Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): I am going to speak in opposition to this motion. It may be contradictory or it may appear on the face of it to be contradictory to do so given my criticism of the Minister and the Government for the time that it has taken to get the bill to this point. But for the purposes of this debate I'm going to use the Minister's own words. There are five reasons why I believe that this motion should not be agreed to by the House. By the Minister's own admission she has said that this bill is complex. Even if we put aside the fact that she was handed a gift by the Hon Nicky Wagner she took 2½ years to get to this point. She is now asking the select committee the stakeholders the officials Parliamentary Counsel Office and everybody else to do the work that she couldn't do in 2½ years in three months. I find that highly highly problematic for the democratic process.The second reason why there should be opposition to this bill is that there are despite the fact that there are very strong similarities between this bill and the Hon Nicky Wagner's draft bill as a Minister and now her member's bill in the ballot there are actually significant omissions to it. I will not go through them; I did so in my first reading speech.But there are things that could be made different in this bill with a robust select committee process that I submit is going to be compromised by the shortened report back. The third reason why this should not be approved actually goes to something that I disagree with the Minister on but agree with Michael Wood on—the lack of involvement in the preparation by the Minister and the Government from other stakeholders. Now she has acknowledged that the people that assisted her in the preparation of the bill to this point were the Ministry of Health and Action for Smokefree 2025. Now they are very good important people to consult with in the preparation of good bills but it's very disappointing to note firstly that the Minister did not take up the invitation by the National Party to engage early so that we could be wholly over the detail in order that we could expedite the bill. We know this has got to get into law. It's not about delaying this. It's about actually getting good legislation and Michael Wood actually said it all when he described the sophistication of the vaping lobby.I have no time necessarily for big tobacco and a vaping lobby that's going to use sophisticated techniques to get their own way. But in a democratic process it's absolutely vital that we see and hear from the people with whom we disagree in order that we can have a robust discussion and make bills better. Now we're going to see them and hear from them—I have no doubt. But had the Minister engaged prior to this point a three-month report back could well have been appropriate.The fourth reason why I don't believe this is appropriate is because of the Attorney-General's advice that this is a breach of the freedoms that are set out in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act that are not justified by the reasons that have been put. And again I won't relitigate why the Attorney-General has that. But we've got a very difficult job to do now. If the Government which was so critical of the Key-English Government for the times when it had New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vets that it did not agree with and then passed legislation in the face of—and I say it wasn't a unique thing; the Clark Government did that 14 times by my count in its years in Government so it's not unusual. But it does behove the select committee to listen very carefully and indeed the Standing Orders Committee on this point has heard submissions including from the Clerk of the House that there could perhaps be a different process under the Standing Orders for when a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet is tabled with a bill in order for a greater level of scrutiny and at least the appearance of not riding roughshod over it—I don't think that that actually happens but it does behove us to be seen to be considering and not only just considering the Attorney-General's advice.That's going to take some time and we're going to need to get some advice about that. It's a very complicated position and a conundrum in respect of freedom of expression. The vaping industry the very sophisticated industry that Michael Wood describes is having its freedoms curtailed and the Attorney-General is saying that's not reasonable. We need to give them a fair hearing lest there be the potential for a judicial review once the process is completed.The fifth and main reason I think is that I get the feeling that the Government has forgotten that it is not the executive that passes laws in this land; it is this Parliament. It does so under a select committee process that is time honoured and very very well followed and this should be a business-as-usual process. It's offensive to the select committee process in my view for such an important piece of legislation that has nearly unanimous support across the House to be treated so poorly. I'm a member of that committee. I'm looking forward to the discussion the submissions and the consideration. We work well as a committee but we're really really busy and in order to be able to consider this bill in the next three months we are going to have to set aside other material business. We have something like 33 petitions before us right now. We have other legislation the water regulatory bill which was being considered yesterday.Hon Nathan Guy: Yeah what about coronavirus—that could mean something?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Exactly. Who knows what the Health Committee might need to deal with in the next three months and to do it properly and diligently what's going to give? Are we going to come back to the Business Committee with a request for an extension because the Health Committee has actually got itself deeply embedded in the role of protecting New Zealanders from a pandemic? And so the select committee does need to have a great deal more control I believe over its workload in the next three months.This is a significant disruptor to that and I cannot support it and my colleagues cannot support it. And we know why we're doing it. I mean let's be honest; there's another date coming up soon. It's about 196 days away. The Government does want to clear some important business but it also wants to be able to go to the electorate and say Look what we did." It doesn't want other members of this House and new candidates to be saying they promised one thing and didn't deliver it. So there's an imperative that's more than just policy. There's a great deal of politics behind this motion. I understand it; I cannot agree with it. It is not for this House to allow the executive and the Government to curtail what is a very important process of developing and passing good law just by a vote on the numbers.I'm disappointed. I know there are times when that's necessary—this isn't one of them. If the Minister had moved faster to get the bill before this House last year we wouldn't be having this debate. It is wrong and I oppose it."