Standards and Accreditation Bill

Thank you very much for the opportunity to have a discussion around clauses 1 and 2, the title and commencement clauses to the Standards and Accreditation Bill. This is an opportunity when we can seek alternative titles to the bill that is being debated. A very simple change to the bill as it is is that we just change it to the “Lower Standards and Accreditation Bill”, because that is exactly what this bill does. It does lower the standards and accreditation of New Zealand’s processes around this, not just in the eyes of the people who practise here in New Zealand but also in the eyes of the international community, which should be of major concern to this Government but it does not seem to hear about that.

A number of people and organisations came to the Commerce Committee and made that very point: that if we change the structure of our standards and accreditation process, New Zealand would be looked at in a much dimmer light in terms of our international reputation around standards and accreditation. You would have thought that the Government would take that on board because it was not just one or two of the around a dozen and a half submissions that came to us. It was a very strong vein of opposition and concern around our international reputation.

You would think that the members on that committee would have taken that feedback to the Minister and said: “Minister, we think we’ve got a problem here. We have got all these people with much more experience than us in the industry who actually do this day in, day out, and they say it is a bad idea. Do you think we should do something about it?”. But, no, they did not do that. They completely and utterly ignored the submissions from those submitters, like the Building Industry Federation, which I do not think we should ignore, to be frank, and many other submitters who were mainly from around the construction industry who have serious concerns around what the Government is doing. Their submissions were that if we do this, things will get worse.

My alternative title for the bill is that it should be the “Lower Standards and Accreditation Bill”. These are not just my words. I am not being in opposition just for opposition’s sake, which you think the Government will have a shot at us about—“Why are you guys being so negative? You always oppose everything.” Well, that is not the case in this case. There were many submitters who came to us who made the point that I have been talking about.

One of them, and I want to quote from her submission, was Diane Baguley, who has been a member of the joint New Zealand - Australia committee around standards since 1995. It is a long time, 20 years. Twenty years is a long time to be an expert in something. So when Diane Baguley turned up we were paying attention, but it seems that the members on the opposite side of the House on our select committee did not really care about Diane’s 20 years of experience and expertise around standards, because she did have concerns around lowering standards through this bill. To quote Diane Baguley—who I think is a submitter who spent her New Year’s Day putting her submission together, which is, I think, a commitment to the cause—she said: “I do not consider that the provisions set out for the establishment of the standards function within MBIE”—which is the loss of independence that we are talking about—“can adequately control the risks associated with the new structure, whether to the management of standards development or the reputation of New Zealand in the international standards community.”

When someone with 20 years’ more experience than me in the standards sector says that, I think we should listen to it. We think that the Government should have listened to it, and maybe the Minister in the chair would like to take a call as to why he did not listen to it and why his party did not listen to it, therefore lowering the standards of the standards and accreditation process here in New Zealand.

Diane did not stop there. She went on to say more about this piece of legislation. She said: “The model proposed in the Bill, if realised, might even be used as an example by countries without robust government systems, with undesirable results. New Zealand is well respected”—she may use that in the past tense now—“in the international standards community” and an argument can be made that other countries may say “Well, if New Zealand does it this way why don’t we do it this way” and that could be influential. Diane Baguley is directly saying that because we do this and we have got a good reputation, other countries that do not have such a good reputation may say: “Well, you know, look at New Zealand. They have been the shining light”—have; past tense—“so why don’t we do what they do? If they don’t think independence is important any more, then we’ll do it too.” We do not think that is the kind of example that New Zealand should be setting. We want to make sure that our systems are robust and that they continue to be looked upon by the international community as some of the best, if not the best.

But we think the changes within this bill lower the standards, which is why I offered up a cheeky—well, not too cheeky—alternative title to the bill. An alternative title—and a good alternative title that you should take because I think it more accurately describes the bill as it stands at the moment. It was not just Diane Baguley; there were other submitters who had concerns about the lowering of standards and also about the amount of political influence that could now come in to the setting of standards. It was the Building Industry Federation, which I quoted extensively earlier in the Committee stage that said, quite simply, in one sentence: “ … Standard-setting should not be subject to direct political influence by the government of the day.” We could not agree more with that, and why the Government ignored that, I do not know. Maybe the Minister in the chair, who, I think, has taken the time to answer some of the questions that we have posed, might take a call in this late stage of the Committee of the whole House to answer some of the questions that we have posed here.

It is lowering standards because the Minister, in that contribution that I mentioned earlier, said that one of the problems he is trying to solve is a lack of visibility for the New Zealand Standards Council, which, for a short period of time, will continue to be the body that looks after standards in New Zealand. His novel approach to curing the visibility problem that he pointed out was to put the new body within the uber-ministry run by Steven Joyce—the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. From my reckoning, taking a small, independent body that lacks visibility and putting it in a ministry that has eaten six other ministries, that has thousands of employees, and that cannot seem to spend money wisely is not the right solution to that problem. If you want something to be more visible you do not put on camouflage. So I think the Minister may want to revisit his thinking behind that because, to me, that does not make sense. If you want something to be more visible—as you know, Mr Chairperson, health and safety is very important; it is something that we all think is important—you put something on that is more high-vis so you can stand out. But in this case the solution to a visibility problem is to put camouflage on the new body, and to put it within a ministry that has, as I say, taken on so much responsibility that it cannot control itself.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Title and commencement.

