Russell DeborahDr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): Thank you Madam Chair. I'm delighted to take a call on this. There are a couple of issues that have been touched on a little bit by some of my colleagues this evening but I really want to speak to them a little more and find out a little more from the Minister about them.The first is an issue that was raised by my colleague Dr Webb and that's the equivalent overseas regime. There's a specific definition of it in clause 6 of the bill. As far as I can tell an overseas regime is a regime that is roughly similar to the regime here in New Zealand but the bit that I find very interesting in this is not just the idea that we might look for a roughly equivalent regime overseas but someone has to make a judgment as to which regime is roughly similar and in this case it's the secretary—so that's the Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade. I found that quite interesting because I guess the secretary is—her or his performance in their job is subject to review by the State Services Commissioner. Of course they are appointed for a limited period of time so what they do or don't do in their job is subject to that kind of review as well. But I found it interesting that it is the Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade who makes the judgment as to what is an equivalent overseas regime. I would ordinarily have expected that it perhaps might be the Minister who made that decision. Even if it was on the advice of the secretary it might have been the Minister who is ordinarily the person who is held responsible for those decisions. So I'm sure there's a good reason for why the particular decision rests with the Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade rather than with the Minister but I would be very interested to hear what that reason is so that I could understand.I mean it's not unusual. It does happen in other legislation as well. We know that the Income Tax Act and the Tax Administration Act are full of references to the commissioner who has a lot of discretion but in this particular instance I really would like to know just exactly why that discretion has been shifted to the secretary. So that was the first aspect of this particular part of the bill that I would like to get some clarification on—just that little bit around the equivalent overseas regime.The other bit that I find very interesting in this first part of the bill is who or what the bill applies to. I'm looking in particular at new clause 3A(1) and this has been inserted at the select committee stage of the process. So it's obviously something that was very important was raised by submitters to the bill and that people wanted to see something going on here in the bill. I didn't sit on that select committee so I don't exactly know what the reasoning was. What it says is that This Act applies to any brokering activity that is carried out—(a) in any place (… wholly or partially outside New Zealand [possibly]) and by a person—(i) who is in New Zealand or; (ii) who is a New Zealand citizen or ordinarily resident in New Zealand". Now that's kind of interesting because ordinarily if a New Zealand citizen commits some offence overseas we normally rely on the other regime to prosecute them. We don't try to prosecute New Zealand citizens for offences they've performed overseas. But in this particular instance we are saying that a New Zealand citizen no matter where she or he actually commits the offence against the Act—we're asking that they nevertheless be held accountable in New Zealand.Now again there are some equivalent sorts of laws. Actually the ones that always come to mind for me are ones involving people who rape children overseas and they can be held responsible under our laws here. So that's the equivalent sort of thing. So I want to know why this has got that particular parallel in this law that even if the offence is performed overseas we might nevertheless choose to prosecute it here.So I'd really appreciate it if the Minister was able to just provide a little bit of enlightenment as to those two particular issues. Thank you."