Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

I move, That the Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Social Services and Community Committee to consider the bill, and at the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 10 August 2023.

It is a great honour to be able to bring this bill to the House. It is the end result of a significant amount of work in the sport and recreation sector over the last few years, and I want to pay a special acknowledgment to all of those who have been involved in that work—in particular, the Play, Active Recreation and Sport Integrity Working Group. That working group has spent a lot of time over the last couple of years consulting widely across New Zealand to be able to come up with the recommendations that are what fills up this piece of legislation today, and I want to thank them for their work, and the transition group that has also been working most recently and those who will continue to support us in this important endeavour.

Participating and competing in sport and recreation is fundamental to the wellbeing of New Zealanders. From grassroots to the elite level, sport and recreation positively impacts health and wellbeing, it strengthens our social connections in our communities, and it is an expression of cultural and personal identity. For children and young people in particular, physical activity is essential to wellbeing and development, and as we all watch our elite athletes compete on the world stage, it’s also an immense source of pride for New Zealanders and also one that draws our communities together.

But the benefits of sport and recreation are only truly realised if those activities are safe, inclusive, and fair. Both here in Aotearoa New Zealand and around the world, reviews of sport and recreation environments have shown that more needs to be done to protect athletes and participants at all levels from harm and to ensure a level playing field. Athletes at all levels have spoken up about how difficult and isolating it can be to raise integrity issues. This can be exacerbated by complex processes which lack transparency and independence.

In New Zealand in recent times, we have seen, sadly, a number of sports where reviews have needed to be undertaken into areas such as athlete welfare, bullying, abuse, and inappropriate behaviour. All of these are regrettable, but it has been across a number of sports and also, sadly, not just at the elite level. We have also seen inquiries undertaken where there have been concerns about bullying and abuse at grassroots sports level as well. We need to do better to ensure that our people can participate but also, in doing so, ensure that they are treated fairly and they are kept safe.

The bill in front of us today will help protect the wellbeing of participants and the fairness of competition by establishing a new independent Crown entity, the Integrity Sport and Recreation Commission, to lead a strengthened and more participant-focused integrity system for the sport and recreation sector. The commission’s independence is important. This was raised with us numerous times over the consultation period. While I applaud the work that Sport New Zealand, High Performance Sport New Zealand, and other sporting organisations do to support athlete wellbeing, it is clear that for athletes and participants to be able to raise integrity issues without fear that their funding selection or participation will be impacted, we need an independent body. Integrity in the context of this Act refers to how we keep sport safe and recreation safe, fair, and inclusive for all New Zealanders.

To that end, the bill empowers the commission to target behaviours and practices that threaten integrity, including competition manipulation and match fixing, the use of prohibited substances and doping methods, bullying, abuse, harassment, sexual misconduct, violence, intimidation, racism and other discrimination, and the failure to safeguard children. The use of prohibited substances and doping methods in sports will be addressed through the current sports anti-doping regime, which gives effect to New Zealand’s obligations under the World Anti-Doping Code. All other threats to integrity will be addressed through a new integrity framework introduced in this bill. The commission will have a comprehensive role to provide education, advice, and independent dispute resolution processes to set integrity standards for the sector, and to investigate and resolve integrity issues.

The commission will also become New Zealand’s national anti-doping organisation, taking on the functions of Drug Free Sport New Zealand, and will be responsible for ensuring we continue to meet our obligations under the World Anti-Doping Code. The bill disestablishes Drug Free Sport New Zealand and transfers its powers and functions to the new commission. I want to ensure that the anti-doping regime can continue uninterrupted during this transition and that the commission retains the expertise and knowledge that currently sits within Drug Free Sport New Zealand.

I want to make a special point of noting the excellent work done by Drug Free Sport New Zealand, and the approach being taken in this bill in no way speaks to any concerns that we have with the operations of Drug Free Sport New Zealand. We are disestablishing it because we want it to be part of a wider integrity body, but the skills and knowledge and expertise that have been built up will be utilised and I thank Drug Free Sport New Zealand for their cooperation in the work that we have done to put this bill together.

The bill requires that the commission will have a strong Te Ao Māori capability and Māori representation on the board. This will help ensure that Māori perspectives are understood and represented at a governance level and that the commission can provide culturally appropriate services. Its processes will also need to respect human rights, promote the best interests of children, and be responsive to the needs and participation of participants, including disability needs and the needs of rainbow communities.

Currently, the quality of response participants receive varies tremendously depending on the resources and capability in their sport or activity. Grassroots organisations and administrators, who are mostly volunteers, often lack the time and expertise to prevent and resolve complex integrity matters. Organisations will still have the primary responsibility for resolving integrity issues. However, the commission will provide expert advice and support to raise the capability of the sector to deal with integrity matters. It will also provide independent pathways for resolving issues when they cannot be dealt with by the relevant organisation.

While sports doping is governed by an international framework, there is no similar approach for other broader integrity issues. Standards vary considerably across the sector, as does awareness of those standards. To address this, the bill establishes a new integrity framework. The commission will issue integrity codes that set minimum standards for conduct for participants and organisations and will prescribe the policies and processes that organisations must have to protect participants.

Like the anti-doping regime, the integrity framework will be based on sport and recreation organisations adopting an integrity code. We will take a collaborative approach to both the adoption of integrity codes and building capability. Careful consideration has been given to what protections are required for people that make a complaint or provide information to the commission. This is particularly important as athletes and other participants have told us they have been reluctant to raise issues for fear of retaliation. The bill requires the commission to keep the identity of complainants confidential, with some exceptions, including where disclosure is required to enable the investigation to proceed. Additionally, if an organisational person retaliates against a participant for making a complaint or providing information to the commission, then this will constitute a breach of an integrity code that could be sanctioned.

Importantly, the bill gives the commission powers to investigate integrity issues either in response to a complaint or on its own initiative. The commission can also investigate integrity issues involving New Zealand organisations that occur outside New Zealand, and this reflects the international nature of sport and recreation, particularly at the high-performance level. Consent and cooperation will be the preferred means of information gathering for investigations, and where information cannot be obtained by consent from the organisation the bill provides reasonable and proportionate information-gathering powers.

The bill provides that the commission can establish an independent disciplinary panel to determine and apply sanctions for the breach of an integrity code. The commission will also be able to hold organisations accountable, including through making public its findings and recommendations and requiring an organisation to take remedial action, such as making an apology or improving its processes and policies.

