Secondary Legislation Confirmation Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Secondary Legislation Confirmation Bill.

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

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I move, That the Secondary Legislation Confirmation Bill be now read a second time.

There are few things in the parliamentary sitting calendar that indicate that Christmas is coming more than the passage of the Secondary Legislation Confirmation Bill. It is a sign that Christmas is approaching and the House’s sitting programme for the year is drawing to a close.

Hon Grant Robertson: Brilliant speech. Well done!

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I do have some obligation to indicate to the House what’s in the bill, Minister Robertson, but I will keep it very snappy!

This year’s bill includes the confirmation of 27 legislative instruments—I will spare the House from reading through what they all are, but I will give a very brief summary of the matters covered by this year’s confirmation bill. The bill includes reducing the size of security levies for domestic and international air travel, as a Government that reduces levies; prohibiting the importation of motor vehicles with inaccurate odometers without the consent of the Minister of Customs; altering fees and levies charged to the dairy industry; establishing a new levy for wineries payable to the Fruit Wine and Cider Makers Association of New Zealand Inc.; amending various fees and levies for animal products, such as increasing the annual levy for the export of processed honey products; broadening the definition of “assistance dogs”; establishing new railway track user charges for rail freight operators; and imposing carbon dioxide charges on new registrations of a certain light vehicle.

I want to thank the Regulations Review Committee for their diligent work as usual. This year, unusually, the committee has added an additional instrument that needs to be confirmed. I don’t think that that’s happened in recent history, but it shows how diligent and conscientious they are in their undertakings. I commend the bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Unaccustomed as I am to speaking on these matters, I’m particularly enjoying being the chair of the Regulations Review Committee and I find the work very interesting.

Hon Chris Hipkins: Once more with sincerity.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: No, I actually do, Mr Hipkins. And I suggest that perhaps other people should put the same diligence into their work.

In the spirit of Christmas, I’d like to take the opportunity to wish everyone a very merry Christmas. For those of you who don’t believe in Christmas, I wish you the best as well, and hope that everyone has a great break and comes back in the new year just as friendly and perky as I am.

I’d like to obviously acknowledge the wonderful staff that work with us in the Regulations Review Committee, and obviously acknowledge my predecessor Chris Penk and my deputy chair Rachel over there. She’s sure to be promoted in the dying days of the current Government, but not for long. And what we have though is this is actually a process bill. I mean, basically, regulations have to either come back to the House to get confirmed or else they fail.

There is one part of this bill that the National Party does not agree with, and that is actually the ute tax. And it is there, carefully hidden as some sort of clean vehicle discount scheme charge, utterly disingenuous—utterly disingenuous. What it actually is is a tax; it’s the “ute tax”. And the other thing is, how can this possibly be a levy when it’s a charge made not for anything that’s actually being done but it’s actually a tax on people who need to buy a vehicle which at the moment is going to emit carbon dioxide above the particular clean car levels. Now, that’s actually everybody who owns a ute, because I who have a huge interest in cars and love them immensely—

Chris Bishop: Oh, do you?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I do, actually. I absolutely love cars. Fortunately, by the way, in their ute tax they did actually give an exemption for those of us who also have classic cars in our collections, so that is a good thing. But this is actually a tax. So it is something which really should never have come through as a levy.

We are, however, going to support, obviously, this piece of legislation—not all the ins and outs of it; certainly not the ute tax; certainly not that absolute ridiculous tax that was put on every tradesperson in New Zealand who has a ute, every farmer in New Zealand who has a ute, and every would-be tradesperson and farmer in New Zealand who has a ute. It is absolutely disgraceful. But this is a process thing, and obviously everything has to come back to the House as secondary legislation for confirmation. And on that basis, we will support it.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. On behalf of the ACT Party I’d like to speak on the Secondary Legislation Confirmation Bill. This secondary legislation is a law that is made by others than Parliament. It’s made under a power that Parliament has formally delegated, in particular to the Acts. So every year our lovely different ministries and our lovely clerks and Parliamentary Counsel Office brings us a huge list of different bills that have changes in them. And as my honoured member across the road said, there were 27 instruments that we had to confirm, and they go over about 14 different Acts. Most of the people that are watching this would find it very difficult to understand what these all are, but when you deep dive you really find what a lot of this is actually doing is actually going to be taking money out of people’s pockets, the likes of the ute tax—the ute tax that they say is not a ute tax but is a ute tax. They say it is a levy and we’re still waiting to find out all the details, so it’s one of the matters that we are still waiting to hear back from around that.

And the thing is that we are in a cost of living crisis and whatever you put on businesses, where does that cost go to? It goes to the consumer, and they are the ones that are feeling it in their pockets. It’s the red tape that you put on businesses, and where do they put those charges when they have to work extra time to make sure they are meeting these secondary rules that have been put on them? And where, again, does that end up? It ends up in the pocket of the consumers. Now, the other thing that we found when we were going through this bill is the tax on trucks. They’re raising the distance travelled on trucks. Yes, we don’t mind paying user charges if it is fixing our roads. We have got too many potholes around this country.

SPEAKER: Order! I’m very sorry to interrupt the member. Can I just tell members it’s really difficult to hear. The member has a right to be heard, so if we can lower the volume, that’d be great.

TONI SEVERIN: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Now, we like road-user charges to fix the potholes. But then again, when you look at this, this is heavy-duty trucks. What is carried on these heavy-duty trucks? Our goods; our goods to the market, our goods around New Zealand. Again, the freight costs will be added to different businesses and then those businesses will be passing that—yet again—to who? Consumers—the everyday consumer whose cost of living crisis is occurring to them. Now, as we said, we don’t mind you fixing our roads, we just don’t need the bridges coming out of those taxes, especially for the cycle bridges. Give us good roads because we do need them to get around New Zealand.

Now, we had to ask questions of the Minister for Food Safety, the Minister for Biosecurity, the Minister of Customs, the Minister of Transport, and the Minister of Agriculture. Yes, I appreciate you for responding to our letters because I am, myself, on the Regulations Review Committee and it is great to have explanations for us to understand this secondary legislation that is being forced on to New Zealanders. Now, there is over, as we said, 27 different instruments for confirmation. This bill, as we are saying, has to be passed so these instruments can be confirmed and, of course, they’ve only got a small time frame to be able to confirm it so this is why today they are going to be rushing this one through so that we can confirm it for them.

But again, most of all, I’m going to go back and thank the lovely clerks of our select committee, and the Parliamentary Counsel Office, because they have to draft this bill and they also have to help us through all these different 27 confirmable instruments that we have to go through and explain whether or not they have any concerns or not. And this is a big thing, to make sure we are dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s to make sure things don’t get through that shouldn’t get through. So even though this seems like a little bill, it’s very important that we do cross those i’s and dot the t’s.

But, most of all, we oppose this bill, because in the end this is going to affect the consumer and this is going to cost people more in the long run: whoever owns a ute, whoever has to have goods taken by truck over our roads that aren’t fit for purpose. And, overall, the consumers are the ones that are going to hurt because of the cost of living crisis. Thank you, Mr Speaker.