O'Connor Simon: Standards and Accreditation Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Connor Simon: Standards and Accreditation Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 19 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3423. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): I am exhausted after listening to that. It was the old stump speech from Labour.Dr David Clark: The arrogance.SIMON O’CONNOR: Yes there is the word—arrogance. That is the word those members keep using—that vainglorious hope that if they use the words “arrogance” and “tired” they will fall on to the National Government. But the strange thing is as I go through my electorate the wonderful place of Tāmaki my constituents actually do not worry about the arrogance or the tiredness of the National Party because they see us progressing positively. What I find most striking though is they do not even talk about the Labour Party. The Labour Party is completely totally irrelevant—not up to scratch not up to standard would not be accredited has not been accredited since 2008 and God help us if it is accredited in 2017.On the Standards and Accreditation Bill I was going to say early on that I actually thought the speeches were up to a relatively good standard; it has been falling away a little bit there. There has been a lot of talk around trade. We have fallen back—and I think Andrew Little was talking about it last week—to the importance of trade and how New Zealand must diversify and reach out into the markets and how we are not doing enough there is a crisis and the sky is falling in. It is interesting that the Labour Party has gone back to logs. I see that the Labour Party has gone back to logs as a great way to save this economy—that somehow we are just going to add value to logs and build all sorts of bits and bobs which the world strangely enough does not seem to want to buy off us at the moment. But that is completely irrelevant. We will just continue on with theories.We have heard theories too tonight around standards and accreditations. The last speaker David Clark was really really keen on talking about electrical jacks and then for some reason switched to phone jacks and then switched back to electrical jacks. So when it comes to standards the Labour Party seems to be really concerned about jacks. And then I thought that maybe that just fits in with its previous policies where it was concerned about the standards of light bulbs the standards of shower heads—and you go: “Are these really the things that matter?”. They are not. What matters is that this Government is progressing legislation through the Commerce Committee that is going to help strengthen the way that we engage.What we can see is actually a Commerce Committee I believe that has worked jolly hard on this. I know other speakers have acknowledged the chair Melissa Lee and the general consensus that has occurred in the committee. That is often being displayed these days on Twitter on a Thursday morning with a whole lot of epicurean delights. I am not sure who is on this week but it is actually a very cooperative working committee. But one of the elements that has come up tonight is this question of perception particularly the perception that the committee and this side of the House has not listened to petitioners. I just want to put paid to that. Twenty-one people came before our committee and submitted. I think all people in the House—even the other side—have acknowledged that they generally were experts in their field.Clare Curran: Not listening.SIMON O’CONNOR: All of us listened actually which is quite an important distinction. We listened and then what we did is what most human beings do: we engaged our minds we discussed between ourselves we read the departmental reports we went away and engaged with people in our communities and in our electorates and we had those conversations. A strange thing about democracy is that people are allowed to have different opinions. In fact the Hon Judith Collins touched on it very briefly when she said that actually the whole point of democracy at times is to have a difference of opinion. We do not come into this House for the sake of just agreeing with each other. That in itself is anti-democratic. What we found in this process is that we did not fully agree but the fundamental points where the disagreements are happening from the Opposition’s side I do not believe are actually real.The first is around conflicts of interest. This was discussed quite a bit—that all of a sudden the people on these panels these working groups somehow are going to be conflicted. The strange thing is that if you wish to have people setting standards working to accreditations you want them to have a certain degree of knowledge and understanding. The committee worked I think jolly hard on this to say—[Interruption] Yes that is right unless you are from the union; that raises a whole lot of other questions. But what we want is people with experience. We want them to declare that. I do not have the exact wording in front of me but we have actually made changes in the select committee to make sure that that bar is not set too high or too low. You cannot have someone on a standards working panel who does not know about the subject so instantly you are going to have a builder an electrician a radiographer—whatever—sitting on one of these working groups and of course they are going to have a conflict of interest; it is their area of expertise. So we have tried to put a measurement if you will in there that allows some conflicts obviously to be acknowledged as we would expect but not too large conflicts.The other disagreement has been the whole question that we would dare to put this organisation under the auspices of the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment. A great scandal—a great scandal we are hearing from the other side. I think the first point for the House and obviously anyone listening at home and those in the industry is that this is an independent statutory body. What we are developing here through legislation is an independent statutory body. For the edification of the other side—Clare Curran: Edification!SIMON O’CONNOR: The edification of the other side. I am all for sesquipedalianism—increasing the standards of language. We have a number of independent statutory bodies and it is strange to note that we have not heard the Opposition demanding that these be closed down. In fact if you look at the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment there are 35 statutory bodies under its auspices. Not all I would note are independent but those that are include the likes of the Remu-ra—rather the Remuneration Authority; yes I am getting tongue-tied here. They are the likes of the Banking Ombudsman scheme the Copyright Tribunal and of course the Employment Relations Authority. These are—Brett Hudson: Clearly they’re influenced by MBIE.SIMON O’CONNOR: Exactly—if you are following the logic or lack of of the other side these are no longer independent because they are under the auspices of a particular ministry. That does not make any sense if you are going to be consistent. The second side and this is what Judith Collins was noting is that in this structure a Minister is held accountable—a very particular person. It could be an encouragement to the Opposition after all these years to actually ask some questions that really matter to a Minister and that matter to the people.The last point I would make around that is around the word “synergies”. Ultimately working within a ministry such as the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment allows for synergies—that actually ideas are being shared. You can be independent; you can act in that space—Brett Hudson: Do you mean collaboration?SIMON O’CONNOR: Collaboration.Brett Hudson: Working together positively?SIMON O’CONNOR: Exactly. Absolutely. Can you believe it? Positive collaboration—something that actually this Government remains very very keen on.Another element I want to touch on is around copyright. A number of submitters raised this in different ways and a couple of constituents did with me as well. It is in clause 42 of the bill. One particular submitter during the select committee was basically concerned about their copyright if it was put into legislation the idea being that if they have an idea that is then articulated in legislation they would lose their copyright. It is very important in the notion of New Zealand’s laws that if something is formally put into legislation it comes under the Crown’s copyright. And if something is under the Crown’s copyright then it must be available to all for free and to be used. There is no point in having laws if they are not transparent and accessible. So within clause 42 and we took a bit of time discussing this as a committee we have made the distinction between those items that are referenced in the law—those will maintain a third-party copyright so if you are the person who has articulated the standard and ideas you have a copyright to that. If it is only referenced in the legislation you maintain the copyright. If however the standard is fully incorporated into the body of the legislation—and I can see my colleague here Todd Barclay from Clutha-Southland is absolutely hanging on every word about this distinction—Hon Amy Adams: Why wouldn’t he?SIMON O’CONNOR: Absolutely—you know this is what the House is about. But again if it is fully engaged in the legislation the Crown copyright holds again so it is accessible. So I think we have come to a worthwhile balance there.Ultimately this is just one bill in a whole suite of bills that this Government is progressing. We heard a lot from the previous speaker around the whole Business Growth Agenda. It is a fantastic agenda it is working and it is bringing about results. This bill in the name of the Hon Paul Goldsmith the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs is just one part of that. I commend it to the House.