I expect the new integrity framework and the commission’s function and powers will be of significant interest to submitters, and I am particularly interested in hearing from submitters whether or not we are targeting the right behaviour and conduct through the definition of threats to integrity, and whether we have struck the right balance in terms of investigative and disciplinary powers for the protection of participants. Overall, I believe that this bill does respond to what we have heard time and time again from athletes: that they want their wellbeing to be upheld, that they need to be comfortable, that they are safe when they are involved in sport and recreation, and that they are involved in a fair sport and recreation system. I believe that this bill takes significant steps forwards to ensuring we achieve all of those goals, and I look forward to its passage through the House and to hearing the submissions that we get. I commend the Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Like the Minister and a vast number of New Zealanders, I am a sports nut. I absolutely love my sport, and Sunday afternoon was spent channel surfing between Melbourne’s Formula One racing event and that spectacular come-from-behind victory by the Warriors over the Sharks, and we really—

💬 Hon David Bennett: You missed the Chiefs, mate.

Well, you see, we won’t get into the Chiefs. I was trying not to be too parochial by picking a sport that the House knew I wasn’t particularly enamoured with, but now that you’ve mentioned it, the Highlanders did have a cracking good win, despite their injury list.

But we also know sport is actually really big business. You know, if you think about those sports—rugby union, rugby league, and certainly Formula One—there’s a significant amount of money involved by the athletes, by the sponsors, by the organisers, and at the elite level, at least, and certainly at pre-elite and elite level. There is a tremendous amount of pressure on all of the stakeholders in sport.

In their introduction to the report of the Play, Active Recreation, and Sport Integrity Working Group, which was released nearly a year ago, there was a disturbing list of anecdotes about how that kind of pressure manifests in terms of bullying, athletes quitting, the mental health struggles of certain athletes, abuse being normalised, players being offended, humiliated, or intimidated, sexual abuse, allegations of homophobia, and sexism. Now, I think they are quite minor in their incidence, but they’re incredibly serious when they occur and they risk reputational risk for those sports and our country. But also there is a tremendous burden and pressure on those who are victims of that sort of behaviour.

Now, of course, things came to a head with the tragedy that was the death of Olivia Podmore, and the subsequent second—sadly—inquiry by Mike Heron KC into Cycling New Zealand, and I’m pleased to note that things are improving significantly and the results bear that out. But it shouldn’t come to a tragedy for us to collectively respond to the risks, to the integrity, of those sports events. So we strongly support the principle of an independent body being established to, firstly, set standards so that these things are reduced and prevented but also, if they do occur, that there is a safe, appropriate, and timely mechanism for people to have complaints investigated and to be resolved.

I personally think it’s a good idea to keep that entity separate from Sport NZ and High Performance Sport NZ. We’re a relatively small ecosystem in this country, and the perceptions of independence could be undermined if this new entity isn’t going to be wholly independent from the ecosystem that we have. I also want to associate myself with the comments of the Minister in the confidence that Drug Free Sport New Zealand has had a very, very good track record in keeping New Zealand athletes overwhelmingly clean, and preventing and detecting—sadly, we had one quite recently where there was an eight-year ban handed down to an athlete, but that’s a very rare thing in a world where competitive pressures may tempt athletes to take performance enhancing substances. They’ve done a terrific job, and it does make sense to fold Drug Free Sport New Zealand into the new entity.

There are some questions, though, that I look forward to—I hope—participating in, but certainly I have confidence that members of the Social Services and Community Committee will explore these in detail. The cost of the body is not identified in the regulatory impact statement. It talks about the overall cost—well, I’m not even sure if it’s the overall cost—of about $9.6 million, of which $5.1 million is the existing cost of running Drug Free Sport New Zealand, but it does go on to talk about additional costs which are then redacted from the regulatory impact statement. I think we do need to know what the costs of the new entity are. I’m sure that—well, I’m confident that—value for money can be established, but we are in straitened times and it’s important to make sure that those costs are fair and reasonable.

One of the unusual aspects of the bill, which was actually set out in paragraph 4.9 of the departmental disclosure statement, was on the voluntary nature of the integrity codes. They’re not going to be mandatory, and organisations then get to opt-in to these integrity codes for them to apply. I do worry about that. I think that if this is important, then there needs to be some expectation that codes, particularly at the pre-elite and elite level, do comply with them. So I think that’s something that the committee can interrogate; officials and submitters will have a view on that as well.

The third thing is that there has been some anecdotes provided to me about the draft codes and integrity body perhaps not being sufficiently robust to cover very young athletes. There are a couple of sports organisations that have highlighted to me that the integrity body may not have the nimbleness that it needs to deal with not only pre-elite but pre-adolescent athletes, and we have certainly seen some quite disturbing anecdotes from around the world of both parental pressure and sexual abuse in a couple of those sports. So I want to hear from those sports organisations as well.

But, broadly speaking, I agree with the Minister. I think the process has been a thorough one, the outcome looks promising, and National is pleased to support it at first reading.

There was one other thing that I think the select committee could have a look at, and that is at clause 51: the commission’s power to require information to be provided. That gives it some kind of quasi-investigative powers, and I want to make sure that the commission is, firstly, armed but that there are the usual controls, I think, around reasonable cause if a commission has the power to require information or documents to be released, because if they are too onerous, then the likelihood that a sports body may opt out of the integrity codes is increased. I think this will work only when, well, frankly, all of the national sports organisations subject themselves and abide by integrity codes for their sports.

But we’re starting from a pretty good place. I think it’s gone through a thorough process and the bill looks in pretty good shape at first reading. I look forward to hearing from as many of the sports organisations as we can, even if they agree with it and they don’t have too many suggestions for improvement. That’s an endorsement too of the fact that we’re on the right track.

We have a shortened report-back date. I don’t like them generally, but I think we are seeing a Government that wants to get a lot of business done before it gets thrown out in October. I don’t think this is one of those ones that would be put aside or put down the list of priorities should a National-led Government be in place, and I look forward, actually, to moving the second and subsequent readings as the Minister for Sport and Recreation. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’d just like to acknowledge the previous speaker, Michael Woodhouse, who just about did a brilliant speech, except for that last little bit—didn’t agree with that. However, it was a very reasonable conversation that you had with us. Your speech hit some notes that I think were really appropriate, and, as the chair of the Social Services and Community Committee, I think we will have a robust and useful discussion about this bill.

