Statutes Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Deputy Leader of the House: I move, That the Statutes Amendment Bill be now read a second time. As the House knows, this bill enables Parliament 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, and this, of course, is achieved only with the support of all parties in Parliament.

The current bill as reported back by the Government Administration Committee amends 26 Acts administered by 13 different Government agencies. Each of the amendments in the bill has received unanimous cross-party support and is a great demonstration of parties working together. It was reported back by the Government Administration Committee on 21 June 2016, and I thank the select committee for its very careful consideration of the bill.

The committee received and considered five submissions from interested groups. The report recommended changes to the proposed amendments to one Act, the insertion of an additional amendment to another Act, and the removal of two amendments, and I support each of these recommendations. The committee recommended changes to clauses in the bill amending the Protection of Personal and Property Rights Act 1988. The Law Society suggested changes to clarify common practices about the operation of the legislation and update the wording of the Act. The committee recommended an amendment in a new section regarding the witnessing of donor signatures of an enduring power of attorney. The committee considered the clause as introduced would set a higher standard for lawyers in certifying that no conflict of interest arises than is required under the rules that set out the ethical obligations of lawyers. These changes will make the legislation more effective and efficient for lawyers and donors—and, of course, we all like efficiency for lawyers.

The committee also recommended inserting a new amendment to the Employment Relations Act 2000. This change will address a drafting error in the Employment Relations Amendment Act 2016, which incorrectly referred to a section of the principal Act. The changes will ensure that employees are able correctly to pursue a personal grievance where their employer has not provided the employee with either notice of a cancelled shift or compensation if no notice is given.

The committee recommended removing the amendment to the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Act 2014 from the bill. The Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Act 2014 introduced a new civil order called a non-contact order, which is designed to reduce the likelihood of serious violent and sexual offenders coming into contact with their victims. The intention of the amendment was to give judges clear statutory authority to clear the court and restrict publication of proceedings when applications under the Act were being heard. The committee considered the amendment was not appropriate for inclusion in a statutes amendment bill and has divided the amendment into a separate bill.

Finally, the committee recommended removing the amendment to the Charities Act 2005 from the bill. The bill proposed several amendments to the Charities Act that were assessed by the committee as not adequately meeting the criteria for inclusion in a statutes amendment bill. The committee has divided the proposed amendments to the Charities Act into a separate bill, and the committee is currently considering further submissions to it.

So I endorse the recommendations of the committee. The bill proposes a number of changes to the statute book that are technical and that are short and non-controversial. Again, I thank the committee for its considered work, and I commend the bill to the House.

As the chair of the Government Administration Committee, can I say what a pleasure it is to report this bill back to the House. I think a number of members, particularly new ones, are under the misapprehension that a Statutes Amendment Bill is quite boring.

💬 Kris Faafoi: Oh, who said that?

Well, other than you, Mr Faafoi. It is my view that it is not boring, and it is actually a really important part of the parliamentary process. What it is meant to do is correct errors in drafting. It is not meant to have any policy changes in it. A Statutes Amendment Bill should not have any policy changes, it should not have matters that are so big that they actually could impact on the policy intention indirectly, and it should be non-controversial. So it might sound like a boring frame, but, actually, it is a really important part of the process, and I want to commend all the members of our select committee because I think we have taken this process very seriously.

As Minister Chris Finlayson said—interestingly enough, he said he endorsed the recommendations of the committee, but he did not admit that we have fixed up quite a few mistakes that he had made, in his introduction to the bill. But that is all right. We do not need an admission of mistakes from the Minister, because it might be a bit much for us to cope with, but I am very pleased that the Minister did note that he endorsed the recommendations.

We made a couple of changes in the bill to remove the possibility of further corrections being made in the next statutes amendment bill, and we took out two parts—that is one of the most important things that I want to mention. Neither the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Act change nor the Charities Act change were considered by the committee to meet the criteria for statutes amendment. My understanding is that the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Act change is going to be introduced separately, so that is good. We were not trying to stop the progress of it; we just did not think it was appropriate for these measures to be included in a statutes amendment bill. The other provision, the Charities Act changes, is actually the subject of consideration by the select committee right at this very time. So we have separated it off and called for submissions, and we have put that part of the Statutes Amendment Bill in as a separate measure.

As I said at the beginning, the point of statutes amendment is to have omnibus provisions that tidy up things that are in other bills that otherwise would not get the priority of the House. They are not considered important enough, but they do need to be fixed. They do need to be corrected. In that vein, there are two Supplementary Order Papers that I note have been proposed, and I want to highly commend them both. The sound of the crash that you just heard is David Seymour fainting in his office as I commend a Supplementary Order Paper in his name.

Kris Faafoi has put forward a Supplementary Order Paper that puts a National member’s bill that has been drawn out of the ballot into the proper place, which is in a statutes amendment bill. It is a disgraceful tactic, which I have never seen before in the House, to use the legitimate process of the members’ ballot to clog up the process and block other members’ bills. We get little enough opportunity as it is—actually, we get very little opportunity—to put forward our ideas for legislative change because we are in the Opposition, and for members of the National Government to put in ridiculous bills and clog up the process just makes a laughing stock of Parliament, but, actually, much to the amusement of the rest of us, it has made a laughing stock of them. I have never heard such ridicule as that which has been directed at the National Government backbench for doing such stupid things.

