Third Readings

on behalf of the Associate Minister of Justice: I move, That the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill (No 2), the Antarctica (Environmental Protection) Amendment Bill, the Biosecurity Amendment Bill, the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill, the Commodity Levies Amendment Bill, the Copyright Amendment Bill, the Forests Amendment Bill, the Friendly Societies and Credit Unions Amendment Bill, the Governor-General Amendment Bill, the Heavy Engineering Research Levy Amendment Bill, the Judicial Conduct Commissioner and Judicial Conduct Panel Amendment Bill, the Land Transport Amendment Bill, the Land Transport Management Amendment Act 2008 Amendment Bill, the Local Electoral Amendment Bill, the Local Government Act 1974 Amendment Bill, the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill, the Local Government (Auckland Council) Amendment Bill, the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Amendment Bill, the Marine Mammals Protection Amendment Bill, the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Act 1978 Amendment Bill, the National Animal Identification and Tracing Amendment Bill, the National Parks Amendment Bill, the Ngāti Manuhiri Claims Settlement Amendment Bill, the Official Information Amendment Bill, the Ombudsmen Amendment Bill, the Pork Industry Board Amendment Bill, the Reserves Amendment Bill, the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Amendment Bill, the Sentencing Amendment Bill, the Summary Proceedings Amendment Bill, the Tariff Amendment Bill, the Tokelau (Territorial Sea and Exclusive Economic Zone) Amendment Bill, the Trade in Endangered Species Amendment Bill, the Wildlife Amendment Bill, the be now read a third time.

By their nature, statutes amendment bills do not address significant policy matters, as you have heard. The amendments proposed must be technical, short, and non-controversial. Crucially, though, it means it must have the support of all members of this House. However, statutes amendment bills are an important part of the Government’s legislative programme. They make amendments that individually would not receive the priority needed to be progressed, but they allow us to keep law up to date, accurate, and fair.

As has already been stated this afternoon, the legislation does amend 34 Acts administered by eight different Government agencies. Some of the objectives achieved by the amendments in this legislation include, firstly, clarifying that the request for official information may be communicated in any form. Secondly, it gives Auckland Transport the functions and powers of an enforcement authority in relation to prosecuting infringement offences for public transport fare evasion, putting Auckland Transport on the same footing as other regional councils. It also allows every properly authorised enforcement officer to execute a search warrant under several regulatory regimes, such as the Animal Welfare Act and the Biosecurity Act. It also extends the protection of Antarctic flora and fauna, thereby allowing New Zealand to fully implement its international obligations under the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty. We also heard earlier today how the legislation allows the Judicial Conduct Commissioner to refer a complaint to their deputy for investigation, to allow for more efficient processing of those complaints. It also clarifies when an infringement reminder notice is deemed to be served on a defendant, as you will know. One of the other things this legislation does is it allows the Ombudsman to refuse to formally investigate a complaint if preliminary inquiries show it is unnecessary, to allow for a more timely and efficient complaints resolution.

A number of people have been instrumental in the passage of the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4), and I want to thank members—all members across this House—of the Government Administration Committee, as well as the Ministry of Justice officials who assisted them in progressing this legislation through the House. May I also thank those who submitted on the legislation for their useful and well-thought-out, considered submissions. Finally, I want to thank all parliamentary parties for their backing of the amendments contained in this legislation. I commend all these bills to this House.

Can I thank the Minister of Corrections on behalf of the Associate Minister of Justice for his comments and say that I endorse them. I would like to begin my contribution by responding to something that was said during the Committee stage by one of the National Party members who expressed support for omnibus bills. I too support omnibus bills, but only in very narrow circumstances such as these. Until 1984 omnibus bills were abused in New Zealand. Actually, it was one of the many abuses, in my opinion, from the then National Government, which was running the economy with scant recourse to Parliament. Members will recall, if they are as old as me, that we had a price and rent freeze in New Zealand that had been promulgated by statutory regulation. Imagine freezing all prices across the whole of the economy for year after year without Parliament being asked whether that was a wise thing to do. That was done through regulation-making powers that were terribly broad under the Economic Stabilisation Act of the time.

The subsequent Labour Government came into power with a reform agenda on constitutional matters that was driven by the Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey Palmer. Amongst the changes to our way in which we conduct legislation in this House and the way in which we hold the executive to account were a number of things. For a start, the Economic Stabilisation Act’s regulation-making powers were just repealed, which meant that important things that should not be done by regulation effectively had to come to Parliament through Acts of Parliament to be authorised, around which there are a lot more protections.

If you bring everything back to Parliament through Acts of Parliament, there is the opportunity for more scrutiny, but Sir Geoffrey Palmer and the Parliament of the day recognised that if you could have omnibus bills into which you could throw everything, you could actually pretty much whack a lot of improper things through in one piece of legislation. So not only did they repeal the Economic Stabilisation Act’s regulation-making powers but the Standing Orders were changed in this Parliament to limit the breadth of omnibus legislation and to say that there were only very limited occasions on which omnibus bills could be used. That is why the Standing Orders now come up quite often when we are considering individual pieces of legislation when amendments are proposed by submitters, or when amendments might be proposed by parties from both sides of the House, that go beyond the scope of the bill and are ruled out by the clerks of our select committees because they infringe the rule about trying to limit the scope of bills so that we in this Parliament do not throw too much into an individual bill that goes beyond the scope of what people think might rightly be within it.