I’m really delighted that this bill has come to this House, and I have to acknowledge the Minister, the Hon Grant Robertson, for bringing it to the House. I want to just acknowledge him for a couple of other things about this particular bill. Despite a lot of other headwinds in his other ministerial duties, our Minister has continued to champion this work across two terms, and it is important work. I know in 2018 we had a year of reckoning, really—we had a year of reckoning with our cycling, our football, our hockey, and our rowing, and we had a number of reviews and it wasn’t good. It wasn’t good, and we can all admit to that. There seemed to be a lack of a genuine focus on athletes’ rights and welfare, and there seemed to be a bullying culture, and the Minister has taken the ball and run with it—

💬 Marja Lubeck: Ha, ha! Nice analogy.

—in order to get us here today. So—OK, OK, that was a bad joke, I know.

I was going to talk about some of my previous sporting prowess as a rep for hockey and a whole pile of things like that, but let’s talk to the bill. I think it’s much more important than me telling you about how good I was at hockey back in the day—or surfing, or diving, or any of the other things, just saying.

💬 Marja Lubeck: And modest.

And modest. So in 2018, the Integrity Working Group was set up, and they’ve worked consistently for a long time to bring us to this bill today. They came up with 22 recommendations and those recommendations have been folded into this bill. And what’s important about this bill, I think, is that everyone in this country wants to know that our grassroots sports—right through to our little nippers, right through to our elite athletes—are safe and are taken care of and they’re included. So, safe, inclusive, and fair sports is what we’re about, and this piece of legislation creates this wonderful independent body which sits there quite clearly in order to do a whole series of things.

I recommend you look at clause 5, the “Meaning of the threat to integrity”—the bill speaks to that. I’m not going to read it off, but it is a very useful interpretation. One of the things is around looking at competition, manipulation, and match-fixing. We all know some of the cricket stories back in the pre-2000s about match-fixing. That was a worldwide scandal, and something that we want to make sure doesn’t happen here in New Zealand. The use of prohibited substances and doping methods—nobody wants to see someone who is a cheat achieving and then losing. We want to know that our athletes are clean. We want to know that they are using all of their skills in order to achieve greatness. We don’t want them to be cheats. We as a country need to know and be satisfied with their status, and that talks as well to the World Anti-Doping strategy. So we, as well, need to make sure that we abide by that, and this Integrity Sport and Recreation Commission will do that.

It also talks about bullying, abuse, harassment, sexual misconduct, violence, intimidation, racism, and other discrimination, and the failure to safeguard children. We all know that children in sports clubs who go away, who do things with their sports clubs, can be held to be vulnerable. This bill creates integrity. It creates a system to support our children, our grassroots right through. There is so much more I want to say, but I just think it’s important to say that I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to stand and take a call on this, the first reading of the Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill. I was looking around the House and trying to see if we had any elite athletes in the House here today that I could refer to. There is one: there’s Meka Whaitiri, who is sitting on the front bench, not because she plays in the parliamentary netball team with Barbara Edmonds but because she actually played at national level in softball and, of course, was selected for the Silver Ferns as well.

I also want to just mention—and the reason why I’m mentioning this is because my own daughter was selected to represent New Zealand, which I was extremely proud of as a father, in surf boat rowing in the New Zealand surf boat team. I went with the team to Australia, where she was competing. But it highlighted for me—and we often hear the stories about it in this country—the fact that there is a big disparity in terms of what we can afford to invest into our elite athletes here in New Zealand and what these bigger countries do in terms of the money that they have available, the facilities that they’ve got, and the resources that they can put into their elite and top athletes.

So I want to acknowledge us as a country and the outstanding results that we deliver. We punch above our weight without that same funding, whether the class of our coaches and sports administration is world-class. But—there is a “but”—I actually held the portfolio, the sport and recreation portfolio, in Opposition for a year. I have to say that on taking up the portfolio, very quickly—literally within weeks—I was being approached by some of our elite athletes and they were highlighting a lot of the concerns and issues that are being raised in this bill. I was working very closely with the Minister for Sport and Recreation—Grant Robertson, at the time—in his role, and I have to say that he was very, very good in terms of trying to get bipartisan agreement and some sort of focus on what we needed to do to make sure that we protected the integrity of our sports and our sportspeople, coaches, and administrators in this country.

So it’s very easy to support this bill. If I hadn’t been in that role, then my natural, default setting would have been to say “This is just more cost. It’s more taxpayers’ money to form another agency and have another commissioner.” But I think that, actually, the investment in this is the right investment. I think that one of the things that we really need to do, and I can see this bill creating that, is try and unlock the tension that comes when there’s a dispute between an athlete and either Sport New Zealand or High Performance Sport New Zealand. It’s only natural; we’re all human. When you’re dealing with elite sportspeople, they are giving it everything that they have got; they are training as hard as they can, often on a semi-professional basis. Of course, then you’ve got coaching and administration that are trying to support and extract the best from that athlete as well, and not always is there agreement on how to get that done and how to make that happen. Like the previous speaker, Angie Warren-Clark, highlighted, sadly, we have seen very public examples within sports of bullying and poor behaviour, which leads, of course, to serious mental health issues.

So I think that the spirit of the bill is absolutely correct in terms of what it’s trying to achieve. Like the Hon Michael Woodhouse, who is now the portfolio holder, said, I would like to see our sporting bodies and our codes actually making submissions and coming in front of the Social Services and Community Committee and highlighting if there needs to be any fine tuning, if there are any issues, if there’s anything that they’re concerned or worried about. I have the feeling that the committee will work in a bipartisan way on this bill to try and identify those in a genuine manner. Any changes that need to be made to the bill can be made through that process and brought back into the House. I can’t see why we wouldn’t continue to support this bill. I do think that it’s a good one, and I wish the committee—I don’t sit on the committee myself—all the best in working through this bill in a positive way. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak on the Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill that establishes a new Crown entity, being the independent Integrity Sport and Recreation Commission. This is a board that will have seven to nine members and we’ve heard some of the different roles that they’ll play. I am aware that I’m standing after, and right next to, a former high-performance athlete—I don’t know if just former, probably current as well. And this is something that’s certainly not been a part of my life. But I have heard, as we all have, in the news, of those high-performance athletes in the past number of years—Angie Warren-Clark said particularly in 2018—where there have been distressing situations and there has been bullying, and it’s very good to hear the bipartisan support today for this bill and the rejection of those negative situations.