So Kris Faafoi’s Supplementary Order Paper 191 puts in the Airport Authorities Act 1966 change, so that we have replaced “the insertion of suitable advertisements in a newspaper circulating in the district where the airport is situated” with “publicising the sale in what the authority considers to be a fair and reasonable manner”. It is an entirely appropriate amendment for a statutes amendment bill, and I look forward to hearing probably quite a lengthy debate on that very point in the Committee of the whole House.

The other amendment is an equally ludicrous National Government backbench member’s bill that, again, has been drawn from the ballot, and Supplementary Order Paper 207 is in the name of David Seymour. It is quite a bit longer, so I would have to reflect quite carefully on that about whether it would meet the criteria of a statutes amendment bill. But given that despite its length it says pretty well nothing, then it probably is appropriate to go in a statutes amendment bill, and I certainly support David Seymour’s intention, not only in putting it in the right place but in adding further ridicule to that which has already been dished out, up and down the country, at the National Government backbench.

As the Minister indicated when he spoke at the start of the second reading, we had only five submissions on this bill, which probably indicates that most people are satisfied with it. We heard only two submitters. The Ministry of Justice gave us pretty good advice. I am not sure that our advisers agreed right at the start that some of the proposals were unsuitable for a statutes amendment bill, but a further part of the statutes amendment process is that a proposal for deletion, for example—as we did of two parts of this bill—does not need a majority vote by the select committee. A statutes amendment bill requires only one single member of Parliament to object and it cannot proceed. Notwithstanding that point, our committee worked pretty well, I think, and reached unanimous decisions on all of these provisions.

So 28 different pieces of legislation are altered in this. The two changes that we made to correct the corrections, if you like, were amendments to the Employment Relations Act 2000 and to the Protection of Personal and Property Rights Act 1988. So, having got the bill before us to correct mistakes in previous legislation, we discovered a couple more, and I want to acknowledge the rigorous assistance that the submitters gave us, both the ones who just wrote in and the ones who submitted orally.

The process that provides the opportunity for these corrections to be made I do not think should be brushed over lightly. I know that a number of members, including Ministers who were responsible for various parts of this bill—when I raised concerns about the appropriateness with them directly, they basically said it had been signed off by all parties in the House, because that is the consideration that these statutes amendment bills go through before they are introduced in the House and passed on to a select committee. I was a bit disappointed at that initial response because, as I said, we looked at the proposals within this bill with quite a lot of rigour and we genuinely considered that some of them were not appropriate.

I remember about 4 years ago we had a statutes amendment bill at our select committee and we said to the officials “We don’t think this is an appropriate bit to go into the legislation. Why did you introduce it?”, and they said: “Well, we didn’t think that this would have a high priority in the House. The Statutes Amendment Bill was a train that was passing, and we decided to hitch another wagon on to it.” They said that, literally. They were not trying to cause any grief or harm. They wanted their proposals put before Parliament, and they thought they would get away with doing it by putting it into a statutes amendment bill. Well, I do not blame them for that. It must be pretty frustrating, particularly when you see the National Government backbench rubbish bills clogging up the system—as we have over recent weeks—and here are good public servants who have got genuine policy issues that the Minister wants to progress and they are keen to progress, and they cannot find the legislative spot for it.

That is what those rubbish National Government backbench bills actually do—they stop good policy being introduced in this House and debated. What is Parliament for if it is not to progress good issues? We do not always agree with initiatives introduced by the Government members, but that is their mandate to do that. They should—or perhaps they have got nothing left to do. Perhaps they think they have sorted all the problems. Last week in the House I heard about eight pieces of legislation that could have been introduced—some of them were amendments from the Green Party, some of them were amendments from the Labour Party, and they were supported by this side of the House—to address the crisis of homelessness that we have in New Zealand. But, no, let us not do anything in this Parliament to address that crisis. Let us waste the time of the House with rubbish bills like we have had from the National Government backbench. Unfortunately, that is the situation—

I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member, but her time has expired.

E Te Mana Whakawā Tuarua, mauriora. In taking a call on this Statutes Amendment Bill in this second reading debate, I want to first of all congratulate the Minister, the Hon Simon Bridges, on bringing in a piece of legislation that, in amending 28 Acts—we did find two that we thought did not meet the test for a statutes amendment bill, because they were not amendments of a minor, technical, and non-controversial nature.

A statutes amendment bill is an important vehicle, particularly for a Government like this one, which is focused on reducing bureaucracy, on making a more streamlined set of regulations and legislation, and on not tying up the time of this House—as we saw last week from a desperate Opposition, polling at only 26 percent and plummeting in their heartland. We should have been dealing with the housing crisis, or the housing matters, in this country under urgency, and instead those members were focused on palace politics here in Wellington. It is typical of that desperate and failing Opposition.

Anyway, this bill is a sensible set of measures. Statutes amendment bills have been used for some time in this country—there were brief pauses in the 1950s and the 1990s where the practice fell into abeyance—and they do provide us with an efficient and effective means to make these small changes, which are often drafting or typographical error corrections.

