Nash Stuart: Standards and Accreditation Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNash Stuart: Standards and Accreditation Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 15 October 2015. Volume:709;Page:7329. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): As you have heard Labour opposes this bill but let me outline the reasons why I am not a big fan of this bill at all. The main reason is that New Zealand has developed what I believe is an enviable global reputation for quality—for standards. It is what we go out to the world with and we actually saw what happened when New Zealand’s reputation was tarnished and the potential impact it had when there was an issue with Fonterra. We heard that there might have been contamination and in fact at that point in time if you had read the media you could have believed that in China at least the chief executive officer of Fonterra was actually more important or more powerful than the Prime Minister of New Zealand.The Prime Minister of New Zealand went over there and he tried to allay the fears and say that New Zealand has good quality standards that we are doing what we need to do well and that we hold ourselves up to global benchmarks. The chief executive officer of Fonterra went over there and he actually was responsible for putting out the fires that could have cost this country literally billions of dollars. This is why I say that the way we implement standards in this country or our standards regime is absolutely vital to maintaining our global competitive advantage around our “clean green” and “100% Pure” brands. What I would say is that this is all about perception and when we have a standards authority that is not perceived to be independent we run the risk of tarnishing that reputation because overseas investors or overseas markets will look at our country and say: “Goodness me. We cannot necessarily trust the fact that a lack of independence is going to deliver the sorts of outcomes that our market needs to see.”I am not saying by any stretch of the imagination that the people who will be in charge of the standards regime are going to be incompetent at all. In fact they will probably be highly competent. But the fact that they are actually appointed by the Minister and come under the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment umbrella just sends the wrong signal. You know when you are a member of Parliament what you have to do in areas where you do not have a level of competency is you have to take advice from people who do. This is why the select committee process is so valuable because we get a number of experts who come along and they voice their opinion and they say: “This is what is wrong this is what is right and this is how to make legislation better.”The thing that concerns me is that it appears that the select committee listened to a whole raft of experts who said independence is vital to maintain our international credibility and our international integrity but the select committee did not do anything that put this into effect. This is why I have real concerns about this and it is why the Labour Party continues to have reservations about this bill in its current form. We already have a great reputation in terms of our global standards but it did need updating. I do not think there was any debate about that but we could have done it in a way that maintained our international credibility because if we lose that if we lose our international credibility and our integrity is slowly chipped away then what we become is simply another small economy selling commodities into a shrinking global market. We begin to lose the value or the premium that our products currently get and that is a really really dangerous road that might be taken.I am not saying by any stretch of the imagination that this will in effect do that overnight. All I am saying is that when we go out to global markets with our New Zealand brand there are a whole lot of brand attributes underneath the big New Zealand “clean green” and “100% Pure” brands that we take to the market. One of those brands is that we know what we are doing we have independence and you can trust our products. If it has “New Zealand” on the can if it has “New Zealand” on the packet then it will be 100 percent right. [Bell rung] Is that my 5 minutes up Mr Assistant Speaker?The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): That is your 1-minute to go bell—it is a 10-minute speech normally—and you get a bell at 4 minutes.STUART NASH: The thing that concerns me is that we need that brand to maintain that brand integrity and one of those brand attributes is the fact that we have world-class standards that we benchmark ourselves and that you can trust us and trust our brand. You erode that trust and all it does is it just takes the shine off the brand just a little bit and I think that is what this piece of legislation does. Taking this within the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment by removing that perception of independence I just do not think is the way forward in the 21st century. This is why we oppose this bill and this is why we have major reservations about this piece of legislation. Thank you very much.