Regulatory Systems (Commercial Matters) Amendment Bill

I will use my dulcet tones again tonight on this bill. I just take a short call, because I want to make a point. The point is that earlier in the debate on the previous bill, which is part of this omnibus legislation, the building and housing bill, the Minister in the chair at the time, Michael Woodhouse, got to his feet very helpfully to give some commentary and some response, which is always good. It is always good to get a Minister who is actually prepared to respond in the Committee stage of the House, because, for those listening at home, it is actually an important part of the debate. But what the Minster said was that this is an omnibus bill. It is a step above a statutes amendment bill, so therefore it does not deal with matters of substance, and he said that those matters of substance are being considered in a separate review—this was in relation to the previous bill, the Regulatory Systems (Building and Housing) Amendment Bill.

However, what we have just been doing in this bill, particularly in Part 4, is, I put to you, debating matters of absolute substance. I do want to acknowledge the work that officials have done on this: the fact that they went away and came back, listened to the submitters, and went away and came back with a revised process that was trying to meet the needs of industry and to be responsible in response to some major collapses—financial collapses—in our country. Really, you cannot say that is not substance, so therefore I question what the logic was behind what the Minister in the chair previously was on about when he said that an omnibus bill does not deal with matters of substance; it is only a step above a statutes amendment bill. Clearly, maybe he had not read it or had not done any of the work.

I think it is an important point to make. We have got another bill to come, another bill to have a debate on, and I am sure there are some matters of substance in there that my colleagues will be drawing out, because, as you would have noticed, all the work is going on on this side of the Chamber in terms of actually doing the work, reading the bill, asking the questions, and having the debates. We know that the reason this bill is coming before this House this week and needs to get passed is so that that retention scheme can be put in place by 31 March, which is at the end of next week.

I just want to make the point that when there is commentary by Ministers on bills such as this that they do address the issues of substance. We had questions around substance. Very few of them were answered, and I do not think it is good practice for them just to get flicked off as being “not relevant, not relevant, out of scope”. I do question why we get the answer that issues of policy are out of scope in bills such as this. We have raised a number of them tonight in this debate, and I think that that should be on the record.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Bill to be reported without amendment presently.