The two provisions that we did consider at the Government Administration Committee that did not quite meet the test included the Charities Act 2005 amendments, which were around, I guess, appeal processes that were available to people who were not happy with decisions of the chief executive officers. That was broken out, as others before me have mentioned, into a child bill, which is being considered separately. We also saw the removal of the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Act 2014 amendments, which were particularly aimed at preventing victims of violent offenders from coming into contact with perpetrators in courtroom situations.

I want to congratulate my colleague, the distinguished and learned Minister of Justice the Hon Amy Adams, on the announcements that she made today around family violence. We might not have been able to address this urgent and pressing issue through this means, but I am proud to be part of a Government that is taking family and domestic and intimate partner violence very, very seriously, and is introducing practical law changes that will have a real effect in that area. This is a good bill, and I commend it to the House.

Quite often we say in this House that it is a genuine pleasure to speak to the particular bill that we are speaking on, and it is a genuine pleasure to speak on the Statutes Amendment Bill. First, a disclaimer for those who are watching at home who might be interested in the Statutes Amendment Bill: I am making use of my colleague Stuart Nash’s table today, so if you see this Hawke’s Bay rugby shirt behind me, it has nothing to do with me. As much as we do love Hawke’s Bay on this side of the House, I will take pleasure in saying that Wellington beat Hawke’s Bay 36-26 in the first round of the Mitre 10 Cup. But—

💬 Jami-Lee Ross: Where’s your “Nick Leggett for Mayor” shirt?

Oh, right. Nothing useful, as per usual, from across that side of the House.

I think it is useful to reflect on some of the comments from the last speaker, Paul Foster-Bell—that this Government does not want to tie up unnecessarily any time in this House, and that it wants to make sure that we are being efficient in the House—in the context of this Statutes Amendment Bill. First, for those people who are actually interested in this bill, I think they might want to know what a statutes amendment bill is. I know that a couple of speakers have mentioned it before, but, I guess, in English—going from what we have already heard today—it is a bit of a spring clean for the Government. Anything that is untidy—a technical error in legislation, something that has become outdated, something that is non-controversial—can be changed in a statutes amendment bill. We have heard from numerous speakers that 28 pieces of legislation are included in this Statutes Amendment Bill, which will have minor and small technical changes.

I did want to just put that in the context not of what is in this bill at the moment but of what could be, and that is baggage. If anyone has been paying attention to what has been happening in and around Parliament for the members of Parliament, there was a bill in the members’ ballot that was pulled out in the name of the member of Parliament Nuk Korako, which is the Airport Authorities (Publicising Lost Property Sales) Amendment Bill—an absolutely mega bill from the Government. So important is this piece of legislation from Nuk that National prioritised it by putting it in the members’ ballot, and, lo and behold, Nuk Korako was lucky enough to have this piece of legislation pulled from the ballot.

💬 Hon Member: They’re really passionate about it.

So passionate about this piece of legislation was the Government that, after embarrassment by coverage in the media, Gerry Brownlee tried to get it passed through all stages through the House in one fell swoop. That did not happen, and now the Government has to put up with the embarrassment that one of its own list MPs thinks that one of the massive priorities in this country right now is people’s lost luggage.

But that is actually not accurate. The bill is not about lost luggage; it is about advertising the sale of lost luggage. So if I could just ask our friends in the media to be a little bit more precise in their reporting, it is not about lost luggage, but it is about when that luggage gets lost and the airport wants to sell it. At the moment, legally, the airport can advertise the sale only in the newspaper. Mr Korako has travelled the country. He has spoken to thousands of people. I think he may even have had a petition, and he has fought so long and hard and is so passionate about this issue—about advertising lost luggage—that he thought it was a great idea to make this a member’s bill. I say, for the people at home, this has been pulled from the ballot and it will go to a select committee—yes, a group of MPs of this House will sit around a table, discussing lost luggage advertising. The select committee will have officials look at the ramifications of this piece of legislation and it will have another reading in this House, and, potentially, a third reading in this House, and all because the Government thinks this is a massive priority for the country.

But help is at hand. If the Government is really concerned about this, and wants to make sure that this piece of legislation that Nuk Korako is so passionate about is passed, we can make it happen for him a lot sooner. We can make it part of this Statutes Amendment Bill because it is non-controversial, it is minor, and it does not change any major policy—perfect for a statutes amendment bill. I think we have to look at the approach that the Government is taking with the members’ bills ballot and the abuse of that process within this Parliament with the likes of Nuk Korako’s bill and with the likes of Mr Doocey’s bill, which I think means that companies will be able to email people instead of sending them a letter when there are declarations of their annual accounts—that is another biggie.

