Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): Thank you Mr Chair. As the Chairman might know I've tabled two Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) and I thought I might just give a bit of backdrop to those. Last week I attended the Constructive forum in Wellington. In the morning we had two Labour Ministers Ministers Twyford and Salesa and the recurring theme during the course of the day—and particularly when they were questioned—was an issue of inappropriate procurement and contracts being issued by Government entities as well as territorial local authorities (TLAs). There was a chorus of the 600 people involved in that forum of people saying: Look even last week"—some of them quoted—Government agencies were out in discussions with some of them and trying to impose very onerous contracts that put significant issues in terms of not only how they were to operate and the penalties if they were late but much more significantly around the allocation of risk. This issue about appropriate allocation of risk is one that permeates the industry. It is the one that is leading to a significant number of company failures and also leading to a general lack of profitability in the building and construction sector. So the Ministers were questioned quite mercilessly by the 600 delegates and unfortunately I've got to say—and I said this last week—that I actually found it quite embarrassing for the Ministers themselves because they were unable to answer the question that the industry people were saying to them and the questions were namely: "When you came into office in 2017 you said you would put in proper procurement contracts for the Government and make the Government do that and you would also address the issue around appropriate risk allocation."So with that in mind I took the opportunity over the last couple of days to draft a Supplementary Order Paper which has now been tabled which gives an additional power to the Infrastructure Commission. Namely in SOP 362 it has got the right now under new clause 22A to be able to review at its discretion specific contracts either undertaken by central government agencies or TLAs. Particularly in its non-exclusive list it asks the commission when the commission is doing that review to have regard for procurement policies and practices of the entity that was doing the procurement identification of risk factors and how they were allocated between the contracting parties—which is the specific issue which was addressed last week in the forum—any funding and financing models relied upon by the entity and any whole-of-life commercial considerations taken into account by the entity. What it provided for was a mechanism for the commission if it chose to highlight good practices or poor practices and to be able to undertake a review seek feedback from parties concerned and publish the results because if there's ever a way to ensure that we've got better procurement practices across both the Government and the TLA or council sector this is the way to achieve it. I was most heartened this morning when I met with the Hon Shane Jones and had a conversation with him about this thing. I was heartened that he was very supportive of my SOP. There is one issue that was raised around the issue of whether we were replicating two clauses relating to the requirement to publish that report. So I've responded to that and provided a second supplementary SOP 363 which gives the option of deleting one of those clauses so there's now only one clause relating to a need to publicise the report. Those two supplementaries are now on the Table and I'm very hopeful that we're going to have them passed by the committee today because if ever we want to try and help the building and construction people or sector which employs 250000 people across New Zealand and includes vulnerable subcontractors this is one of those tangible mechanisms that will achieve a real outcome and make a real difference. So I'm hoping and I'm looking across at Government members here today to make sure that they act in the best interest not only of that sector but for all New Zealanders so we get an excellent outcome and help to achieve a sector that is in trouble at the moment."