Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4)

I move, That the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4) be now read a second time. Sometimes bills come before the House and create a real stir. I think it is fair to say that this is not going to be one of those bills. It is probably in the category of being dull but worthy. I hear the members behind me say that that is like some of the members in front of me, but I could not possibly say that.

💬 Hon David Parker: They were talking about you.

How cruel. As the House knows, what a statutes amendment bill enables Parliament to do is to make technical, short, and non-controversial amendments to a number of Acts. It enables amendments that would not usually receive sufficient priority to be progressed individually. This is achieved with the support of all parties in Parliament, and I certainly want to thank all parties for their cooperation on this bill.

This current bill, as reported back by the Government Administration Committee, amends 34 Acts. Each of the amendments in the bill has received unanimous cross-party support in the previous Parliament. It is a demonstration of all parties working together. The bill was reported back by the Government Administration Committee on 29 July last year, and I thank the committee for its careful consideration of the bill. The committee recommended changes to the proposed amendments to two Acts and the insertion of additional amendments to two further Acts. I support these improvements. The committee also recommended amendments to parallel clauses in the bill amending the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987 and the Official Information Act 1982.

The Law Commission recommended the initial amendments in its 2012 report on official information. It proposed the changes to clarify common practices about the operation of the legislation and to update the wording of the Act. The committee recommended removing four of the clauses in the bill affecting these two Acts. The committee considered them to be policy issues and not appropriate for a statutes amendment bill. These provisions relate to legal professional privilege.

The committee also recommended clarifying clauses dealing with information requests and how agencies may deal with these requests. Two of the recommended amendments will clarify that agencies may request that an oral Official Information Act request be put in writing only if reasonably necessary. Further recommended amendments will ensure that a clarified or amended Official Information Act request is considered a new request. Collectively, these changes will make the legislation more effective and efficient for requestors and agencies.

The committee also recommended inserting a new amendment to the Local Electoral Act 2001 and the Local Government Act 2002. These changes will address omissions from previous amendments to these Acts. The Acts were amended in 2013 but some necessary consequential amendments were overlooked. The changes will extend the time frame for completing pre-election processes by 7 days for all elections and polls, not just general elections.

This bill proposes a number of positive changes to the statute book that are technical, short, or non-controversial—as I said, dull but incredibly worthy. Again, I thank the committee for its hard work and I thank the House for its unanimous cross-party support. I commend this bill to the House.

By my reckoning there are 33 Acts that are amended here. I think you might have had poor advice from your ministry that there were 34, because there are only 33 parts to the bill, Mr Bridges.

💬 Alastair Scott: Start again.

That is right. It might not be the most interesting piece of legislation, but I would have hoped that the Associate Minister of Justice would at least know the number of Acts that he was amending through this legislation. This bill splits into 33 parts upon its passage, because it amends each of those 33 Acts—not 34.

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: You need to get out more.

Well, the difference between 33 and 34 is probably a wee bit more important on this side of the House than it is on that.

In terms of the amendments to the legislation that are recommended by the Government Administration Committee, I endorse its caution in respect of some changes that were being made to these Acts, particularly the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act and the Official Information Act, both of which had amendments that went further than was probably appropriate for a statutes amendment bill. As the Minister has correctly pointed out, the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4) is an omnibus bill. The reason that we do not generally have omnibus bills in this House is that they can traverse a wide area of information, and buried in the middle of them can be something significant. Submitters who might be interested in one piece of legislation will not, through the general notification that goes to members of the public from Parliament, be alerted to the fact that there is a change in the law that could be significant to them. The public, therefore, does not have the ability to raise the issue, the fourth estate does not get over the top of what might be a significant issue, and this Parliament could, therefore, in a pre-emptory way make an unwise change to legislation.

For that reason, omnibus legislation is frowned upon, but there is one exception, and that is through a statutes amendment bill, where Parliament agrees that there are technical amendments that are needed to lots of little pieces of legislation. It is generally in the nature of housekeeping, sometimes it will be a drafting error, and other times there will be a non-controversial thing that has arisen just through changing circumstances over time. All parties in the House are canvassed as to whether they think that the items are non-contentious. If any one party at any stage in the proceeding says: “Look, we’ve changed our mind. We think there is something controversial here.”, then the custom is—and, indeed, it might be a Standing Orders requirement, I think, rather than a custom—that that provision has to be taken out of the bill so that we truly are left with non-contentious matters. That is where we have got to here. The reason that the provisions that were recommended for amendment by the select committee are coming out is for that reason.