So we’ve heard, as well, that there’s been a number of reviews undertaken and that there’s been work going on internationally, as well, that demonstrate that there is a need to better protect our athletes—and others who participate—from harm. I think this is interesting—that the bill isn’t just about sporting bodies; that it’s also about wider recreation. Of course, it’s not just about high-performance sport, where we’re talking about sport; we’re focusing as well on grassroots organisations. Talking of grass, I do spend a lot of my winter Saturday mornings on the grass watching one of my children play football and it is amazing and always never ceases to amaze me how many volunteers give their time for those children’s sports, and, of course, adult sport as well. He’s coached by somebody who doesn’t have any children in that age range and he gives up his Saturday mornings and Wednesday nights to coach the team, and it’s amazing.

So a lot of these grassroots organisations don’t have a whole lot of time and money to implement codes. So the commission will be helping with expert advice and also—we heard from the Minister—pathways for resolution. It’s optional to sign up to the codes, and the optional nature of that is found in clause 21 where the word “may” is used. Clause 21 is headed up: “Who is bound by integrity code”.

I think it’s also interesting to look at the functions of the commission and these are at clause 13. If we are looking at the code parts of that, it includes “to provide mechanisms for complaints” and “to provide accessible and culturally responsive mechanisms for resolution of disputes relating to integrity between persons or organisations involved in sport and organised physical recreation”, also to “investigate matters relating to integrity” and to provide a disciplinary process for breaches of the integrity code.

There are some other pieces of this bill that I thought was interesting, as somebody who, I think—I don’t watch as much sport as other members of the House—

💬 Marja Lubeck: You’ve got no time; you work too hard.

I do. So some other interesting provisions are at clause 54, where there’s a compulsory review within five years, by the Minister, of “how widely and effectively integrity codes have been implemented”. The Minister must report that review to this House. Also interesting, at clause 14 there are the requirements for the commission’s procedures, and in 14(1)(d) one of them is to “promote the best interests of children and young people”. I’m very pleased to see that because, of course, it is a lot of children and young people who grow up in sports often in this wonderful—these amazing volunteers that I was talking about before, but also it’s those younger people that go on to become elite athletes. This really matters for them; we don’t want our young people being bullied.

So I want to acknowledge the work of the Minister and his real commitment to this issue. It’s clearly very important to him, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m rising on behalf of the Greens to speak to the first reading of the Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill. We support this bill and we’ve appreciated the collaborative contributions that have come into this debate so far.

The bill will establish a new Integrity Sport and Recreation Commission, which will have different duties such as investigating threats to integrity such as competition manipulation, corruption, or fraud; use of prohibited substances, abuse, including the abuse of children, bullying, harassment, intimidation, and racism; creating integrity codes for the sports and recreation sector as well as carrying out current Government functions including the implementation, compliance, mediation etc. that relates to anti-doping.

I want to particularly, in terms of the comments, in terms of the threats to integrity in relationship to the racism, give a shout-out to Manukau United, who actually recently released a report on racism in football. They themselves identified that racism in football was a major issue that our communities were experiencing and they called on Government to take this into account and to put in place different policy interventions—some of them focused around, say, equitable funding. I reckon this bill has the potential to address some of the concerns that have been raised by Manukau United.

Like others, I want to acknowledge that the journey of coming into this place with this bill comes after several athletes at a community and a high performance level have highlighted the abuse that they have experienced, the toxic culture that they experienced, and so I hope that we honour those voices and contributions that have created the space for this bill to come into place.

As this bill goes through select committee, there are some specific clauses we want to pay some close attention to. So while we welcome that—for example, clause 16 establishes that the commission must have effective means of seeking views of the rainbow communities, which we really welcome, and in clause 20 it also states that rainbow communities can be included in consultation when it comes to the creation of the integrity code—we do find it odd that in clause 11, when it talks about the appointment of board members to the commission, there’s sort of a range of expertise that is kind of being required or expected. And while human rights is included, it then goes and specifies particularly the rights of children and young people—it does feel odd to then, for example, exclude the rights of our rainbow community there, in terms of the competencies that we would like of those board members, as well as some competencies around anti-racism. I think, particularly when we see the vitriol that members of the rainbow communities experience, whether they’re the trans community or homophobia in sports, it’s important that we proactively seek that level of competency on the board.

Other stuff that we hope to pay attention to is feedback we received around the minimum number required of Māori members of the board and whether that number is correct. So we’ll be paying close attention to that. But, overall, we do think this is a step in the right direction to improving the wellbeing of our athletes, whether it’s a high performance or community level. So we commend this bill to the House.

I rise on behalf of the ACT Party to talk about the Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill, and it falls to ACT once again to challenge this piece of legislation. It seems to be, across the House, that people haven’t really looked at what’s happening in the UK or Australia with regards to this type of legislation. It doesn’t matter whether there’s several Ministers of sport and recreation in the National Party or one in the Labour Party; this bill demonstrates that, in terms of a stand-alone integrity sport solution, there’s a lot to be desired. It’s not a step in the right direction, and to retain the skills of these independent bodies while supporting their capacity, the transition committee that is contemplated in this bill requires a commission, and this will involve tens of millions of dollars, of people running around in black suits with blazers pretending to monitor sport.

ACT believes that this will take away valuable resources from the anti-doping and match-fixing legislation that is required at the core of this bill. Everybody wants to play hard and win hard but I can’t see what this does for the high performance sports athletes in New Zealand. In terms of the bill itself, there is another way to look at this, where people can get their day in court with a QC-based commission which thoroughly investigates a body like Racing New Zealand, which this bill will never be able to grasp or do.

The bill contemplates a new Crown entity called the Integrity Sport and Recreation Commission, and Sir Don McKinnon has said he wants to look at what’s happening around the world and to fit it to what works for New Zealand. Now, that has clearly not been defined here, and so that would flag up early concerns for the ACT Party over the independence of the new agency and how it would actually investigate Sport New Zealand.

