Wong Pansy: Standards and Conformance Bill — First Reading 
Wong Pansy: Standards and Conformance Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:628;Page:1021] 
PANSY WONG (National) 
: 
 Yesterday this Minister like other Labour commerce Ministers before her once again made warm fuzzy noises about cutting compliance costs especially for small businesses. Apparently one of the fantastic responses that cuts compliance costs is to ask the Ministry for Economic Development to look into ways to measure and publish the cost of compliance. Compliance costs are indeed being identified along with high tax and the employment laws as one of the major obstacles facing small businesses. But can we have confidence in the Ministry for Economic Development championing the ways that Government departments can measure and report compliance costs? Let us look at this legislation because I am sure it was put together by the Ministry for Economic Development and as required by all legislation it has to contain a compliance cost statement. 
We see the statement identifies that this legislation will incur compliance costs because two accreditation bodies will be reduced to one and the organisations that were previously registered by International Accreditation New Zealand will now have to be registered with Joint Accreditation System of Australia and New Zealand. According to the compliance cost statement the size of the compliance costs that will be incurred by the bodies that shift their accreditation from one organisation to the other will depend on how much confidence the new accreditation organisation Joint Accreditation System of Australia and New Zealand has in the previous accreditations that were undertaken by International Accreditation New Zealand. 
The compliance cost statement also points out that there may be some confusion in the market because of these changes. Therefore it states it is not possible to quantify the size of the compliance costs. But the Ministry for Economic Development claims that it will take on the task of writing to the organisations that will be affected by the changes and that somehow that will clarify the issue and remove any confusion. Well the Ministry for Economic Development obviously has huge confidence in its letter-writing ability. I have never known any business owner to suddenly say he or she is no longer confused because a letter from the Ministry for Economic Development has outlined all the changes. That is why one can have no confidence in the commitment in this Minister and the minority Labour Government she belongs to to tackle creeping compliance costs. In fact business owners continue to complain nowadays that they can feel the tentacles of this Labour Government interfering in various parts of their businesses. 
National members will support this legislation going on to the select committee process. We look forward to meeting the advisers especially those from the Ministry for Economic Development and to testing their ability to demonstrate that they can indeed champion the measurement of compliance costs given they have actually at this stage put an abysmal effort into furnishing the business compliance cost statement contained in this bill. 
Let me turn to the provision in this bill that concerns the transfer of the accreditation function from International Accreditation New Zealand to Joint Accreditation System of Australia and New Zealand. On the face of it to reduce two accreditation operations into one seems to be a sensible move. However we have learnt from the explanatory note of the bill that various organisations have expressed concerns because the new body Joint Accreditation System of Australia and New Zealand actually charges higher fees than International Accreditation New Zealand. Whatever happened to economies of scale? We are now telling the bodies that have to get accreditation that they will have to pay higher fees for no obvious benefit. 
Apparently the consultation process threw up another observation: there are concerns about the lack of client services in Joint Accreditation System of Australia and New Zealand compared with International Accreditation New Zealand. That is a classic case of businesses being asked to pay more and get less. That sounds to me like a very Labour business persona—one pays more and gets less. I look forward to quizzing the officials and advisers during the select committee’s deliberation on the bill as to why businesses are to pay higher fees for fewer services. Apparently the officials actually took up those concerns and they reckon they have solved the problem by including a transitional provision in the bill. The transitional provision includes the measure that the advisers will write to Joint Accreditation System of Australia and New Zealand asking it to review its fees and also to take the concerns expressed by businesses into consideration. Well I do not think that is good enough. I think basically the advisors have to ask Joint Accreditation System of Australia and New Zealand for a fee scale and to justify why its fees are higher than those of International Accreditation New Zealand. Unless businesses can be convinced they are receiving more services I cannot see why the Government should pass legislation to force businesses to pay more for fewer services. So that is another provision we will take up and seek answers on from the officials. 
The functions of the Standards Council will also be affected by this legislation. According to section 10(1) of the Standards Act the primary functions of the council were originally: “… to develop standards and to promote encourage and facilitate the use of standards in New Zealand with the object of—(a) Improving the quality of goods and services having regard to economy in their production or supply; or (b) Promoting standardisation in industry trade or commerce; or (c) Encouraging and facilitating industrial development trade or commerce; or (d) Promoting public or occupational safety health or welfare.” This bill seeks to expand those functions by having to include the objectives as outlined in clause 7(1) of “minimising environmental risks” and “promoting social responsibility”. 
Alarm bells should start to ring when sweeping statements like those are to be included. I want to know whether the Minister has in mind a ban on plastic shopping bags in supermarkets in order to minimise environmental risk. When the Greens want such solutions to become policy they at least are upfront about it but the Labour Government always insists upon a quango to do the work it does not tell the public about. 
Another provision I want to question concerns the definition of “social responsibility”. On what criteria is it based and who will decide what constitutes social responsibility under this legislation? If that term is well-defined why is it not included in the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 or the Fair Trading Act 1986? After all those Acts seem to be even more relevant to that requirement than this bill is. I wonder how many types of children’s toys will pass the social responsibility test. We look forward to the officials coming up with guidelines and examples at the select committee. 
The last point I want to raise—the ultimate concern—is that this bill includes another sweeping statement whereby the Minister can interfere. Apparently the Minister can simply ask the Standards Council to take on any other function not in contradiction with its objective. But as we know the council’s objective is very wide. So although we support this bill going to the select committee we look forward to putting it under very robust scrutiny.