Adams AmyHon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn): Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you Madam Chair for that. Look we are obviously now debating Part 1 which is a substantive part of this National Animal Identification and Tracing Amendment Bill. I want to come to exactly the point that I've just been raising which is around the status and the nature of the changes we're making in this bill. My colleague the Hon Gerry Brownlee has set out very well that there is no objection on this side of the Chamber whatsoever to improving the National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) legislation to ensure that the NAIT legislation is properly complied with that the officers have the appropriate range of powers and that our response to M. bovis is robust and effective. That is why we are voting for the legislation and that is why we have worked so constructively with the Minister through my colleague Nathan Guy to this point. To suggest otherwise is frankly offensive to this side of the Chamber.What we are absolutely saying and we're saying very very clearly—in fact the Minister acknowledged it in his last contribution—is that this is not a technical bill. I'm sorry. I know the officials want to pass it off that way but officials will always take an opportunity to get more powers. What the officials are saying is We've now discovered we would like to have more powers than we currently have." Fair enough—bring a bill to the House and we can have the debate as to whether those powers are appropriate. But to give an officer the power to seize goods which they do not currently have can under no interpretation in any natural meaning of the words be regarded as technical or a drafting error. When the NAIT legislation was passed Parliament said that when a NAIT officer goes into a property without warrant without any cause to suspect any offending—and as my colleagues have said this isn't just farms; it could be any number of businesses that may hold records or information relevant—they should have the power to enter they should have the power to inspect but beyond that they should get a warrant.Now if the Minister wants to bring a bill to the House and suggest that actually those officials should have the power to also seize goods well we can have that debate. We're up for that debate. It's a debate we can have. But I want to remind the committee that that very Minister is the one who voted against the search and surveillance legislation that provided for actually more constrained powers than this.Hon Nathan Guy: Did he vote against it?Hon AMY ADAMS: He voted against that. So to now suggest that the powers that the Minister in the chair said were inappropriate and should be opposed should not only go through but should go through in urgency should go through without a select committee—and he has the audacity the barefaced cheek to describe it as a technical change. Mr O'Connor I ask you please explain on what basis giving an officer going on to a property without warrant without cause a power they don't currently have is technical?Now I don't mind as I say having that discussion. On this side of the Chamber we have implored you: please send it to a select committee. If we're going to grant an extension of warrantless search powers the very least you can do is allow members of this House to get good legal advice to allow those affected to come and address the select committee and to allow us to assess the way those powers sit in the overall framework. The Minister has completely refused to do that. He has I believe attempted to obfuscate through his officials and through this bill by telling his support partners and members of this House that it's just a technical fix-up—nothing to see here. Well listen; I've been a Minister for six years. I know that every time you get told something is minor and technical every alarm bell in your head should be going—and a siren. And then to rush it through under urgency is outrageous. It is utterly outrageous. This is an extension of warrantless search powers—no select committee no legal advice—and the Minister has attempted to tell this committee that it is technical. Under no analysis possible can this be regarded as technical and the Minister should expect that we will be raising the issue of why he has attempted to mislead the House in the explanatory note in this way.I also want to reflect on the fact that the Minister has not answered the questions that my colleague the Rt Hon David Carter put up. Now the Rt Hon David Carter is of course not only a farmer himself but a previous Minister in the role that the Minister in the chair now holds. I'm sure the Minister in the chair will acknowledge that David Carter has extensive knowledge of not only the law but the practical operations in this regard and he has raised very serious and reasonable realistic scenarios in which this—[Bell rung] Madam Chair?CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): The Hon Amy Adams.Hon AMY ADAMS: He has raised very reasonable as I was saying and practical examples of exactly what could be caught in this aspect of now widening the definition of what is caught as a "movement".David Carter pointed out that if a farmer was to move a mob of cows from one paddock to another after milking—is that now a movement? Is that now going to have to be reported for NAIT purposes? There are any number of iterations of confusions as to what that might be—Mr Carter ran through several of them—and while the Minister took a call he didn't address any of those. These are important issues and while we don't have a select committee to go through it it is incumbent on the Minister to go beyond what a Minister in a committee stage might normally do and take the time to work through every reasonable question that is put because he has denied members of this House he has denied the public any chance to raise their concerns with him and with his officials through a more considered process. I simply cannot emphasise enough to this committee how concerned I am that we would be extending warrantless search powers without any assessment of that and without any checks and balances.One of the amendments on the Table that I want to support is that of my colleague again the Rt Hon David Carter where he has suggested quite reasonably that this House is determined to ram this through without taking the opportunity to test it even over a very limited time frame Minister. We're not talking about anything that would delay the M. bovis response. A week 10 days would be sufficient for members to get the sort of advice that would enable a proper consideration. If the Minister is utterly determined that he won't do that we implore him and we implore this committee to put in place a sunset clause so that if these powers are to exist over a permanent course if this is to become the new normal at the very least the Minister takes the time to bring a bill back to the House that goes through the proper process.Now the Minister has told us he's intending to bring more NAIT legislation to the House. So he already has a vehicle. He's got a bill coming back to the House. He has every chance in that bill to say "OK now let's have a proper select committee process and a testing of that." If that's his intention—and I hope it is—then there can be nothing lost at all to support a sunset clause in this legislation so that at least members of the House but more importantly those affected by these powers know that there will be an opportunity to really test this with some rigour before it becomes the new normal. So if the Minister is true to his word—and I'm sure as an honourable member he will be—and he intends to ensure these matters are properly reviewed in the NAIT legislation tested in the select committee process—and we would welcome that—then I implore you to show your good intentions by backing the amendment that puts in place a three-year sunset clause. That's plenty of time for the Minister's legislation to progress but it would assure the House that this is not a nefarious dead-of-night—although we're now in the morning—under urgency approach to ram through extensions of warrantless search powers as the new normal because the officials have seen an opportunity to get some more powers and to rely on the goodwill of this House to address the M. bovis response as a platform to do it.I can think of no reason why that wouldn't be acceptable to the Minister. I hope that it would be acceptable to other members of the committee who have on many occasions spoken strongly about their concerns at extending search and surveillance powers. The most concerning search and surveillance power is always the warrantless one. This is what we're talking about. Of course NAIT officers need the ability to go on to farms and to inspect. They can do that now but if they want to seize goods that is a massive increase in their powers. It is not technical. It is significant. It needs to be properly debated and if it isn't going to be in this process—and we think that is incredibly regretful—the House should at least have the assurance that it cannot become the new normal without a select committee process in due course."