There’s a couple of points that need to be raised about the bill; why the status quo has not been considered. This seems to be like a massive leap into the unknown where, if you look at the information pack that’s been supplied, there is actually a body that exists that, if it was enhanced, would allow us to actually deal with this, and that would be by extending the powers of the Sport and Recreation Complaints and Mediation Service to actually deal with options that are independent, based on sports integrity with pure focus, and it’s not a status quo arrangement. It could be enhanced with some legal mechanisms to involve QCs in very serious misconduct, or local authorities and local representative sports organisations in communities.

The other aspect is, just on the cost of this bill, there is no clear mechanism for defining that in terms of the values and benefits that it produces. Now, it’s easy to say on face value that it all looks great but, actually, what does it do for New Zealand sport? What does it actually do for the recreational sportsperson? What does it do for the high-performance sportsperson, and—

💬 Angie Warren-Clark: It keeps them safe.

Keeping them safe—well, that is obviously part of a code of conduct that exists at the moment. That’s one of the other worries we have about the bill—it’s all optional in terms of codes of conduct, and everybody else will have the ability to write their own codes of conduct, which means there’s a plethora of scenarios that could emerge. Now, that, to me, doesn’t make sense. It’s not binding. It doesn’t actually commit sports authorities to administer any set of rules that are actually universal and across the board. So keeping people safe is important but it isn’t the total requisite for a bill of this nature.

If you look at the Australian system, they have clearly been down the road further than us and they’re getting hammered by athlete welfare complaints, especially in the first couple of years of operations, but then they run out of resources for anti-doping and the match-fixing investigations. So you can see that there are unintended consequences of this. So they changed a model earlier this year and the Dutch people have changed the model to place sports management investigations outside and away from Government control.

Why is the Government actually doing this when it should be independent bodies that actually get them truly accountable in the courts and the administration of those sports? So why do we need a commission? Why do we need a sports commission as contemplated by the bill? What is the function of it? The same people are going to be running this. The two sports organisations are going to be welded into one, and it’s still going to be the same people with a wider mandate to do things that are actually getting done at the moment.

So, to me, we should look overseas to what is a sensible approach, where sport and the legal aspects of funding, the legal aspects of behaviour, are actually carved out and very well understood. You’d need a matrix here of about eight boxes to actually get what is going on, and I hope, with the select committee process, we will get to the bottom of that. I’d like to see Sir Don McKinnon’s views sooner rather than later, given the truncated version of the select committee process. So, for that purpose, we cannot support the bill at this stage.

After five and a half years in this House, I finally have the opportunity to speak on my favourite subject: sport. I’d like to thank the Hon Grant Robertson for that opportunity to do so. Like many in this House, I’m a big sports fan. In fact, many New Zealanders are—it is very much intrinsically part of our culture as New Zealanders, the aspect around playing sports.

It’s been exciting over the years seeing the development of sport in New Zealand. I remember when I grew up in rural New Zealand, in the winter it was rugby and netball, and in the summer it was cricket.

💬 Angie Warren-Clark: There might have been hockey, though, come on.

That was it—nah, nah. In rural New Zealand, where I grew up, the options were very limited.

💬 Hon David Bennett: Pirongia.

It was Pirongia. The Hon David Bennett mentioned that—he knows my history well. So I ended up playing rugby for Pirongia and playing cricket for Pirongia. I went to Hamilton Boys’ High School: I tried to make rugby teams; couldn’t make it. In the seventh form, I finally switched to football and made the first XI. So since then I’ve loved football, and I know we’ve all got stories about the sports that we love.

But, look, it’s great to have a bill on sport and it’s a very important bill, and I will get into that. Most of my early memories in terms of watching sport have been just trying to see us beat Australia. It didn’t matter what the sport was—it was as long as we beat Australia. And if we didn’t beat Australia, as long as someone else beat Australia. Now, I hope that doesn’t cause any offence to our Australian friends, who we love dearly, but we do have that rivalry there with Australia. And I’ll give a brief shout-out: the women’s world cup is coming this year and all the best to our Football Ferns in the women’s world cup here in New Zealand.

Sport is important for connection, belonging, and health. If I could touch on those three points, the first one is in terms of connection: sport brings people together. Now, there’s plenty of other things in society that do that—you know, music, the arts, etc.—but sport is one example of bringing people together. It’s so important as a society that we have a strong community. If we don’t have community, really we have nothing. We’re not, as Margaret Thatcher once said, an isolated group of individual individuals—

💬 Nicola Grigg: Are you quoting Margaret Thatcher? Excellent!

Ha, ha! We’re not an isolated group of individuals each with their own purposes. We are connected; we’re are a community—that’s who we are, and sport very much brings people together. I remember my grandfather was president of the New Zealand Rugby Union back in 1984, from the small town of Collingwood. My grandma—before she passed away, I remember interviewing her and asking her about community. She was on a dairy farm and she spoke about the fact that in the 1950s and 1960s, before refrigeration, people relied on community for their survival. With technology, we don’t need community for survival; we can survive on our own, but we need community to thrive, and sport is one of the key aspects that facilitates community and a thriving society.

I’ve spent a lot of time on the sidelines of sport—of football, basketball, and other pitches while my children have been growing up. I think it’s fair to say that I’ve seen a variety of interactions—some positive; some not so positive. Often, at times, unfortunately, parents are trying to achieve their dreams through their children and, you know, often the children become pawns in a bigger game, and it’s not helpful for those children. So it’s important that we do have some strong guidelines. The aspect around education is as important here, in terms of educating not just our own children, and then moving into adults who are playing, but also those who are supporting. I think that parents play an absolutely key role in terms of instilling those values, working alongside coaches.

I see I’m sort of running out of time here, but in the last sort of 30 seconds: the bill promotes, advises, and educates on integrity issues.

Tim van de Molen: You’ve got another 5 minutes.

I like to be succinct—I like to be succinct. Short and sweet. I’m sure the members opposite will as well. So we did hear from the Minister, particularly around what the bill does. I endorse the bill and I encourage people to make a submission. And keep playing sport, New Zealanders.

Hon David Bennett, five minutes.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, I’ll just have to follow up that speech. Jamie Strange is a good sportsman and he’s co-captain of the parliamentary football team—

💬 Nicola Grigg: Is there one?

Yes, and we are supporting women’s football in the World Cup, and a big shout-out to our women’s footballers who are one of the best teams in the world and are going to do brilliantly. Jamie actually plays for the red team in Hamilton called Melville, and I’m a supporter of the blue team in Hamilton called Wanderers, and they’re on either side of the river. But in, I guess, the nature of sport, we’ve actually come together and we’re working very well together to get some artificial turf in the city, so it’s working well. It’s good to see sport can bring two different political parties and adversaries together for the betterment of our communities, and that’s what it’s all about.

