Mallard TrevorHon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): From the time that the committee deliberated on this report until about 10 days ago I anticipated that this would be effectively my valedictory speech. How times have changed.This is the worst and the least ambitious review of the Standing Orders I have ever seen.Hon Simon Bridges: Oh what a joke. What a bad joke from a bitter old man. What a joke.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Well it is better to be a slightly bitter slightly elderly person than a lazy Minister who did not read the submissions to the committee and who had to read a speech in the House today. He clearly had not read through the speech which someone else had written and he could not even tell the difference between referring" and "refereeing". He is the laziest member of the Standing Orders Committee that I have ever seen and he put Mr Speaker in an awful position as the chair of the committee because Mr Speaker had to consistently remind him of the different objectives of the executive and of the Parliament. Mr Speaker had to explain the differences to Mr Bridges time and time again. In the end of course Mr Bridges reminded me of Dr Gromyko—"Dr No". To every positive suggestion put forward by submitters Simon Bridges said no. That is why later this year they will either reconvene the Standing Orders Committee or pass sessional orders to make many of the improvements that were suggested by the submitters and were ignored by the committee.Some of the things that are very important involve making this place more family friendly. Some of them I accept are administrative; they are in the hands of the Speaker and of the Parliamentary Service and of the Office of the Clerk. There are some that will involve changes to the Standing Orders and some of them will involve changes to electoral law. I think we can learn a lot from some of the European MMP Parliaments as to ways of having temporary replacements for members who are on family leave. I look forward later this year to sitting in that Chair and having the brand new baby Prime and the yet-to-be born baby Allan coming up and giving me a cuddle because we have become more family friendly in this House and we will be more welcoming of children here.On the question of the prayer the committee says that there will be consultation; it recommends consultation. I think there should be too. I think it should be brief. The current parliamentary prayer is not appropriate for the type of Parliament we have become and I think it is important that we change it and soon.Under Labour select committees will go back to being creatures of the Parliament and not rubber stamps for the executive. There will be many more Opposition majorities and Opposition chairs of committees so that they can work through the legislation and give a proper parliamentary opinion rather than being a place for people who are greasing up to the executive in order to try to be Ministers going forward. We have had too much of a history of that recently—people who do not do their jobs as chairs of select committees because they want to become Ministers—Dr David Clark: Tell us what you really think.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Well—the next point I want to make is that this Parliament and the last couple of parliaments have had very poor pre-legislative scrutiny. We want to encourage Governments to do better consultation. We want to get back to having things like green papers and white papers. We want draft bills available with reasonable periods. We think the Government should be rewarded for doing the right thing. We are already doing quite well with having our extended sittings but one of the things that we should be doing is saying that if a Government does the right thing before the legislation is introduced then it should have the right to go to an extended sitting without having to have permission and without the select committees being shut down. So if Governments do the right thing they get an easier track through the House with the non-relevant committees also sitting.I think there should be a trade-off. I think we do not need now urgency in its normal form within this Parliament. If we get a proper track working then I think we should save urgency for items that are actually an emergency where we do have to do something in a hurry: natural disasters maybe urgent revenue changes sales tax changes or similar things. I think for that there should be a 75 percent majority. The Government should be able to convince the Parliament—a supermajority of the Parliament—that in fact there is something that is very urgent rather than using urgency as a lazy approach to avoid proper scrutiny in select committees and to try to do a bit of catch-up when the Government has not been working well.That sort of approach would put a bit of pressure on Oppositions. If there really was an emergency—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: When I was in Opposition under you guys—Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Well the member will not be in Opposition under us because he is—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Was was.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: He was and Mr Deputy Speaker I think that in that time we had not done our wonderful changes to be able to go back and sit on Wednesday and Thursday morning through extended sittings—something that the current Mr Deputy Speaker has been in the Chair for and has guided the House through really well. I think it should not be reserved only for Treaty bills and other non-contentious issues; my view is that Parliament could make a lot more progress and be a much better place if while members are here and not sitting on select committees they could be nutting out the nuts and bolts especially of the Committee stage and make some real progress. We need to have also some better systems for sending urgent legislation off to select committees.So I want to finish how I started. This is an exceptionally disappointing report. There have been many submitters who came to the committee who have indicated that they felt their submissions were a waste of time and that Ministers on the committee had not read their submissions and clearly had not read their submissions when they were being heard. As a result of that this has been an opportunity wasted. But I just want to make it absolutely clear that those big ideas will be picked up in November."