Dyson Ruth: Inquiries Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDyson Ruth: Inquiries Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 22 August 2013. Volume:692;Page:12767. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills):Thank you for recognising me as well. It is always a relief is it not when you take a call to hear the correct—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): I recognise that member as well.Hon RUTH DYSON: —name attributed to you. Can I just say that it is a really pleasurable time in the House not only for so many parties to be supporting such an important bill as the Inquiries Bill but also to acknowledge the process that has been gone through which I would commend to other Ministers to follow. There have been concerns raised by Holly Walker a member of the Green Party which were listened to and responded to in a respectful way. There was an amendment moved by my colleague the Hon Trevor Mallard which was considered properly and agreed to. Both those processes have made the bill better.I think if that happened more often and people were less entrenched in the politics of their party and less determined to score points at other people’s expense then not just legislation but this Parliament would I think be a better place. So there is a lot of potential for improvement shall we say. Certainly the code of conduct that you yourself Mr Assistant Speaker have proposed would also contribute in that regard.I want to acknowledge the history of this legislation. It has been around for a long time. My colleague the Hon Annette King put it in place. The reason that she instigated the work to be done on this legislation was that it was clear that not just members of Parliament but the citizens of our country actually were frustrated with the lack of ability of inquiries to get the information that they were set up to get because their range of powers their abilities and their opportunities were limited because of our legislation. That is not good enough. When we have something serious whether it is tragic or otherwise or a matter that is of public concern the public deserve to have the information from an inquiry that would lead them to say “Now I understand what happened.” and then we as a Parliament can ask whether we should do something about it. We have had some very significant tragedies which I will refer to in just a little bit.But going back to my point the Hon Annette King set up this process because of the level of dissatisfaction with the range of powers and responsibilities inquiries had. They did not meet the public expectation. When it finally got to the House the bill was referred to the Government Administration Committee ably chaired at that time by the Hon David Parker. The junior member of that select committee was our deputy leader Grant Robertson so you can tell it was quite a long time ago. That bill was consideredand came back to the House in 2009. I omitted to mention another person who deserves credit and that is the Hon Rick Barker who was the Minister who actually introduced the legislation. The Hon Annette King set up the process for looking at the policy and the Hon Rick Barker introduced it. So it came back to this Parliament on 20 November 2009. It is now the third week in August in 2013 so it has been around a long time—nearly 4 years on the Order Paper.We have had examples this week of mismanagement of the House. The House is moving into urgency again next week we are told. I am not quite sure whether it is on Wednesday or Thursday or both days. But either way this is another example of the inability of the National Government to run the House properly. I would not presume that any other Cabinet Minister would be better than the Hon Gerry Brownlee but he has got a lot on. I wish he would put the Port Hills zoning review as a bit of a priority because we have just had another delay in the announcement of that. That announcement to the Port Hills residents my constituents was due by the way prior to Christmas last year—not Christmas this year; Christmas last year—so we are still waiting for that.Some people listening to this debate might ask why the scope the range the responsibilities and the abilities of panel members in inquiries are important. If you look at the two recent tragedies that we have had where there have been inquiries—the huge tragedy and loss of life at Pike River and the massive tragedy and loss of life in the collapse of the CTV Building and thePyne Gould Corporation building in Canterbury. There were 115 lives lost in the CTV Building—people who were just going about their day-to-day business and had no ability to understand the lack of structural strength of that building who died as a result. The family members of both the CTV Building victims and the men who died at Pike River at the very least deserve to know every single detail. It will never bring their lost family members back but it will give them the respect and the information that they deserve to have and currently our range of inquiries does not have that ability.This bill fixes that and I think it is a jolly good thing that this Parliament is not only progressing this finally but is doing it—as I said right at the beginning of my contribution—in such a robust way. That should give more confidence to the public of New Zealand that when there is something that is a public concern something that should have public information this Parliament acknowledges that and has ensured that every bit of information is gathered as robustly as possible.It is a real shame that that ability was not available in the recent David Henry approach. I feel so sorry for Mr Henry. I do not actually know him as an individual but he was hand-picked to take on the job of finding out what happened in theKitteridge report. He clearly did not have the mandate that he wanted but he called on the office of the Prime Minister which seemed to have leaned on a few people. The political adviser WayneEagleson in the Prime Minister’s office seems to have leaned on a few people. In the end we had access given to information about a Minister’s phone log and a Minister’s swipe card access. So the inquiry knew where the Minister went all around the building whom he had rung and whom he had received phone calls from. The same applied to a Fairfax journalist. I think that is appalling. If that inquiry had had the power to call witnesses and require them to attend and to make testimony under oath then we may not have had the situation that we have now.What we have ended up with instead of a robust process where we actually find out the facts of the situation is a terrible murky situation. A Minister has resigned on a point of principle. A journalist has had her professional work exposed in a very unusual way and a very unfortunate way. A senior public servant from the Parliamentary Service has resigned from his position. David Henry who headed the inquiry was attacked withsome vitriol by the media representation and by Judith Collins—described by her colleague Gerry Brownlee today as a drama queen. That was a bit unfortunate true though it may have been. Anne Tolley and Gerry Brownlee himself attacked Mr Henry. That position is not satisfactory and I hope that we do not end up with it happening again. This bill as I said should fix that.So why is this bill having been started off in 2008 and having sat on the Order Paper since 20 November 2009 after consideration by the select committee back before the House now? Well the reasons for that are the contamination of our dairy products the concerns of people who import them about the safety of our goods and the desire of the Government to have an inquiry that resolves those concerns and that answers all the questions not just of the New Zealand public—although of course we all want to know not only that it is investigated properly and somebody is held accountable but also that it is fixed and that the problem does not arise again.I totally support that inquiry having the ability to do that. The reason I support that is that I do not think there would be a single member of Parliament regardless of their party who would not agree that our No. 1 consideration must be the safety of consumers. If we sell goods domestically or export them we must be able to assure consumers particularly children of the safety of those goods. At the moment that is a little bit under a cloud because of recent events.Labour certainly backs the desire of the Government to have a robust inquiry into this so that we can give everybody the confidence they need about the safety of our products. Our international reputation as an exporter is at stake here. We have to ensure that that reputation is protected and perhaps even enhanced actually by the rigour of such an inquiry. But more important as I said we have to guarantee the safety of consumers of our exports.Our biggest company is Fonterra. It is important not just in the New Zealand economy but it is important in our social structure as well with the number of jobs it provides and with the number of other businesses it supports. The hard questions will need to be asked about the situations that have arisen. I am sure they will be by the additional powers that have been given. I again want to commend the process of listening to the concerns of Holly Walker and supporting the amendments of Trevor Mallard. It is a good process and it is a better bill as a result.Holly Walker: Mr Speaker—Mr Speaker.