In this place here, we talk a lot about social welfare, how we help people, Government investment, and those kind of things—mental health and all those issues—but we never really talk about sport, one of the most practical things that people engage in. If we’re talking about youth and getting them on to the right path, sport’s a crucial part of that. It takes up time after school, it enables young men and women to pursue some energetic pursuits, it’s good for physical fitness, it’s good for mental health, and it’s good in so many ways, and yet we don’t actually fund it in this Parliament.

Jamie’s right, and it’s his first time that he’s spoken on a bill in this area, and yet sport actually would achieve a lot more social goals than what we spend a lot of money on in this country, to be honest, and we just think it’s something up to the community to do. How many community groups struggle day by day trying to raise money, trying to have the people that run the facilities, to actually get sport off the ground? You compare it with countries like Australia, which do put a lot of Government money into sport, and they get the results at a national level but also those underlying results in their community as well.

So bills like this are important—that we actually support the network of sport—but it’s only a really small part of what we could do. If we actually had a programme that enabled some Government money to go into some artificial turf in Hamilton, it wouldn’t be a bad idea. It would probably do more to keep some of the young kids out of the gangs than anything else you could do at the moment in that city. It actually would probably be one of the best things you could do at dealing with that. It’d keep kids in school, it’d keep kids associated with their friends, and people of different communities coming together and playing on the same field. We’ve lost that in our country a lot. We’ve lost that ability to come together—town and country—in sport, and to be able to acknowledge our differences but also come together in that.

Our sport’s also getting divided, I think, along the lines of capability and communities. Some communities in Hamilton are great at rugby league—Ngāruawāhia, for example—and yet we don’t have, actually, that ability for other communities to come together and play that same sport and understand each other, and, yet, some other communities are really focused on rowing and rugby and those kids could be great rugby league players. People like Sport Waikato have done a great job at just making sure kids play something and enjoy something and learn the fundamentals of it. I think it’s one of those things that gives a balance to our youth in sport, and this bill is a starting point, but it really just highlights how deficient we are as a Parliament in actually supporting this part of our community.

The people that go out there, the grassroots people that run those organisations, get nothing from this place. The kids that are going to benefit from it get nothing from this place. We all enjoyed sport because we’re all successful people that have had a balanced life. Many kids don’t have that chance, and this is their opportunity to get a chance to have a bit of a start. I think that Jamie should be speaking two or three times on sport before the end of his—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Jamie Strange.

—political career, and we should have some bills in there supporting infrastructure in our sports in our communities, and it would probably do a lot better than some of the other social spending that this place passed—

The member’s time—he was going so well, so well.

I’m pleased to take call on the Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill, and I want to commend all those that have spoken on this bill for their love and passion for sport, and also those who may not have the love and passion for sport. It does not matter, because we are all New Zealanders, and we descend from a long line of navigators and of explorers—it’s in our DNA.

I want to commend the Hon Grant Robertson for bringing this Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill. Obviously, we’ve traversed that it will enable the establishment of an independent integrity commission. It will then identify a lot of the concepts and codes that the commission should do.

But I want to commend those who referenced their own upbringing with sports. I want to add that as a young child, many, many years ago, I remember actually being chased back into the home by our parents when it was dark, because we were out playing. You know, those were the days where it was safe to stay out in your communities and play. This was after six hours at school. When you weren’t in the classroom, you were out on the playground playing, whether it was bullrush or tag or whatever.

💬 Nicola Grigg: Bullrush—bring back bullrush.

Bullrush—yes, bullrush. There you go—there you go. But the point being is that as New Zealanders, the importance of physical activity is really in how we’ve been shaped as we are today.

This bill is not just about the faults in the sport sector, but how we can get back to the days where we’re attracting young people into the sector and, when they are coming into the sector, how we nurture and manaaki them in their journey in that sector.

Of course, in my observation, elite and professional sport has only come to New Zealand in very recent times. I’m only talking about decades ago when many of our top athletes would actually travel overseas, fully paid, with a stipend. But now, as we’ve morphed and we’ve evolved into elite and very highly professional sports, there is a lot at stake here for many of those athletes or teams that choose to participate in elite, professional sport—the enormous sacrifice they make and the hours and hours of training that these top athletes do. Then they’re subjected to the selection and they either get in or they don’t get in, and the heartbreak, and we’ve seen many of those stories in our recent time.

This commission and this bill is trying to address that, as you make those decisions as young people, or not so young people, because, you’ve got to remember, we’ve got bowls. We’ve got very, very good bowlers in New Zealand that represent us well at the Olympics. So it’s not an ageism thing; it’s a recognition that when we enter into a sporting sector, we look after them so that people feel that their energies and their commitment to their sport is well considered when decisions are made, and when things don’t go right, we will then have an agreed set of codes that holds everybody to account. Goodness helps the commission and those that are appointed to this board, because its focus is on integrity, and so those members are going to have to demonstrate a higher level of integrity themselves if they are then going to proceed over all the sporting bodies.

I want to make a distinction between elite and professional sports and then our amateur grassroots sports, because I really back our amateur and grassroots sports. They are the bread and butter of many of our communities. They do a fantastic job, and they are based on volunteers and all the aunties and uncles that turn up at the clubrooms and do the meal after the rugby game or the netball game, and do the speeches or put down the hāngī, because they are doing an amazing job to keep that particular sport, but, more importantly, the mana of their community is at the heart of what they do.

So this piece of legislation that we’re reading for the first time is to ensure that our sporting sector, the one that we know as proud New Zealanders—we respect the opportunity for those that go into elite and professional sport. But we will also be a beacon of hope for our grassroots amateur sports, and we recognise that enormous voluntary support that they give in ensuring that we’ve got strong communities throughout the country, so that when you enter the sport, you’re looked after, you’re manaaki-ed, and your time in that sport enables you to then turn around and go back and give back to the very community that looked after you. Therefore, I support this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Yeah, I’m also really excited to be able to talk about sport in the House, just like Jamie Strange talked about—really excited to see this piece of legislation that will support what Meka Whaitiri was talking about in terms of our grassroots sports. But I can’t believe I almost entirely agree with David Bennett and his speech—probably a first, eh, especially when I think that—[Interruption] Absolutely, absolutely. Sports—absolutely, sports is—[Interruption] Well, absolutely, sports is, as we know, something that does bring people together. It is about looking after—

💬 Jamie Strange: David, come across!