The committee did not think it was wise to introduce into the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act a definition of “legal professional privilege”. One of the reasons that the committee has come to that view is that upon reflection—and I suspect it may have had a submission from someone to this effect at the select committee, but I was not sitting on it. Effectively, the select committee is saying that the definition could be interpreted in a way that restricts legal professional privilege to only circumstances where court proceedings are in train or contemplated, which is but a subset of legal professional privilege, which perhaps should apply more broadly to the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987. Therefore the introduction of a narrower definition than the wider definition of “legal professional privilege” might have had the opposite effect to that which was intended. So by defining it more narrowly, it might have been overriding a wider legal professional privilege that already applied. So I can see the logic in that, and I think that it is wise to pull that out of the Act.

Similarly, I think that the amendments that are made in respect of the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act are appropriate. In respect of that issue the committee said the update to the legislation—which, as the Minister said, was recommended by the Law Commission, I think, as a consequence of changing practices over time—is uncontroversial, but the introduction of a discretion, if you like, for the local authorities to say in respect of an oral request for information that it should be particularised in writing was too general and could have been used by local government to obstruct people getting information in even the most mundane of cases. So if someone was coming in with an inquiry and the authorities said: “No, we are not going to give that to you today.” and the person then stood on their right to get what was public information and said: “I am making a request under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act.”, someone who was being obstructive in the local government office could say: “Put that in writing.”, even though there is no need to put it in writing. So the committee, as I understand it, has made some amendments to limit the discretion of the local authorities to always be able to say that routinely, and that seems pretty sensible as well.

The other Acts that are amended are listed in the bill. I do not propose to go through all 33 of them in detail. With those comments, I record that the Labour Party is happy to support the second reading of the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4).

Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this omnibus bill—again, another technical bill. These bills do seem to sit with the Government Administration Committee. As a member of that committee along with the member opposite, Ruth Dyson, who is the chair of it—I guess we must have the brainpower for these very technical bills, so it is wonderful to be speaking on this bill.

I note that it has cross-party support, and that is fantastic. It is fantastic that these changes to the interpretation of these Acts will be made expediently and will allow clarification. Obviously, the aim for laws and statutes is that they are read in plain, simple English and that anyone can pick them up and read them and that it does not become a legislation-fest for solicitors.

But I would like to just focus my comments on one part of this bill, and that is the changes to the Official Information Act 1982. When I used to work for the Department of Conservation, obviously official information requests were very important. They kept us, as officers of the Department of Conservation, honest and accountable. This Act plays a very important role in doing that.

Just starting from the beginning, clause 72 clarifies that the request for official information can be communicated in any form, including orally. Quite frankly, this was often the way that official information requests were communicated to us. It is only fair that people be allowed to request information in that way. Obviously, it helps to clarify that request when it is put in writing, but by using your emotional intelligence skills, you can talk to the requester, delve a little deeper, investigate what they want, take notes, and let them request that information in an oral manner. I think that is fair.

Clause 73 of the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4) clarifies that partial transfer of official information is permitted, and that is fair enough too. While at the Department of Conservation, especially in the concessions realm, I was dealing with quite a lot of information and lots of printout reports from a computer database. Often, it was time-consuming to collate that. Often the requester would need that information as soon as possible and that is actually part of the legislation—that Government departments deal with the requests as expediently as possible or, at the very least, within 20 working days. So the partial transfer of information allows that requester to obtain the information earlier than, obviously, waiting for the entire request to be processed. It means that they can act on that themselves in an expedient manner.

With regard to clause 74, this clarifies that if a request for official information is amended, then that revised request is to be treated as a new request. Again, while working for the Department of Conservation, I found that often requesters would change their minds, which would change the nature of the request, and that could be quite a significant change for officers dealing with that information, especially if it was a great deal of information at the other end. So it is only fair that the officer gets a fresh time limit to deal with that information at that time.

Clause 75 of the bill puts beyond doubt that official information is able to be released electronically. That saves on cost, especially when there are quite a few reports being generated in those requests. It means that the requester does not have to pay for the information; it can be just emailed to them, and they can flick through that relatively quickly and get the gist of the information that they need. Again, I think that is pretty pragmatic. It has probably been going on for some time, but it now just sets that straight in the legislation so that there can be no challenges.

In respect of clause 76 of the bill amending the Official Information Act 1982, it clarifies that an agency must make reasonable efforts to locate the information before refusing on the grounds that the information cannot be located. I can speak firsthand from working for the Department of Conservation that it has screeds of information generated back—for 7 years, I think it has to keep the information. There are files upon files and it can, in some ways, become onerous for it to check for that information. But it is accepted that the Official Information Act is about transparency, it is about accountability, and hence those officers must exhaust their efforts, and use reasonable efforts to locate information that is requested.