Why is that important? We do not have many constitutional provisions in New Zealand against the change of legislation. We have only one House of Parliament. We do not have all of our constitutional rules written down in one place in a written constitution and we do not give the courts the power under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act to strike down parliamentary legislation. Actually, I agree with those settings. I do not think we should give the courts the power to strike down legislation. But what it does mean is that we have to take great care that we do not misuse the very broad powers that we have in this Parliament to change the laws quite quickly. There are some good reasons for us having those powers. We do not get stymied like they find themselves to be in the United States now, where they have got a deadlock against meaningful change. It means that if we as a country want to move on things like climate change, actually, this Parliament can do it. It is very hard for them to do that in the United States. It is good that we can make those changes, but it does mean that we have got to be careful that we do not go too far and have one piece of legislation that, effectively, gives a big change over great big swaths of the economy or society, as happened under the old Economic Stabilisation Act, where regulation-making powers were, effectively, conferred upon the Government for just about everything.

The Standing Orders now say that omnibus bills that change legislation in a lot of spheres are not generally allowed. So if the Government wants to change something relating to tax laws, it has to bring forward a tax bill. If it wants to change something around the criminal code, it has to bring forward a criminal piece of legislation, and if it wants to do something about the environment, it needs an environmental bill. Where there is cross-over between the environment and the economy, it can touch on those things in the same bill, as it ought to and often does not.

We should not be changing the Local Government Act and the Land Transport Act and the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Act in the same bill unless the things that are being done are of minor effect. That is the one exception that we have to omnibus bills in this House, so this is that exception, the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4), or, as we now have, the list of bills that are before us now it has been split into separate bills following the Committee stage—and I could take the rest of my 10 minutes of time up by just listing the various Acts that we are now considering in this bill. This is the one exception, it is a proper exception, and we agree it is all non-contentious.

I will just mention two final things in closing that I think stand to be emphasised. I do find it ironic that we are improving in a minor way the operation of the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act and the Official Information Act itself, when, in such a wholesale way, we have the Government abusing both of those pieces of legislation. The worst offenders were the Hon Judith Collins—and I say that name as a matter of parliamentary principle rather than as a matter of honour—through her dealings with Whale Oil; the Prime Minister’s own office in respect of Jason Ede’s antics using the Official Information Act; and the Donghua Liu affair to attack the Labour Party and David Cunliffe, who, I think, is justifiably aggrieved at the injustice that he suffered at the hands of the abuse by this Government of those pieces of legislation.

The other point I would make is in respect of the more current abuse of power, which is that here we have amendments to land transport legislation coming before this House, even though they are minor, and yet we are not seeing any legislation to authorise the use of $70 million of money collected from New Zealanders by the Government, taken through excise duties and road-user charges, and being used as a political slush fund by the National Party in Northland. Again, that is not coming before Parliament.

💬 Tim Macindoe: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I take offence at that reference, and I also believe it is absolutely out of order for the member to make such an accusation of the Government.

Speaking to that point of order, the Government might not like being accused of being improper, but I can do that. I have rights of free speech in this House, and when the Government acts in an inappropriate way—indeed, I have been in Parliament when the prior Labour Government was accused of being party to corruption in respect of the Taito Phillip Field affair, and we had to put up with those allegations day after day. We did not like them, but the Opposition’s right to free speech meant that those matters were properly raised.

💬 Tim Macindoe: I am not questioning the member’s right to free speech. Of course I would defend that, as would all members of this House. It is the unparliamentary nature of the specific allegation that the member made that is beyond the Standing Orders.

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: All right, well—I think I am ready to rule on this. The member has taken part in the debate on the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4). He has used a clause to illustrate a point that he has made. Some offence has been taken. I do not hold that the member speaking has abused that right or used unparliamentary language. It is a robust place and of course he may well find that subsequent speeches from members on the other side of the House will be just as robust. However, the member must confine himself to the matter that is being debated at the moment, which is the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4).

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I do thank you for that ruling, because I think it is a proper ruling. No doubt the Government members will get up and try to say that prior wrongs by other parliaments mean that their current wrong is right. But, of course, that logically does not follow; two wrongs never make a right. Indeed, I have been here for 12 years and I have never seen a wrong like this one. That is one of the reasons why the fourth estate is holding the Government to account, as well as the Opposition. What is happening currently in Northland is an abuse of power by an increasingly arrogant third-term Government.

💬 Hon Maggie Barry: What about Willow-Jean, thrown under Winston’s bus? How much of an abuse is that?

It is actually none of an abuse. I will address that comment that Maggie Barry has just made.

