Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill (No 3)

I move, That the Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill (No 3) be now read a first time. I nominate the Regulations Review Committee to consider the bill. Given that from the next Parliament future subordinate legislation bills will be sent to the Regulations Review Committee without debate in the House, I propose to start this new procedure early with this year’s bill. I commend it to the House.

Although the Attorney-General wishes that this Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill (No 3) be referred to the select committee without debate, which I would normally concur with, as chair of the Regulations Review Committee I would like to explain to the public just what this does and what this bill means. The process that the Attorney-General just outlined has not arrived at this point without a deal of history and without a deal of consideration by successive Governments.

This is the Subordinate Legislation (Confirmation and Validation) Bill (No 3). Last year the Regulations Review Committee considered the equivalent but No. 2 bill. It was referred to the Regulations Review Committee, as it would be as a matter of procedure and as is normally the case. What I would like to do, at the outset, is commend the Government for bringing it to the attention of the Regulations Review Committee in a timely manner.

We had complained previously, as the Regulations Review Committee, to the Government that it did not give sufficient time for the committee to consider the subordinate legislation and the various expiry dates within it in 2012. So we were very pleased to see and to be able to report, in our recent report of the activities of 2013, that last year the Government did act on the recommendation of the Regulations Review Committee and introduced the bill on 29 July—1 month earlier than the equivalent bill in 2012. On 22 July this year it has done so again and presented it earlier than previously. That is to be commended. The only thing that gets in the way of this proceeding very quickly is in fact the big democratic right that all citizens have, and that is to elect a new Government.

This is important stuff. I do not want to talk about this simply because every Parliament needs to have its process work—and that seems to be me in the current Parliament—but because it is important. I am not a trained lawyer, but I am passionate about this Parliament and particularly the Government of any hue doing its business in a way that is constitutionally sound, that is legally sustainable, and that observes proper and due process.

I want to go back to one example that some people in this House might remember. It is one of those things that stuck in my memory as a young person in 1982 when I was, I think, convenor of the Combined State Unions in Auckland, the Auckland region of the Combined State Unions. Some people may remember that there was, in 1982, inflicted upon working people in this country a wage and price freeze—a wage and price freeze—inflicted by the Muldoon Government. That was done by regulation. Regulation is subordinate legislation. That is what this bill is about.

Subordinate legislation is legislation that is not primary legislation. It is not legislation passed by Parliament that can have debate and scrutiny. Delegated or subordinate legislation are the rules and regulations that are usually provided to make sure that the administration of legislation is smooth and operates effectively and efficiently. But back in 1982 Muldoon decided to bring down a wage and price freeze. There were to be no wage increases and no price increases, by regulation. The Combined State Unions took that case against the State Services Coordinating Committee, and on appeal it became very clear from the Court of Appeal’s judgment that the Act the regulations were being promulgated under was the Economic Stabilisation Act 1948—a pretty iniquitous piece of legislation on its own merits, and one that stayed with us for a long time.

Muldoon had seen fit to cancel all wage increases and price increases—though somehow that did not quite work—despite the fact that in the Public Service wage increases were set by quite different primary legislation, by proper legislation that was considered by the whole Parliament. On that basis the Combined State Unions took the State Services Coordinating Committee, as it was—it would now be the State Services Commission—to court and in fact won. So the wage-fixing procedures in the State sector that came about under separate legislation could not be overridden by regulation.

That is the purpose of this scrutiny: to make sure that the executive, the Government, is not bringing in regulations that override primary legislation passed by this Parliament. It is not that complicated. It is as clear as that. This Parliament is sovereign; the executive runs the country according to the legislation that this Parliament passes. It does not have the right constitutionally or legally to promote regulation that overrides primary legislation.

When Muldoon realised that he had lost that case, it took him about 1 month to change the law. Because of the majority he had in the House at that time—notwithstanding Marilyn Waring’s impact on it later in that term—under a first-past-the-post system, he was able to ram through amending legislation so that the wage and price freeze was able to be maintained by primary legislation and not by dodgy, overriding regulation.

That process then resulted in changes to the Standing Orders taking effect in 1986 and Parliament’s establishment of the Regulations Review Committee. That is why we end up where we are now. I would like to give thanks for all of that information, as well as my own recollections of the event. I remember huge marches up Queen Street in Auckland against the wage and price freeze, and myself and Bill Andersen making speeches at those rallies against the wage and price freeze. That is how old I am. [Interruption] Bill Andersen, yes. [Interruption] Oh, right, Bill Andersen, as a representative of the Federation of Labour as it was at that time, and myself as a representative of the local Combined State Unions.

The point of this is that it is right and proper that this bill be sent to the Regulations Review Committee. It is the only bill that goes to the Regulations Review Committee. It is right and proper that it is sent there for proper scrutiny, because what it does is it validates and confirms regulations that would otherwise expire or fall to pieces if this bill was not passed.

What the Regulations Review Committee will now do is take this bill, write to all the departments and ministries that are affected by the different pieces of legislation and the orders that are in this bill, and ask why those pieces of regulation and subordinate legislation need to be confirmed and validated in this way. So there is some scrutiny, there is some justification, and it is done properly.

But just before I finish, I want to acknowledge Justice McGrath, who drew my attention to that episode of the wage and price freeze in the 1980s in the introduction to this very fine book Subordinate Legislation in New Zealand by our very own parliamentary staff.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Regulations Review Committee.