Yeah, come over this side, because I heard you talking about wellbeing and social inclusion, and I was like, “Are you all right today, David Bennett?” No, great to hear it—great to hear it. But that speaks to the point, right? Sports bring people together regardless of your code or regardless of your colour.

💬 Hon David Bennett: You’re going to get me embarrassed now.

It brings people together. Oh, I don’t mean to embarrass you; I just think it’s good to bring out that social part of you, David Bennett.

So, really good to be able to speak on this bill. That is what it’s about, as well: it is about making sure that—like many others have talked about, I also played sports; loved it. I remember I played union, I played volleyball, netball, all the really cool things, and one of the things that we did do was we were able to travel for reps and whatever it was. As a rural, regional community, we were able to meet with other regional communities, and after the game, you know, whakawhanaungatanga—come together. It is that social inclusion, like Meka Whaitiri talked about. It was the nannies that were there with the cups of tea and the waters and whatever else we were able to have.

I played rugby as an older person, so I am a Wanderers old-timer—shout-out to all my Wandies people—and we might not have had the cups of tea, but we were still able to have, you know, after your game, that family time where you are able to bring your children along and there’s that encouragement of getting our youth and our young people to look at sports. My children, I have three of them, and they all play league, basketball, union, and they swim. It is good because every single day they’re spending time socially with their friends. It is that grassroots where they’re aspiring, especially my big boys, to become, hopefully, an elite or a professional sportsperson.

That is why this bill is important. It supports people in that space as well, makes sure that there is somewhere that people can go to if they do have any complaints, whether it is the elite or professional sports player or whether it is that grassroots rugby team that needs both guidance and standards. So that’s why it is important to have a piece of legislation like this.

I think, just going back to my children, they play many sports. Right throughout the week, they’re training; their weekend they’re actually playing the sports. Going back to talking about my big boy, his dream one day is to—he’s already planned it out that he’s going to hopefully make the under-15 Warriors, and he’s already asked all my family—

💬 Hon David Bennett: Oh, South Sydney Rabbitohs!

Oh, I don’t know; I like Moana Pasifika, so I don’t know how I can get him to switch, but that’s his dream, and he’s already asked all my family in Auckland, “Who am I going to stay with when I make the under-15s?” He’s got that dream. He looks at those professional and elite athletes and he’s like, “This is my dream.” But he also sees some of the athletes that might not be fully supported, and what does that look like for him? So, again, a bill like this, where we are looking at making sure that we’re establishing a commission that is independent, that can hear the concerns from not just, like I said before, the elite and the professionals but from our grassroots people as well. It’ll show people like my son that a sports career can be a safe space, that there are those standards in place to be able to support him—hopefully, that he gets those dreams for himself and others. But that’s what this is about.

So we had that consultation. We went out and we spoke to a wide range of organisations and people in this space; they all wanted, and the key—and I think Minister Grant Robertson talked about how the key was having an independent commission for this. So we talked to all those people in 2018. The recommendation came back last year that this would be a great idea to establish this commission, make sure that it’s independent, make sure it’s accessible for not just the elite and the professionals but for our grassroots, have those standards in place for everyone to make sure that they feel supported and safe in their sports.

But, again, great piece of legislation, and just like everyone else in the last few speeches, I encourage people to uptake sport. It’s a great thing for New Zealand. And, also, my wishes also go to our women footies as well—go the girls!

💬 Tama Potaka: Kia ora tātou. Kia ora e te kaiārahi, te Kaikōrero o te Whare—

Tama Potaka needs to seek the call.

💬 Tama Potaka: Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Tama Potaka.

Kia ora. Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to comment—in a healthy manner—on the first reading of the Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill. I’m pretty mindful that this bill is in the name of the Hon Grant Robertson, and willingly admit that he and I were involved in a lot of recreation—but not recreational matters—for several years in New York City. It was there that I heard one of the biggest patsy questions, asked by an Australian to Nelson Mandela: “How does sport unify people?” It was a very interesting question, given that the great man Nelson Mandela had just emerged from prison in South Africa and was doing a tour of the world, talking about unifying people. And in rural New Zealand—it was inspiring to hear my colleague and fellow Hamiltonian, Jamie Strange; and almost for the first time, three Hamiltonians in a row, with David Bennett nearly imitating the Chiefs rugby team, which at this stage is six for six. And I wanted to acknowledge the recent Aupiki women’s rugby final: absolutely fantastic—sadly, Manawa lost to Matatū, but the fact is, women, rugby, and sports were the winners on the day.

Unlike my urban friends—some of which are here today—I grew up playing some genuine rural sports, like spotlight, long ball, tee ball, go home, stay home—and the occasional game of chains, which only people from Taihape like my whanaunga Shanan Halbert and I actually know about. Kī-o-rahi and triathlon—they actually didn’t exist in Hunterville at the time, but rugby really dominated my life. I spent many a moment at the Hunterville Rugby Club waiting for my father and driving him home, and, subsequently, the Te Aute College first XV, which Minister Whaitiri will recall with fondness, her brothers’ faces adorning the walls of the Te Aute wharekai—all three of them, actually. There were three sports available at Te Aute: rugby, rugby, and rugby—and I was lucky enough to be on the 1990 Te Aute College softball team when we toured Australia; I was the scorer. Then I was lucky enough to participate in events like the national touch championships in Auckland—and, actually, 1998, when I was the Wellington team’s masseuse. Later in life, I tried to be the next Cameron Brown by training over in Iron Māori half Ironman, and I wanted to pay a special acknowledgment to my whanaunga Heather and Wayne Skipworth for the magnificent work that they’ve been doing in Te Matau-a-Māui and throughout Aotearoa.

But participating in Ironman and Ironwoman New Zealand—I always say Ironman and Ironwoman New Zealand—was somewhat challenging, perhaps embarrassing, actually, to me, because often I’d be coming in on the bike, and Cameron Brown at the age of 42 would be finishing the run. And it was a bit daunting to me to know that I still had a marathon to go after the folks at the end had finished their race, but the lakefront in Taupō is just about as beautiful as the Rangitīkei river valley.