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Please be seated. The point was made by me in ruling on the point of order and granting the latitude that the member was seeking that he must confine himself to the bill. I would prefer him to—in fact, the member will come back to the bill.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I take it then that if issues in terms of Willow-Jean Prime’s role in the Northland campaign are raised by the Government members, they will be ruled out of order. I would like the opportunity to respond to Maggie Barry’s comments but you have ruled that out of order, so presumably those comments are out of order too, which is unfortunate because there are proper answers to those.

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Back to the bill.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I will return to the more general proposition that this is actually an instance where—whilst there are political barbs that will always go back and forth across this House as we try to keep democracy clean and free from corruption in New Zealand—this is a good bill. I support it. It is a justifiable and wise use of an omnibus bill, which, for the reasons I previously addressed, is something that we must use judiciously in this House. On that basis I record that the Labour Party will be casting its vote in favour of the final readings of this bill.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to speak again on the legislation arising from the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4). It seems like only yesterday that we were enjoying the musings of the second reading. We have just come out of the Committee stage, and now we get to debate the legislation arising from the original bill. Picking up, again, from my colleague Mr Hudson’s statement that he was going to refrain from talking about the positives and the benefits of having omnibus bills, I say that I cannot help it either. They are a fantastic vehicle for expediting the legislative programme, and I am fully in support of these bills.

Quite often I am teased by my colleagues for the wide-ranging bills and matters that the Government Administration Committee hears, but I am thrilled to sit on that committee. The very nature of it, being wide-ranging in issues, makes it fascinating, and I believe that the people who sit on that committee definitely have skills that enable them to look at a wide range of Acts, in particular in respect of this bill, and understand those issues and move legislation forward—shepherd legislation—through the House effectively. So I appreciate sitting on the Government Administration Committee. I appreciate its breadth of topics and I appreciate being able to talk about and debate this bill. It is important to update the various legislation that needs updating and to put it into plain, simple English so that all of the public understand the laws by which they are governed.

I think the select committee process, which shepherded this bill through, is extremely important. I was not fortunate enough to sit on the committee when it heard the submissions, but I understand that there were a whole four submitters. We should not take that as an indication that this bill is not significant. Those four submitters showed an interest in this bill and the importance of it. They were very good submissions. In fact, I understand that there was one submitter, Law for Change Otago, which is a group of students and young professionals interested in public law. They actually gave a detailed 15-page submission that highlighted the potential for semantic misunderstandings in the bill. I am pleased that this Parliament and this process can give an opportunity to our young law students to involve themselves in law-making. I am sure that they have enjoyed that process and have moved on to fruitful careers in the law, and that this process has enabled them to widen their knowledge on public law and omnibus bills.

Moving on to some of the provisions in the bill, I would like to talk about the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012, and the amendments that this bill makes to it. Clause 88 of the bill clarifies that the period for appealing against elements of a provisional local alcohol policy runs from the notification of that provisional policy, and not from the notification of the original draft policy. Of course, this change relates to natural justice. You are giving a period for people to comment on and submit on the version of the alcohol policy that is most likely to be passed, and that is only fair. The mind boggles, really, that those changes needed to be brought into effect, but sometimes these technical difficulties follow through into Acts, and we need to update them so they are more meaningful in real-life terms.

Clause 89 of the bill replaces an incorrect reference to a draft policy with a reference to a provisional policy. That simply takes into account transitional processes, and it simply makes sense. Clause 90 of the bill, in respect of the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act, clarifies that objections to the granting of licences are limited to the suitability of the applicant in the case of an application for a licence that is of the same kind and is subject to the same conditions as the current licence for the premises. That is fair enough. When no terms of that licence are changing and they have been thoroughly considered in the first place, but the licensee is changing, that provision expedites the process, and it is a fair enough consideration to consider only the suitability of the applicant.

Clause 91 of the bill clarifies that a licensing authority, as well as a licensing committee, has to state a date for the expiry of a licence if its renewal is refused. Again, that sets clear parameters. It reverts back to natural justice premises and sets a clear expectation as to what is expected of that licensee and when they are to cease operations. Clause 92 amends the heading to provide a fuller indication of the contents of the section, which is simply fair enough. Finally, clause 93 of this omnibus bill, with respect to the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act, clarifies that electors of trustees of community trusts must reside in the trust district, and that is absolutely fair enough. It is the electors within the district who know about their community. They are focused on their community’s needs and, therefore, they are in the best position to elect those trustees.

And, of course, it would not be cricket if I did not bring that back to my electorate, to Invercargill, and talk about the Community Trust of Southland, which is an absolutely fantastic organisation that supports our community so wonderfully. To end with, I would like to simply highlight some of the projects it is involved in. If it was not for the Community Trust of Southland, we would not have the velodrome, a world-class facility to encourage young cyclists to enjoy the sport of cycling. Thank you.

I am sure this has got to be peak viewing time. Can I begin by saying how unfortunate it is that the member who just resumed her seat, Sarah Dowie, did not continue along that line. I thought, as I was listening, what a nice way it was to end Parliament for the week.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 6 p.m.