So the title of this piece of legislation should be the “Lower Standards and Accreditation Bill”. This Government has lowered standards because it has not taken on a lot of the recommendations that have come through the select committee process: to keep independence, to make sure that there is a viable financial model, and to make sure that we do address the issue of whether we can properly cost and fund the standards process. This is another example of the Government trying to solve a problem, and where it has not solved the problem that it is trying to solve, it has actually created others.

So we will watch very closely whether our predictions of our international reputation being even more dimly viewed by the international community will come to fruition. We believe they will, and I would like to say to the Government: you were warned—by about 19 submitters who all said the same thing—that this lack of independence will lead to our international reputation being affected. In the end we will have lower standards in our standards and accreditation processes. It is a missed opportunity for the Government to have done something properly, and it is a really wasted opportunity. Thank you very much.

That act from Mr Faafoi is going to be a hard one to follow, with his excellent suggestions for alternative titles. I, however, wish to attempt a few of my own, and one of them is to draw attention to the fact that we discovered in the fine print of schedule 2—in a Supplementary Order Paper that we did not really have an opportunity to discuss at length because of other pressures—a concern that vulnerable workers’ rights are removed in this bill. The ability to contest the nature of employment, with the transitional arrangements, is not protected in the bill. It is explicitly ruled out in that schedule, so we may actually say that this is the “Standards and Accreditation (And, By the Way, Removal of Vulnerable Workers’ Rights) Bill”. The slipping in of that particular little line there is rather mean-spirited, I think. Some of my colleagues have agreed with me, and I suspect many people watching at home will agree, that targeting those who formerly worked for the accreditation committee that will now transfer to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, and ruling some of them out from taking any action based on what they perceive to be an injustice in the transfer, is a pretty mean-spirited step. So we may give it that alternative title, just to make people aware that that is part of the Government’s agenda here.

Part of the Government’s agenda beyond this bill, I would suggest, is to remove the protection for vulnerable workers. It really is a shame, and there is no need for it, I would suggest, in this bill. Some of the other provisions in it are designed, in part, to cover that off, but just to make it perfectly clear, the Government put a special clause in there to say that Part 6A of the relevant employment legislation does not apply—i.e., vulnerable workers cannot go back to that protection if they feel hard done by in this transition. So we could make that point by putting that in brackets in the title of the bill.

To raise another thing that has been brought up in the debate, the “Detraction from Our International Reputation and Influence Bill” may be another title that we could adopt, given that we have seen in the bill that the change in structure will interrupt the existing successful arrangements we have whereby members of the existing committee participate in international fora. We have seen in the submissions process in the select committee that that will be less highly prioritised. So we may choose a title for the bill that reflects that change in emphasis, that focus on collecting of fees for the setting of standards and accreditation from successful existing industries, and the likely lower priority given to new and emerging industries as this Government seeks to protect entrenched interests over those that are coming through—those that would diversify the economy; those that may actually grow the economy in a way that protects it and ensures that our future prosperity is protected.

I would be interested in the Minister in the chair, the Hon Paul Goldsmith, taking a call on this, because he has not addressed this problem in the debate, in my view, and he could probably quite well address it in this particular title and commencement debate, which lends itself to a quite wide-ranging debate within the confines of the nature of describing a bill, but none the less wide enough that the Minister in the chair could give, I am sure, an illuminating response, if he had one at his disposal. But we shall see. That test will remain.

We could also call it the “Standards and Accreditation (And, By the Way, ‘Henry VIII’ Clauses Slipped In As Well) Bill”, because that is another point that has been well made in the debate—that there are clauses that are very wide ranging in this bill that appear at the end that give the Minister the ability to hire and fire, and that allow the Minister to make some quite significant changes. They were referred to by my colleague the Hon David Cunliffe in his contribution to the debate. So we have seen that in this legislation there are many things that reflect the Government’s wider agenda, and that sense of being a little bit arrogant, a little bit out of touch. It thinks it can pop things in here that wipe out protection for vulnerable workers. It thinks it can slip things in here that give the Minister or others rights to do away with the usual parliamentary process, with the “Henry VIII” clauses, when it wishes. Also, we have seen here that arrogance in the ignoring of the advice to select committees from industry representatives—that sense of being out of touch with where industry is today.

I would like to take a call on the title and commencement clauses and, in the prevailing theme of my colleagues, suggest a new title for this bill, the Standards and Accreditation Bill 2014, as being the “Watering Down Consumer Confidence Standards Bill”. I just, I suppose, reiterate the fact that there are numerous issues with this bill that have watered down and lowered down the standard of what a good standards system should be. Consumer confidence is a really important measure of that.