That members’ bills ballot is there for members of the House—all around this House—to be able to put up issues that are important to them and their communities. Maybe I am wrong—maybe I am wrong—and maybe Nuk Korako’s community does think this is a big thing. Maybe he has sent out his pamphlets, as the National MPs do, and asked “Which issues are important to you?”—you know, “Which party do you vote for? Do you know who I am? Do you want my newsletter? What is the big issue for you?”—and maybe they came back with “Lost luggage.” Maybe that is actually what happened, but I do not think that is the case. Back when his bill was pulled from the ballot, and the Government realised it was in a bit of trouble because the optics were not good of lost baggage being in the headlines, I wrote to the Government, saying: “Hey guys, just chill. We can put this in a statutes amendment bill, and it will all happen really fast. I will save you not only money but, potentially, embarrassment.”

💬 Dr Megan Woods: Like this speech.

Thanks, Megan Woods. Ha, ha! This is the reply I got from Simon Bridges: “Kris, thank you for your correspondence proposing the inclusion of Mr Korako’s Airport Authorities (Publicising Lost Property Sales) Amendment Bill in the Statutes Amendment Bill. Your letter was forwarded to me, as I am the Minister in charge of this bill. As a member in charge of the Airport Authorities”—it is a long name—“Bill, it is up to Mr Korako to make decisions on how to progress his bill.”—and he was polite—“Thank you for taking the time to write.”

If Mr Korako is serious about this bill, and he is serious about saving the time and money of this Parliament, he will just give up the game. He will give up the game of wasting Parliament’s time with the members’ ballot and just agree to my Supplementary Order Paper 191, because we are from the Opposition, and we are here to help. If the Government thinks that lost baggage advertising is the most important thing it can put in the ballot, well, I think the Government has got some issues with priorities. When the average house price in Auckland is $1 million, when homelessness is going through the roof, we get this piece of legislation through the members’ ballot. So, Mr Korako, yep, it might help the odd airport around the place—and I kind of question how much consultation you did with the airports, because I do not think they think it is a massive issue. But if you are really keen to make your change in New Zealand legislation with your member’s bill, then take up the offer of our Supplementary Order Paper, because we can save you lots of time and money—two things the Government says it wants to make sure it does every day.

But it gets worse, because there are more members’ bills that could potentially come through this process that are absolute stunners.

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: Like Mark Mitchell’s bill.

Oh, no, we will not pick on him. But who have we got here? Maureen Pugh’s Justices of the Peace (Medical Reasons for Retirement) Amendment Bill—

💬 Carmel Sepuloni: Woah!

Yeah, yeah, no, wait, wait, wait. It allows former justices of the peace to use the title “JP (retired)”. That is a biggie—that is a biggie. I will not pick on the member in the chair at the moment. Jacqui Dean’s Local Government (Customer Focus) Amendment Bill requires local authorities to promote a customer focus in the delivery of public services and regulatory functions and makes chief executives responsible for ensuring that happens. I would assume that is already happening. Ian McKelvie’s Sentencing (Livestock Rustling) Amendment Bill does sound exciting, but it adds livestock rustling to the list of aggravating factors to be taken into account at sentencing. Wow, that is a biggie. Usefully, it also defines livestock as “animals kept as part of an agricultural operation, whether for commercial purposes or for private use.”

All of these types of bills, which are in the ballot, could be in a statutes amendment bill. So my message to the Government is, get your priorities right. Get the spring cleaning done with a statutes amendment bill. Stop filling up the members’ ballot with what I would call—

💬 Meka Whaitiri: Wasteful.

—wasteful—

💬 Meka Whaitiri: Wasteful pieces of legislation.

—wasteful pieces of legislation that really are a bit of a joke. They really are a bit of a joke. So next time Simon Bridges is sitting down putting together a statutes amendment bill, I would suggest he looks at all the bills that National Government backbenchers have got in the members’ ballot and says: “Guys, these are embarrassing. Let’s put them in the Statutes Amendment Bill, because, at this stage, we’re looking like a joke.”

It is my pleasure to take a call on the Statutes Amendment Bill, and I would like to acknowledge the Hon Simon Bridges, who has brought this bill to the House. The bill has been through the Government Administration Committee. I do want to acknowledge the chair of the committee, the Hon Ruth Dyson. She has done a very good job of chairing the committee and shepherding this bill through, and I also want to acknowledge, of course, the outstanding deputy chair, Paul Foster-Bell, who also takes a leadership role on that committee.

Of course, the bill tidies up legislation that needs provisions clarified or to have minor technical corrections made. Amendments must be technical, short, and non-controversial, and it is a good way of getting legislation into the House that on its own would not get here. We do need to continue to modernise our statute book in a rapidly changing world.

I have to say that I was quite pleasantly surprised when the chair of the committee was recognising and praising the Hon Chris Finlayson, and that went on for about 2 or 3 minutes. I wondered when it was coming and, sure enough, it happened. She suddenly switched into manoeuvres. She realised what she was doing. So she was searching for something to speak about. She decided that she would switch back into a 17-hour filibuster on housing. She decided to go back to the future. She had nothing else to talk about, so she started talking about and trying to reinvent the filibuster, and, unfortunately, we saw the Opposition run out of steam on last week. Then we had Mr Faafoi get up and make a very good contribution.

💬 Kris Faafoi: Thank you. You can stop now.