In respect of clause 77 of the bill, this clarifies that the Ombudsmen can notify the Chief Archivist if a request is refused on grounds that may indicate that the Public Records Act 2005 has not been complied with. Again, this is a check and balance that is required in respect of the Official Information Act.

Finally, clause 77 of the bill clarifies that the Ombudsmen can hear complaints under the Act that an agency has failed to decide a request as soon as is reasonably practicable. So again this is another important check and balance in respect of the Official Information Act, which is so important in our democracy to maintain that transparency and accountability.

It is with pleasure that I speak to this technical bill. It is an expedient way to deal with a number of changes that do have cross-party support. It allows us to get on with more pressing business but allows things to be tidied up under these Acts so that—to coin a phrase—you cannot drive a wedge through that legislation. It goes to the intent of the primary legislation and certainly helps us to deliver better public services for New Zealand. So with that, I commend the bill to the House.

At this peak viewing and listening time there is always fierce competition for a member to get the call, and I am just so delighted that you chose me ahead of my friend and colleague from Christchurch Denis O’Rourke. He will have a much less interesting time, with far fewer listeners and viewers, I am sure, when he is able to take the call.

Like others, I am pleased to be able to talk in the second reading of the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4). It is a bill that the Government Administration Committee, which I am privileged to chair, had the opportunity to scrutinise. I want to acknowledge three members of that committee who are no longer on the committee, two of whom are no longer in Parliament: Eric Roy, Chris Auchinvole, and, of course, Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi. Kanwaljit Bakshi is still in Parliament but, unfortunately, no longer on our committee. The member who—very bravely, I think—subjected the House to a 10-minute speech on a bill that everyone agrees on should also be commended. I am enjoying working with Sarah Dowie, the current deputy chair of the Government Administration Committee, and I hope to do so for many years to come.

As has been pointed out, this Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4) has the agreement of Parliament. It is interesting to notice, then, that this bill is being filibustered by the National Party members of Parliament. They are filibustering a bill that every single member of Parliament agrees with. We could not get the Government to give us a vote on sending 140 young New Zealanders to Iraq, but here we are filibustering a bill that every single member of Parliament agrees with. It is all about priorities; it is all about what is important. I would have thought having a robust debate on what has to be the biggest responsibility of a Government—deciding to put someone else’s life at risk; not your own life, but someone else’s—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order!

So we did not get a vote on that, but here we are filibustering on this bill at 10 o’clock at night.

Some of the statutes that this bill amends are really interesting, and again it is all about priorities. I notice that one of them is the Antarctica (Environmental Protection) Act 1994, and, again, it is about priorities. Here we have a Queensland fruit fly infestation causing huge concern to the communities that my colleague Damien O’Connor spoke about in question time today. There is nothing on the Order Paper to boost up biosecurity for our own country, but here we are amending legislation to give better protection to Antarctica. I am pleased that we are doing that—I am pleased that we are doing that. I just wish that the Government had not cut back millions of dollars and lots of staff from our own biosecurity teams, because that protection is one of the most important things that New Zealand can do. Again, it is a core Government responsibility to protect not just our citizens—the young people who serve in our defence forces—but also, of course, our agricultural and horticultural sectors.

There are 33 Acts that are amended in this bill. I think about half of them were previously the responsibility of the Hon Judith Collins before she was moved out of Cabinet. I know that members generally talk about how these statutes amendment bills are progressed to allow for minor technical changes, but actually they are mistakes that previous Ministers have made with legislation. I have had some in my own name that I have been responsible for, and I have thought: “How on earth did that get through?”. Well, it is because you do not take enough care, to be honest. That has happened with 33 pieces of legislation in this statutes amendment bill, which is far more than you would normally expect. It goes from the Animal Welfare Act in Part 1 right through to the Wildlife Act in Part 33. Every one of those amendments has got what are sometimes quite substantive changes, but not substantive enough to breach the requirements that our Government Administration Committee rigorously adheres to in terms of appropriateness for inclusion in a statutes amendment bill. Also, obviously, the amendments do not concern any policy matters. Otherwise, they would not be able to be in this bill. Policy matters cannot be in a statutes amendment bill.

It is unusual to have this many changes in one piece of legislation, but I certainly look forward to its further progress. Mr Assistant Speaker, you have the air of someone who is about to curtail my contribution to this debate, and I do not want that to happen. I was keen on making a full contribution, as has every member—

I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.