that there is a little bit of dissension in the National caucus we just have to listen to Judith Collins. I mean I do not know who sets the National speaking list—I suspect it might have been Jami-Lee Ross—but whoever put Judith Collins up to speak about trade obviously was out to set her up. When the Hon Judith Collins stands up and says: “Don’t trust anything that Labour and the Greens do.” I would say to the people of New Zealand that when that member starts speaking about trade and free and fair trade and good standards we have got to be worried because the one thing we know is that when Judith Collins speaks about trade it possibly means that any piece of legislation may lack transparency accountability and very definitely responsibility.Dr David Clark: What about Oravida?STUART NASH: That is true. What about Oravida? We are still murky about that. What the hell happened there? I do not know. No one knows. Mr Key does not know. Only Judith Collins and the Chinese officials know.But the former Minister was right in one respect—when she said that we need excellent robust standards that have international recognition. She is dead right. In fact in the regulatory impact statement the role of the standards is this: “Standards make an important contribution to the economic growth and health and safety. Standards promote innovation facilitate international trade and enable firms to leverage their competitive advantage. Many standards are also designed to increase safety and manage risk.” That is why we have on this side of the House a real problem with the bill as it stands because we do not think that this piece of legislation mirrors that in any way shape or form.Todd Muller must understand this. Todd Muller must have a huge problem with this and I will tell you why. Todd was at a senior level in a large organisation and Todd Muller understands Governments. He understands that governance is about managing risk and mitigating risk. That is what governance is about. But it is not just the reality; it is also the perception of risk and the fact that a large number of submitters highlighted the perceived conflicts of interest here is really telling.In fact let me read out what one submitter said and this is the Centre for Advanced Engineering and you could hardly say that this is a Labour Party organisation or anything at all like that. What it said was: “MBIE as the building regulator should not be in the business of drafting standards many of which are building sector related. The relationships as set out in the Bill between the Minister the Standards Approval Board the Standards Executive are awkward and unnatural and could easily lead to significant difficulties. The removal of ‘personally interested’ people and parties from the standards setting process is impracticable.”The real concern that I have about this—and I worked in international trade; I know how these things work—and the real issue I have with this piece of legislation and the framework it is setting up is that the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment will simply not get the buy-in necessary to give this new body credibility. That is a real problem. James Shaw of the Green Party highlighted the fact that the Australian standards authority has massive problems with this legislation and if we cannot get on with our Australian brothers and sisters let alone everyone else—if they are voicing such major discontentment with this piece of legislation then it says that something is wrong. It might not be that there is—maybe it is only their perception and that is not the reality.Whatever the issue this legislation needs to change. It needs to go back to the select committee and it needs to be changed because the perception is that this piece of legislation will not do the job that is required by New Zealand by New Zealanders and by our international trading partners. That is why the Labour Party simply cannot support this bill. Thank you very much.