You are welcome. He talked about Nuk Korako’s bill. I am lucky enough that I have travelled with Mr Faafoi as members of the Parliamentary Rugby Team. I know for a fact that if his luggage went missing, with his Giorgio Armani suits and his rugby mouthguard, that bottom lip would be quivering. That bottom lip would be quivering and he would be rushing around. It is very hard to get another mouthguard to fit Kris at very short notice like that. The other thing that he got very excited about, which I found very interesting, was cattle rustling. For some reason, he seemed to really home in on rustling, and he also singled out and picked on our justices of the peace (JPs).

I just want to make one comment, on a serious note, on that. Our JPs provide an extremely important service in our communities. One thing that is very important within our JP service is that we continue to rejuvenate and we continue to find new JPs who are willing to come in, who meet the standards set and required of a JP, and who are able to take on that role, which now requires fairly technical work, and also, often they are in very high demand, especially in semi-rural or provincial areas. So allowing our JPs to retire and to retain that JP title when retired is actually very important to them, and it is a way of us being able to continue to recognise them—

💬 Brett Hudson: To acknowledge them.

—and acknowledge the service that they have given. So I just wanted to highlight that. That is a member’s bill, and that is actually a very good member’s bill.

I am very happy to take this call on the Statutes Amendment Bill and commend it to the House. Thank you.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. I am pleased to take what will be a short call on the Statutes Amendment Bill. Just looking through the bill, I looked at Part 7, where there is a change to the Conservation Act. I guess that illustrates the nature of the changes that are in this bill, because there are just two clauses there. They amend section 38 of the Conservation Act, which itself is in the miscellaneous part of the principal Act, and clause 26 is entitled “(Hunting, etc)”, which I am not sure is the best drafting. But what this amendment is doing is ensuring that—in section 38 it is about the issue of hunting permits. You cannot go hunting on public conservation land unless you have a hunting permit issued by the Director-General of Conservation, subject to public safety and other requirements. It is an offence under the principal Act to not comply with the conditions of the hunting permit.

What the bill does here is ensure that if you are using a trap on conservation land to go hunting, you need to have a hunting permit and you need to comply with the Act, because previously the principal Act listed nets, poison, snares, and hunting weapons, but it did not mention traps. So what the bill does is it inserts “trap,” and adds it to the list of killing mechanisms that you need a permit for.

I guess I am making a point similar to others’ that when the Statutes Amendment Bill is making small, technical changes like that, then it should also be making the changes that a lot of National Government backbenchers have dreamt up in terms of members bills’—the ones like Nuk Korako’s, which is the advertising of lost luggage from airports, and the one developed by Waitaki MP Jacqui Dean, which is typical of the National Government and its attitude to local government, telling local government what to do by requiring local authorities to promote a customer focus in the way they provide public services and the way in which they undertake their regulatory responsibilities. Local authorities know about being customer-focused, but it highlights the distrust with which this Government treats councils that it sees fit to have a National member require that in a member’s bill. All those sorts of bills could be included in the Statutes Amendment Bill instead of clogging up the time that we have on members’ days to debate what could be, if they were being lodged by Opposition parties, quite substantial changes to law and policy.

The Statutes Amendment Bill should be dealing with a number of the matters that National backbenchers have in their members’ bills, because it is really an abuse of the parliamentary process to deny us the time to debate genuine measures that would advance policy and legislation. I guess that is typical of this Government in terms of the way in which it patronises select committees, denies the select committees the chance to actually debate substantive changes to legislation, has officials debating that with the Ministers instead, and then has select committees acting as a mere cipher on controversial legislation—again, similarly, with these members’ bills. But given that Parliament costs around $42,000 an hour for the time that we spend debating legislation, I will conclude by commending this bill to the House.

New Zealand First supported this bill at the first reading, on the basis that it is a statutes amendment bill that makes minor amendments to the several Acts that are set out in it. As part of the process that we took with this bill, we referred the entire bill to all of our caucus members and asked them to study it to see which areas of the bill related to their portfolios. They looked at it, they studied whether there were any issues that we needed to particularly take notice of, and the feedback on it was that there were no such issues, that we were satisfied with all of the amendments in the bill, and that there was therefore no reason for us to object to anything in it. So I indicated at that stage that we would be voting for it, on the basis that it was as it was at that stage.

I have now also looked, as we all have, at the report of the Government Administration Committee, which has made a number of relatively minor but actually quite important amendments, which New Zealand First is also happy to support. Actually, two of them are really only amendments, and they are the ones to the Employment Relations Act that amend a new part. The issue there is that the correction would ensure that employees are able to correctly pursue a personal grievance where their employer has not provided the employee with either notice of a cancelled shift or compensation if notice is not given as per the employment agreement. So we have no difficulty with supporting that. That is a genuine and well-thought-out amendment that the committee has made to the bill.

Similarly, we support the amendment that the committee has made to the Protection of Personal and Property Rights Act 1988, which amends one of the clauses relating to the witnessing of donor signatures. I remember, as a lawyer, doing many, many of these, and it is a standard certificate, but the committee has said that it believes that adequate protection would be achieved by adopting the same formulation as in the legislation. It has recommended replacing the words “does not constitute a conflict of interest.” with the words “does not constitute more than a negligible risk of a conflict of interest.” That is actually much more reasonable as a certificate, because how could anyone—lawyer or not—give an absolute certification that no conflict of interest would arise? So “not more than negligible” is much more reasonable. For that reason, again, New Zealand First sees that as a genuine amendment to the bill, and one that we can support.