Unfortunately, we have heard from the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs only once during this debate. He basically read out tracts from the ministerial report to justify the rationale for the bill before us tonight. He has given us no indication of what the purpose of his amendments are, and has, essentially, given no response to any of the issues that have been raised. So I suppose what that tells you is that another alternative name is the “Usual Arrogance and Out of Touch Nature of the Government when Developing a Standards and Accreditation Bill”—

💬 Kris Faafoi: Usual—usual.

Usual—arrogant and out of touch, as usual, and that is the syndrome to which we are all becoming accustomed. The issues that lie behind our criticism of this bill go to the issues that lie behind so many things that this Government is doing. It is removing independence. There are suggestions of conflicts of interest, there are impacts on our international reputation, there are impacts on consumer experience and consumer confidence, and this is just one of numerous—it is a trend in Government legislation that is coming before this House. If anyone is listening at home tonight, at 9.30 p.m., or watching this on the TV, then I imagine they will be shrugging their shoulders and saying “Well, what’s new?”. We think the bill is deeply problematic and that it is going to need a review by this side of the Chamber when we become the Government. We are going to have to come back to the drawing board on this, and we are, you know, signalling that. The work that was done by officials on this—there has been a lot of work done on this bill, and thank you to the officials. However, we are not convinced, and we are not convinced because of the very, very strong weight of concern that has come from reputable industry bodies and people with long history and credibility in this area.

We know that the standards framework needed a review. Everything needs a review, and it is important that we do that, and so that was undertaken. We know that there were financial unsustainability issues, but is that a reason to water down and suck an independent entity into a great, big amorphous beast that is called the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment? It has its own issues in terms of how it operates and the consumer confidence of people, particularly with regard to ensuring that there is good management of processes around health and safety. And here we are—we have created another entity within that. So to consumers listening tonight, people out there: be a bit afraid about where our standards are going and how well they are going to stand up internationally. We do not believe that it is independent. We believe that because it is inside—

The majority of the contributions on the title and commencement clauses so far have focused on the title, and I want to applaud my colleagues for their creativity in producing titles that describe the debates that we have had here in the Chamber. There have been some lively debates and there have been some genuine concerns raised, and some frustration from this side of the Chamber that the Minister in the chair, the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, has not made more contributions to perhaps justify the direction that has been taken in putting this legislation inside the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment when the independence in the past has served us so well.

I wish to focus my contribution on the clause that relates to the commencement of the bill and suggest an alternative date for commencement, and suggest that new subclause (2) of clause 2 be amended so that the effect of it is that the bill comes into effect in April 2018. That would allow, of course, for a more sensible decision-making process by a more sensible Government. I am hopeful that in 2018 we will have a more sensible Government that will actually listen to the submitters on select committees; a Government that listens to the people. That is something that we on this side of the Chamber would like to see.

The feedback I am getting from across my constituency—in fact, across New Zealand as I go and make small business visits and so on—is that the Government is no longer listening. It is a Government that has said: “Goodbye. Farewell. We’ve got our own agenda, and we’re implementing it. Here we go. We’ll listen to your submissions with beans in our ears. We’ll sit in the select committee, we’ll nod, we’ll shuffle our feet, but we won’t really listen, because we are under instructions from Minister Joyce to get on with it, to subsume everything into the massive monolith of ‘MoBIE’, which has its great big sign outside, its $140,000 TV screen, its $260,000 sun deck with barbecues, its hair straighteners, its $23,000 fridge. That ministry should absorb everything.” That is Steven Joyce’s agenda, as we have seen—to create this monolith. This is another aspect of that empire that he is building. He is pulling the standards-setting procedures inside that.

No doubt within a matter of months he will be choosing the colours of its brochures. He will be saying to the standards and accreditation committee: “You’re not communicating with the public the way I like. Set your brochures out in landscape format—landscape format. I’ve had enough of this portrait format; we need some landscape format.” That will be Steven Joyce. You can guarantee it. He has got a track record on this stuff. He will be rewriting the submissions. He will be controlling the whole jolly thing. We will still see exports falling as a percentage of GDP, as they have continuously with this Minister.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Title and commencement—title and commencement, remember that.

Title and commencement. And so, if we push this out to 2018, we would see more sensible decision-making. We would not see this particular aspect of our important arrangements pulled into the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment under the control of Steven Joyce and his mega-ministry, which is appealing to the multinationals. We would see it focused more nearly on the interests of small and emerging businesses—those businesses that are going to diversify our economy and those businesses that are going to bring future prosperity to our country.

We need a Government with vision. We need a Government that makes sensible decisions and that listens to submitters. Therefore, if we push the commencement of this bill out until April 2018, we hope that we will have such a Government—a Government that listens to the people, a Labour-led Government, a Government of the future that is looking to diversify the economy. That is why my submission is that we should change that clause to ensure a more sensible decision-making process. Thank you.

I move, That the question be now put.

Motion agreed to.