So organising TriMāori with my wife, with the kaupapa, “For the Whānau”, was an inspiring and motivating part of my life. To engage with people, to invite them to participate in health and wellbeing, and to bring them to the mighty Waikato river at Karapiro and the whenua, to reconnect them in sport—actually enables that, and enables people not only to connect with one another but also to connect with our taiao and with our rivers, with our lakes—with our iced-up lakes; curling in the South Island—and the hills and the mountains of our tīpuna. But what an absolutely inspiring moment for me to see during those TriMāori events that we used to run, my peers coming together—three of them good friends of mine, each being over 250 kilograms, to be swimming, cycling and run-walk-running their way to good health. Since then, I’ve had the great fortune of having children with my wife and seeing them participate in various sporting activities, whether or not it’s rugby down at the Grammar TEC clubrooms or the Hamilton Boys’ High clubrooms; my daughter playing rugby for the Waikato Diocesan School and hockey, basketball, judo, karate, and all the other activities that I’ve become a professional Uber driver in participating in. But at the outset, I affirm National’s support for this bill and forward to discussions on how to better strengthen and protect the integrity of the sport and recreation sector by establishing the independent Crown entity known as the Integrity Sport and Recreation Commission.

Over the years, our nightly intake of nutritious and sometimes gluten-light meals in the evenings have been interrupted by various news reports alleging breaches of integrity and breaches of mana tangata across professional sports organisations, with cycling being particularly topical. Now, these stories were sometimes very gutting and wrenching to hear about, particularly given the incursion of mana tangata amongst these athletes who have dedicated their lives—and sometimes their whānau members’ lives—to achieving at the apex of their chosen sports. Now, National gives tautoko to the proposal to set up a commission to handle integrity issues in the sports sector, and particularly helpful that the commission is independent from Sport New Zealand and High Performance Sport New Zealand. I’m mindful about the reports that Mike Heron KC and others undertook and delivered into high performance cycling, which noted some distressing matters around aggressive texting, coach-athlete relationships, the bullying and belittling of athletes by coaches for the athletes raising concerns, shaming on various matters, and other related toxic behaviour. But that lack of accountability, effective leadership, human resources, culture—and for want of a better term—rangatiratanga, leadership, worried Heron and others, and led to what I would describe as real, genuine mana tangata issues. So this bill is something that we would commend for further discussion. Heron’s and others recommendations to address those issues and athlete safeguarding and to reconsider the funding model were insightful.

There are a couple of issues that we would like to see addressed: the high level of power proposed for the commission to require organisations to supply documents or information during an investigation—that might need a bit better balancing, a bit better checking, and to be a bit better justified—and the optionality that the commission may publish reports upon its investigations. That’s something that we want to see a bit more action, a bit more inquisition, and a bit more debate around.

So, sport: it’s a platform for success, a platform for health and wellbeing, and a platform for kotahitanga across our country. How does sport unify people? It unites through mana tangata; it unites the country; and I hope, and I pray, and I recommend that all of us in this House today unite behind the Chiefs for the Super Rugby finals. Kia ora tātou.

Kia ora e te Mana Whakawā. It’s an absolute honour and a privilege to speak on the Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill.

I know we’ve heard members in the House talk about sport, but I remember when the last time Tonga played the All Blacks, and Tonga, the ‘Ikale Tahi, actually, they lost, but they scored the last try. I then said to the Speaker—then Speaker Trevor Mallard—that the last score wins. So that’s what I’m just saying about this speech here.

I want to acknowledge the Hon Grant Robertson for bringing this into the House. But before I get on to the bill, I’m not sure whether anyone really knows there’s a game called futsal, which plays five-a-side. FIFA is that sport’s governing body. So I want to congratulate the Papakura City futsal women’s team. Yesterday, they beat the Bay of Plenty - Waikato team, so Papakura City retain their national women’s futsal title. So congratulations to the women.

I want to talk about two areas of this bill because I think it’s important. If people are listening in who are involved in sports, it’s important that the public understands what it is. In clause 4, under interpretation, it talks about the interpretation of national recreational organisation. So it defines it as meaning organisations that represent members in a particular type of organised physical event or activity in New Zealand, but does not include a local, regional, or other recreational organisations not operating at a national level. So this talks about operating at the national level, but also it has to have all those levels that I spoke about. Also, it defines what a “national sporting organisation” means. It means members involved in a particular type of sporting event or activity in New Zealand and, if a national organisation does not exist for sport, includes local, regional, and or other sporting organisations.

I want to bring that to the debate because I’d like to ask people, as the Minister for Sport and Recreation said before, to please put in a submission at select committee. Put in a submission because the Minister would like to hear and, of course, the Social Services and Community Committee, which I’m part of, would also love to hear that.

The title of the bill talks about integrity in sport and recreation. In clause 5, it talks about the meaning of threat to integrity, so it defines it there. One of the things that I want to really speak about is about manipulation of the result of sport competition—that’s about sport betting. People in the House have spoken about their children being involved in sports, and future athletes. Paragraph (c) talks about bullying. It defines threats to integrity as “bullying, violence, abuse, sexual misconduct, intimidation, harassment, or racism or other discrimination in sport or organised physical recreation:”. If you’re listening in and you’d like to contribute, if the members of the public think there is something else that we should include in that, then this is an opportunity to put in a submission.

I also want to acknowledge the people who manage the sport. Most people have talked about their sports prowess as players, but, as a manager, I managed the four Tonga touch teams that went and competed in Australia in 1999. We went there 20th rating; we came back seventh, so I think that’s a success on the tour manager’s behalf, and that’s myself. These rules—actually putting this independent body—are about looking after those athletes, and not just that but also supporters within the game as well, so that if they have a complaint, if it’s not resolved at the level that they’re at, actually, this new body would provide that support.

I also want to acknowledge my other management title. I also managed the first Tonga rugby team. I do have a metal plate in my right foot—I was a player-manager. I want to say kia ora to all the props out there. So that’s why I walk with a limp—because of that. I want to acknowledge that it is the passion that people put into sports. This bill will definitely protect every person who is involved in the area of sports. On that note, I commend the Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill to the House. Mālō.

The question is, That the Integrity Sport and Recreation Bill be considered by the Social Services and Community Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Social Services and Community Committee.

Instruction to Social Services and Community Committee