The other two recommendations of the committee were to divide off into separate bills the amendments relating to the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Act 2014 and the one relating to the Charities Act 2005. We agree with the committee that those are amendments that should not be in this bill. We take its advice and agree with it on that.

That leads me to move on to the two Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) that would add further amendments to the bill by adding two members’ bills to it. We in New Zealand First will definitely not support either of those SOPs. This is an abuse of the statutes amendment bill procedure. They are not genuine amendments that were considered or were part of the original bill. This is not the right way to go about getting members’ bills through the House. We consider that to be an abuse of procedure. It should not be happening. We will not support it on that basis alone, but there are, of course, other good reasons for not doing so.

Nuk Korako’s bill is, admittedly, an extremely minor bill—in fact, so minor that it almost reaches vanishing point—concerning lost property at airports. It is now proposed by Mr Faafoi in Supplementary Order Paper 191 that it go into this bill. Well, this is a serious statutes amendment bill, and it should not be there. We will not support it for that reason. Similarly, we have Matt Doocey’s bill—also desperately unnoticeable in content—which is now proposed by David Seymour to go into this bill, presumably as a means of getting rid of it. Well that, again, is actually an abuse of the procedure, and it should not be happening.

In both cases the members should have an opportunity to speak to their bills. They should, in fact, turn up and explain to this House why they have moved those as members’ bills, why it is so important that the provisions in them should take up the time of this House, and why it is such good legislation that we should all vote for it. We think they should do that. We want to hear what they have to say. We want to hear that justification. We do not want to see it buried in this Statutes Amendment Bill as just a nice, quiet way of getting rid of it or sweeping it almost under the carpet. So we will not have that. We will not have that. We want to have the debate. We want to hear what they are all about. We want to know why we should vote for or against them.

Lastly, we think that by allowing this sort of thing to happen we will be setting a very bad precedent, one that we do not want to see happening again. For those reasons there is no possible way New Zealand First will vote in favour of either of those two SOPs. Otherwise, we have no difficulty whatsoever with the process that has been adopted for this Statutes Amendment Bill or with the recommendations of the Government Administration Committee, which we also support. So that is our position, and it is one that we are going to stick to. It is the only one, we believe, that is credible and proper as a way to deal with this particular bill. We will be voting for the bill but against the two SOPs, for those reasons.

It is an absolute pleasure to rise in support of the Statutes Amendment Bill in its second reading. I do sit on the committee—the Government Administration Committee—that considered this bill. As other members have said, it is the nature of a statutes amendment bill that the provisions are not controversial and that they should be simple and technical in nature. But that does not mean that they are in any way unimportant. In fact, the provisions, which I will come to, are extremely important—so there, too, is the role of the committee on the bill.

The committee spent a great deal of effort in analysing and hearing submissions and listening to officials to reach the positions it did, and that included some very valuable amendments—for instance, the amendment in a new section around the witnessing of donor signatures of an enduring power of attorney, and the amendment in the area of the Protection of Personal and Property Rights Act 1988 to clarify common practices and to improve the suggested change that was there. The committee also recommended the removal of the amendments to the Charities Act 2005 because it felt that they were better addressed as a child bill to this Statutes Amendment Bill, and it has undertaken that process.

Within that, and within the bill as it is returned to the House, there are still some important, albeit small, changes that we hold should take place. For instance, in the Accident Compensation Act 2001—the very first principal Act to be amended—the changes will amend section 139 to prohibit the ACC from using its own employees or any subsidiary to conduct reviews as part of the statutory dispute resolution process. It is pretty simple to understand. It is pretty obvious in its nature, you would think. So, very clearly, the legislation as it currently stands does not prohibit that. It makes sense to tidy up that small anomaly. There are more clauses still that give changes of import, even if the change itself seems somewhat minor.

This Statutes Amendment Bill will amend section 149L(3) of the Crown Entities Act 2004, which changes a reference from “another entity’s responsible Minister” to “another Minister”. One might wonder, why such a potentially pedantic change of wording? If we look at the changes in Government entities over the years, and with entities such as the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment being such a large and very encompassing agency, it makes sense to acknowledge that wording that may have been right in the past would no longer be.

The one I want to finish on is one that I felt my colleague Chris Bishop, a man who has a great and warm heart, might like to see take place. The Statutes Amendment Bill will amend section 23(1)(a) of the 16th Act, the Members of Parliament (Remuneration and Services) Act 2013. I am sure Mr Bishop would wish very well for his erstwhile opponent in the Hutt South seat—for this change will enable the Speaker to authorise travel services to continue for a reasonable period after a member of Parliament vacates his or her seat. And I am sure Mr Bishop wishes Mr Mallard all the best. I commend this bill to the House.

It is a delight to take a call on this important Statutes Amendment Bill, which, of course, Labour will be supporting. This is part of a long tradition of tidy-up and remedial matters. For folks at home, what happens with a statutes amendment bill is that on the second reading we go through it and we satisfy ourselves that there is nothing in here that belongs in a more substantive policy - type bill. Now it has come back from the Government Administration Committee, we hear any qualifications and we pass it into law. It saves the House time by grouping a whole bunch of issues that, frankly, really are not supposed to have a great deal of policy content. They are tidy-ups. They are corrections.

That brings me then to a couple of little issues. Firstly, can I commend the Deputy Leader of the House for the Commodity Levies Act amendments in Part 5, because it has done the right thing and it has got a sunset clause in it. Levies will be in force for no more than 6 years, unless extended. That is really good practice, and we are pleased to see that in there from a regulations review point of view. However, the next part, Part 6, inserts new section 16A into the Community Trusts Act and it is over a page long. It is a process for adjusting the areas of a community trust or, indeed, merging part or the whole of two community trusts.

Community trusts were set up to accommodate the funds of a number of the trustee savings banks. Many of them have hundreds of millions of dollars in them. This is actually a pretty substantive provision. I would welcome a Government speaker just explaining to us—perhaps the Attorney-General might want to take a call, or the Minister responsible—how Part 6 inserting new section 16A is not a policy matter. And if it is a policy matter, what is it doing in a statutes amendment bill?

It was with a little chuckle that I looked at Part 9, which is around the Crown Entities Act, because you will recall that this House has had some extensive debates on the merits or demerits of the so-called mixed-ownership model, where a State-owned enterprise (SOE) or a Crown entity has part of its shareholding hived off to the private sector for the supposed benefit of scrutiny by analysts but, of course, it is actually done to enrich a whole lot of middle men in the time-honoured tradition of National. Well, this is really interesting because clause 40 in Part 9, which substitutes section 110, actually reinforces one of the most important provisions of the old State-owned enterprise model, which is the power of Ministers to give a direction to the Crown entity that they must, by law, follow.

This tidy-up actually writes into law more specifically the obligations of those Crown entities, which I assume—and the Minister will correct us if this is otherwise—includes former SOEs now governed under the mixed-ownership model. What an incredible U-turn. It is not one that the Opposition is wholly disappointed to see, because we rather think the idea of a ministerial direction power is a useful protection for the public interest, but I think it shows that the mixed-ownership model went too far, got a little too shoddy, and now the Government is backtracking, which is probably a good thing.

When you go to Part 21, “Protection of Personal and Property Rights Act 1988”, there are a number of reasonably significant amendments in clause 75—section 94A(4A) and (6A), and, over the page, new section 95A—around the revocation of enduring powers of attorney. Again, I think this pushes the envelope of what you would normally see in a statutes amendment bill. They are matters of policy, albeit minor.

However, we are supporting this bill because although one or two of these things come a little bit close to the Standing Orders line, we respect the overall intent of the process, which is to save the House time and to save the taxpayer money by grouping up a whole lot of fiddly little amendments into one legislative vehicle.

That is what brings me to the topic of denuclearisation, and, specifically, the “de-Nuk Korako-isation”, of the Order Paper from things like the “Luggage Handling Advertising Bill”, which could have fitted in the Statutes Amendment Bill because, frankly, it is less substantive than any of the amendments that I have just spent the last 5 minutes reading out. It is much more important to give a ministerial direction power to a State-owned enterprise that could affect hundreds of millions of dollars of public investment than it is to change the advertising method for a lost bag. It is far more substantive to merge two community trusts that hold hundreds of millions of dollars in assets than it is to spend the House’s time debating whether a local newspaper notice or an email notification for a lost handbag is the most appropriate way to advertise it. So that is what I mean by denuclearisation of the Order Paper.

Frankly, we have had enough of nuclear testing. The North Koreans have done some of it this week and that is a bad thing, and it is a bad thing to see the Government nuclear testing on the House with the Order Paper with this lost baggage bill. What we are really calling for is a case of “Nuk tuck”—we want to tuck the Nuk bill into this bill to save the House time. Or we could send it to Nuku’alofa, or, perhaps, we could follow the old dictum that “A Nuk in time saves nine”. It would be really good to save nine times the time that is going to be spent on Nuk Korako’s “Blimmin Waste of Space Bill” and put it in the Statutes Amendment Bill.

Of course, these things do not happen by accident. The highly paid strategists and spin doctors of the National Government spend hours around the bonfires in the Beehive working out new ways to sucker the public of New Zealand into the proposition that the Government knows what it is doing. That is why it is wasting the House’s time with trivial, inane pieces of members’ legislation like Nuk Korako’s bill, which does not go unnoticed by the perspicacious personnel of the press gallery.

I merit one Vernon Small, who observes as follows: “Ridicule has been heaped on list MP Nuk Korako’s bill to exempt airports from having to advertise the auction of lost property in their local newspaper.” He goes on to say why that is ridiculous and concludes with the following: “It was a tactic advocated by National pollster and blogger David Farrar back in 2012 that has come into its own now National has only a slim majority … it allows National to dilute the odds that a measure drafted by the Opposition or minor party MPs”—sorry, chaps, those are his words. We do not think of you as minor; we think of you as excellent colleagues in the House, pursuing, as your leader has said, the task of changing the Government, and that is a good thing.

It allows National to dilute the odds of something real coming out of the ballot paper—real, like building State houses, taking children out of cars into warm, dry homes, or making sure that our rental accommodation is fitted within the parameters of the Statutes Amendment Bill. I take your guidance, as always, Mr Assistant Speaker.

New Zealanders are not stupid. As much as National’s strategists might think you could fool all of the people all of the time, New Zealanders are going to prove the age-old dictum next year that although you may be able to fool all of the people some of the time—possibly for about 7 years—in the end, sense catches up and enough of the sum of the people cast their ballot for a change of Government, rising up in indignation about the trifling with the House that has been vested upon us by Nuk Korako wasting members’ time. It is time to “de - Nuk-learise”.

This Statutes Amendment Bill is a living, breathing example of a railway train that is leaving the station that could have had a couple more carriages on it. The carriages that are on it at the moment include things as important as merging community trusts, reinforcing the power of Minsters to direct State-owned enterprises, important additions to the powers of corrections officers and police in respect of bail, and many other drastically important measures that we are tidying up through this legislation. Why, oh why, could it have not found room in its heart for Nuk Korako’s bill? Think of the hours of House time that members could have spent enjoying themselves in other pursuits, knowing the country was safe, and that the Order Paper had been “de - Nuk-learised”. Thank you.

It is a pleasure to be talking on the Statutes Amendment Bill in its second reading. Some Opposition members are most uncharitable. I have sat here and listened to some very mean-spirited people, particularly talking about Mr Nuk Korako. I think he has got an excellent bill. It is interesting that Opposition members feel that it is their divine right to determine what should go forward in a statutes amendment bill and what should be put forward as a member’s bill. I do not subscribe to that view. But it is actually an auspicious occasion today because this is one of the rare times I have been in this House and actually heard that New Zealand First is going to support one of our changes, one of our bills. Its history is always to say no—no to everything. This is a very rare occasion, and congratulations on doing that.

I have listened to a number of the speakers talking about various aspects of the Statutes Amendment Bill. I thought I might just pause for a moment on the amendments to the Protection of Personal and Property Rights Act 1988. I have not heard anyone talking about this, so I thought we would just spend a moment or two reflecting on these excellent few changes. Amended section 94A, in clause 75, amends the Act to support a proposal to enact some regulations, which means, in effect, that there would be a standard explanation of the effects and implications of an enduring power of attorney.

The reason I am picking up on the enduring power of attorney is that it is very important, and there are about six changes. Amended section 94A also talks about the donors of mutual enduring powers of attorney receiving the required explanation and having their signatures witnessed by the same authorised witness. New section 94A(7)(ab) goes on to talk about these donors and witnesses, to certify that the donor “understands the nature of the instrument;” and the potential risks and consequences.

I am sure that many of us in this House and many of the members of the public have had a lot of trouble trying to get appropriate enduring powers of attorney. When you want to change them, you have to go through a full rigmarole of reassessing them, rewriting them, and getting new consent. So some of the changes in this are quite simple and it is perfectly adequate that they are dealt with through the Statutes Amendment Bill, and I think they go some way to making sure that we get the rights of powers of attorney in place. They are good, practical solutions. These are just one of a series of measures that this bill deals with, and I fully commend it.

I would hate to see the House fall into silence on such an important bill. The Statutes Amendment Bill, as we have heard, is quite non-controversial, and, really, would probably explain the rambles that we have been hearing, particularly from the other side of the House. I thought that we should talk about what is important in this, and I think the amendment to the Commodity Levies Act 1990 is actually fantastic. It gets the law right into line so that a levy order lasts for 6 years from the date it comes into force, rather than the date that it was issued, which I think is really very important. The commodity levies go up for election every 6 years. It is very important to those industries that they have those levies, but it is also important that they have industry support.

Also, the Fisheries Act 1996 amendment provides for a notice to temporarily close a fishing area or restrict fishing methods to be automatically revoked 2 years after coming into force. I think that is really important, because fishing areas are coming increasingly under pressure because of overfishing, quite often by recreational fishers. Although they are taking only a small amount each, because they are fishing constantly and with new technology with fish finders that can virtually home in on the area where the fish are—so fishermen are no longer leaving it to chance. They are actually finding that area very quickly, so it is important that the Minister has the opportunity to close fisheries should he or she need to.

I think it is also important that fishing methods are covered in that, because, for example, in the Marlborough Sounds at the moment we do have a complete ban on scallop fishing, particularly the damage that dredges appear to be doing to the sea bottom. That may well have effects on other fish species spawning in the little sea grasses that grow on the bottom. Because you are, effectively, ploughing the bottom of the sea, those little fish do not have the area to live in. That could really have a major impact all the way through that food chain, so it is really important that the Minister has an opportunity to manage that as needed.

I will just finish on the Land Transport Act 1988 amendment, which removes the retention of logbooks for 12 months. That is really important for the administrative process.

So I would like to just reiterate that I am quite honoured to be able to bring some good sense back to this debate and stop all of the ramble that was coming from the other side. I commend the bill to the House. Thank you.

Bill read a second time.